Why The Next Generation Will Be In Our Hobby- Malaise Daze L.A. Show

[8E45E]

9 hours ago, padgett said:

Energy absorbing bumpers were hidden. Use of chrome declined.    I suspect that at some point in the future some cars of this era (like my 88 Reatta with a touchscreen in the dash) will be recognized for what they are.

That was a HUGE improvement, and I'll NEVER figure out why it took 15 years to hide those ugly exposed bumpers as the 1973 Grand Am, Chevelle Laguna and Corvette clearly showed it could have been done right from the start of the mandate.  Hemmings Motor News had a one-pager on the early CRT touchscreens about a year or so ago as used in the Riviera.

 

Craig

[rocketraider]

The story of Chevy engines in 1977 Oldsmobiles is interesting. Short version, Olds had committed to sell Pontiac, Buick and, yes, Cadillac 350 and 403 engines. Those Divisions no longer had large-displacement V8 engines to haul their still-hefty products around, and Buick didn't have a V8 at all in 1977. They bought OLDSMOBILE engines to replace them as they were sturdy, easy to meet emissions and powerful for the time and,  in the case of the FI Seville 350, easy to modify. The Cad 425 was not a good fit for the X-body Seville (didn't know it was a Nova in drag, huh?), the X-body was already adapted to the small-block Olds engine, Buick and Pontiac were getting out of the V8 business (because of emissions), so the Olds was deemed best fit for the Seville. So- pretty obvious B-P-Cad liked and wanted the Olds engine enough to buy them over Chevrolet, which had more engine-building capacity than they knew what to do with.

 

With all these commitments, Olds found itself without enough V8 engines or engine building capacity to supply its own cars. To their credit, they honored those sales commitments and stooped to buy engines from Chevrolet for 88s and Cutlii. Chevy had outrageous engine building capacity that often ran at less than full capacity due to their own car-building limitations, and there were a lot of Chevy-Olds dualled dealerships and service departments. So, win-win for everyone, until that reporter saw the Chevy engine in a Delta 88 at the NY auto show.

 

Do I want a Chevy-powered Olds in my fleet? No, but the cars weren't as bad as they were made to be in spite of Chevrolet's soft cam problems in those years. I'd rather have one with the Olds Diesel in it just to be different. 

 

And as someone pointed out, all GM intermediates with inline sixes had Chevy 250s. There were a number of 1975 Oldsmobiles built with Pontiac 400 engines too, but Pontiac was esteemed as a "step-up" Division within GM so owners of Olds so equipped didn't grumble much.

 

Far as Olds engines in 80s full-size GMs, Federal emissions standards dictated that more than anything else. The Chev 305 and Olds 307 were the only V8s emissions certified for B and C body cars. So blame the Feds for a lot of GM's engine-swapping  shenanigans. It's what happens when bureaucrats get into things.