I am currently looking to buy a 62 Cutlass convertable from a private owner
on the east coast.Pics of the car look good,but for one curious picture of
the engine compartment.There's a BUICK 215 engine in there! Owner says
it was in the car when he bought it and explained that "they did that
sometimes."

Not being familiar with Oldsmobiles,can anyone tell me if a Buick 215
installed by the factory in a 62 Cutlass is possible? Of all the years I've
been around cars,(a lot of years) I have never seen this before.

Guessing a previous owner may have done this as an engine replacement.
Owner's "they did that sometimes" answer is red-flagging me as being
bullshit.

Can anyone tell me if he is right?

 

The Buick-designed aluminum 215 engine was standard equipment on the 61-63 F85/Cutlass. It used Oldsmobile-specific heads and exhaust manifolds and was available turbocharged in 62-63 as the first production turbocharged American car.

So yes, the basic engine is a Buick design. The difference in a Buick installation vs an Oldsmobile installation is the heads. If it has Buick heads, yah, maybe someone has changed something, but if it still has its "Rockette" aircleaner, odds are the factory put it there.

This engine design and tooling was sold to Rover in the mid-60s and is still used by them. Meaning the Brits have tons of performance stuff for this engine.

 

To expand on Glenn's post, the 215 was used by Olds, Buick, Pontiac, and later Rover. All share the same architecture and all physically interchange. My 62 F-85 currently has a Buick motor in it that I temporarily installed this spring.

The Olds version of the 215 actually used a different head design with six head bolts around each cylinder (the others only used five). The head shape is different and the valve covers are different as well. The Buick block casting has the bosses for the extra bolt holes but they are not drilled and tapped. Olds also used different pistons due to the different combustion chamber shape.

Note that in the 1961-63 cars, the Olds F-85 series was only offered with the 215. Buick used the 198 cu in iron V6 as the base engine and the 215 was optional. Pontiac used the 195 cu in four cylinder with the 215 optional.

The 215 (and it's larger descendants) were built by Rover for nearly four decades after GM stopped production. Despite that, GM still built more of them in 3 years than Rover did in 4 decades.

 

The 215cu in. Was produced by gm in 1961 and 62 (aluminum) and was available in the buick special, pontiac tempest, and olds f-85.


R. D. Tonazzi

 

Hi,

I'm not sure why you're dredging up a thread from four years ago, but read my post from Nov 2010 that's directly above yours. GM made the 215 for the 1961, 62, and 63 model years before selling the design and tooling to Rover in 1966. The Olds version was different from the Buick-Pontiac-Rover version in the design of the heads, valvetrain, and pistons. The question the O.P. asked back in 2010 concerned whether or not a Buick version of the motor would have ever been factory-installed in an Olds. The answer, as noted above, is no.