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1984 Olds Cutlas Factory Drag Car?
A friend of mine that has been a drag racer all his life purchased a 1984 cutlass drag car a few years ago. Someone at the strip this spring told him he had one of a very few factory drag cars that were shipped without a VIN from Oldsmobile. Anyone ever heard of this? The car does not have a VIN and is equipped with an aluminum hood.
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Aluminum hoods and trunk lids were actually quite common. No vin tag cars were sometimes given to schools for use in shop classes. Without proof of where it came from, it's pretty hard to tell.
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I actually do remember reading about no-VIN Cutlasses sold to racers in the late 80s, here’s some more chat. I think they were more complete than body-in-whites, but not complete or street legal or registerable.
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...ag-car-164838/ I think the first car in this video is one of them as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC3IweOk2fo |
Thanks for the thread link Tom. Very interesting that in that thread they mention that car had a 1988 front end on it. My friends car is the same....1984 main body with a 1987 front end. I'll ask him if his has a similar sticker in the trunk.
BTW, the Cutlass in the video looks just like my friends. |
Olds provided quite a few of them to racers back in the 80s, and there were a handful of them still racing in stock eliminator/super stock a few years ago. You likely won't be able to find any factory records on what was provided. Another Olds forum that had a bunch of posts about them ~10 years ago is gone.
It's probably worth a post on classracer.com asking about them. The racing community tends to have a pretty good insight on this stuff. Names that come to mind are Jerry Ryan and Alan Warman, though Alan passed away a few years ago. |
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Heard of them before too but know nothing, love to see and learn more! Even though no VIN Tags, interesting would be if any Hidden Vins also what they are specifically. If there are any Hiddens, being Canada Vintage Services has details for ‘77 and newer GM Vins available, these uncompleted and/or shipped vehicles wouldn’t be included w/ their GM records, would they?:hmmm: :beers: ~ Pete . |
If I recall correctly, they were prepped by Ed Quay.
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Body in white
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Picture of Jim's car. He told me it was shipped as a body in white from the factory. Never did ask him about how the Landau Roof came about ? But you can call him
and ask. |
Checked back in with my buddy. His car has a VIN sticker in the trunk. Comes back as a 1985 cutlass with a Diesel engine. It was built as a black car with factory T-tops. It has an aluminum hood, trunk lid, and core support. He's now digging around the World Wide Web trying to find out more about it. He has not yet found any others with the aluminum core support or built with T-tops.
Thanks for the info guys, he's off and running! |
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Super interesting topic. And to me, kind of crazy that they would offer a body in white (or close to it if not that specifically) with T-tops.
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Those cars weren't body in white cars. They were all test vehicles from GM. A large number of the Cutlass bodies had been diesel test cars, some with tons of miles on them. They did the same with the Olds Ciera race cars. Arlen Fadely was in charge of the program, same guy who did the same at Ford before that. SS&DI magazine had a series on him years before buiding the orange Maverick out of a body in white. Pontiac did the same, The Rod Shop Transam that Larry Morgan raced in Super Stock was a running driving car, Larry and i drive it around before he took it apart, it also was a T Top car which wasnt ideal but were left in it and wasnt a problem with the roll cage added.
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Were the aluminum body panels used in production cutlasses in the mid-80's or were they added once the test car was designated for the race program? I wonder why the 1985 body test cars ended up with 1987 front ends?
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There was a lot of new engineering going into cars back then, engines, fuel injection, transmissions, anti lock brakes, front wheel drive and more. I’d bet anything all those cars weren’t scrapped and some of them made it out the back door, whether they were sold as pseudo race cars with no vin, who knows. If some of them were high miles, this could have been the source. |
I don't remember anymore why or when but the aluminum stuff was assembly line, i wanta say it was on the diesel cars but don't remember for sure. Yes, some of the cars given to drag racers were totally whipped mechanically, the Cutlass given to Ron Garey still had some test instrumentation mounted. All of these cars had the vin tags removed mostly because of a case of FORD cars given away and resold which created a big stink
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Those cars would have been crushed anyway so meant nothing to GM money wise. Some of the stuff they junked that i would see at the Tech Center and wind tunnel in Warren was heartbreaking
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Aluminum hoods were production parts and were originally thought to be a diesel car item for front end weight reduction, but people reported having them on original 307 powered cars too. I had one for my old '83 H/O and it was crazy how light it was compared to the steel hood. The aluminum deck lid could be the rarest part if that's truly aluminum... the '78-80 cars had some aluminum deck lids, but I don't know that I'm aware of an '81-up aluminum trunk. Updating the front end of a racecar to be the current model year was popular back then, especially if you had factory backing or a potential different class you could run in. The 70 cutlass factory-backed race cars were updated to '71 and '72 front ends. Wouldn't surprise me if it was the same in the 80's. |
Visions of Warren Johnson come to mind.
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So has anyone posted anything to show it was a race car BIW / giveaway, I don't see a pic of the invoice. Seems like it was just a fleet / test car that was given away like they would to schools.
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