(first posted 2/19/2016) The sight of this big, beautiful Olds being piloted by this gentleman last summer stopped me dead in my tracks. In resplendent, factory Dark Green Metallic and riding on classy Super-Stock III wheels, this clean ’79 Delta 88 Royale coupe rolled across the Saginaw Street Bridge downtown over the Flint River with authority and presence. This is exactly the kind of car I would have seen on the streets of my hometown in the mid-1980s, being driven by a General Motors pensioner who had worked hard on the line, didn’t have to do it anymore, and had wanted to enjoy retirement in a much classier chariot than he (or she) had driven to the shop and back for many years. The GM Employee Discount had also helped many workers realize their dreams of owning cars positioned further up the Sloanian ladder at substantially discounted prices.
So many things about this car are uncommon or just plain obsolete these days, whereas they were once so common: being an Oldsmobile, in a reasonably popular two-door bodystyle, V8 power, rear-wheel-drive, bench seats, and an exterior and interior color combination as bold and unmistakable as the subject car’s beautiful shade(s) of green. This is one brougham (though not an actual “Royale Brougham”) that I feel benefits aesthetically from the absence of a vinyl roof treatment. I’d like to think this one was powered by Olds’ own biggie, 185-hp 403 Rocket-V8, then in its last model year – mated with GM’s 3-speed TurboHydramatic automatic transmission. From the page above featured in the same-year, ’79 brochure, it’s apparent that the interior of these cars was a very pleasant, commodious, and luxurious place to enjoy spending time behind the wheel. The gentleman in our fine, featured B-body Olds seemed to be doing just that.
Downtown Flint, Michigan.
Saturday, August 15, 2015.
The 403 and THM would had been my powertrain choice also.
As Mah Daddums often tol’ meh: “You can’t have performance and 30 mpg in the same car!” (In this time period).
Actually, you can…if your vehicle is extremely small and light weight.
I guarantee this one is not a 403 from the factory. The 403 was only Ninety-Eight and Custom Cruiser for ’79. This is also a small pattern car. ’77 and ’78 Delta 88s with the 403 were large pattern.
Wrong wrong wrong.
A big Olds in Buick City? What’s the world coming to? 🙂
LOL – Aaron, that GM Employee discount was also eligible for use at Victor George Olds in Flint!
I’m surprised the Buick management allowed an Olds dealer in their town! 🙂
I still have the 1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88 that’s been in our family since new. It has the 350 (Code R) Oldsmobile engine and is fully loaded.
Love it. What a terrific piece of family history!
My sister had one just the same color as above.
Very classy, very nice car.
Back in the day when GM understood its customers!!
Please post more pics if you have them. We also had exactly this car (1978 Oldsmobile Delta 88 – same color including vinyl roof). Would love to see some interior pics. Especially if it’s the blue velour like we had. Fantastic car. It’s great that you maintained such a well preserved example.
–JC
Love it! I’m usually partial to the 1977-1979 Buick LeSabre coupe over these, but the color combo, wheels, steel roof and beautiful roofline make up for the square rear window and then some! Beautiful!
I agree…The rear window, chrome road wheels and sloped headlight surrounds make the Buick look sportier
It does! the varying rooflines on the “B” coupés really added divisional identity!
+1.
Fixed that annoying rear window for ya.
That is better, but it does suffer a loss of what made the Olds unique. In ’77 I’d have asked for this change, but now the Olds quarter window is a part of history.
And that square window foreshadows the more formal roofline in the upcoming reskin of the B/Cs, So I’m thinking the owner of the 79 felt less “out of step” with the times even by 1985.
By then just about everything out of GM had wonky windows or cheese-cutter rooflines. Did all the B/Cs use the same roofline after the reskin?
Much better.
Perhaps toss in the rear taillamps with yellow turn signal indicators like this export version of Delta 88…to make it “look sportier”?
That looks like a Pontiac
I like it better with the square cut window. Leave the triangular window for the Buick (which is gorgeous in Sport Coupe trim) and the Pontiacs.
+1
That’s a great find! I remember that color – it was somewhat rare even when this car was new. A fair number of GM cars were painted in a two-tone paint scheme that paired this color and mint green.
The crowning touch is the Super-Stock II wheels. Most Delta 88 buyers, if they were willing to spend the extra money, went for the optional wire wheel covers. My parents were Oldsmobile loyalists who drove Delta 88s. When they bought their 1982 Delta 88 Royale sedan, it had the wire wheel covers.
The Super-Stock II wheels, sport side mirror and lack of a vinyl roof suggest that this car was special ordered by the original buyer. Judging by the condition, the driver knows what he has, so that is a good sign!
In Rhode Island on Delta 88’s the base wheel covers and the Super Stock II wheels were very popular. It wasn’t until the early 80’s that most Deltas started to get the wire wheel treatment.
What a beauty!
Even when these were new it seemed a little cheesy to have the little added-on pod on the front of the door armrest for the power window switches…couldn’t they have built a different armrest, or used the one the 98 got? I like the taller aluminum rocker-panel trim…dresses it up versus the basic trim.
The wheels are not color-coded…I seem to recall seeing other Oldsmobiles from that era where the wheels were silver, was that a special option? My mom’s 82 Cutlass Supreme had color-keyed Super-Stocks.
The arm rest extension for the power windows was part of the Brougham package. It was not unusual for GM, and Ford for that matter, to use little build ups like that for power windows on some of their second tier luxury trims. You’ll find odd little shelves like that on a number of ’60s GM C bodies.
That is the correct and rather rare version of the Olds Super Stock wheels for the 88 line.
It is, but 88s had center caps that covered the lugnuts, too. They probably lost one and replaced it with the much easier to find ones from a Cutlass.
They didn’t use the big 98 armrests on the 88 because while they would have fit on the front doors, the rear door 98 (and other C body) armrests were too long to fit on B bodies like the 88. This was less of an issue on the coupes, but even there GM used a different, larger armrest on C body rear seat armrests than on B bodies. Some B body coupes did get the C body front armrests – the 78-78 Buick Riviera, and the rare Palm Beach edition of the LeSabre are the only ones I know about.
In any case, the armrest extensions were much better than putting the power window controls on the door panel where the crank would otherwise go, all in a row, which made them hard to reach and distinguish.
Before I settled on my new 1979 Olds Cutlass Supreme 2dr, I test drove one of these. I was shocked by how well it handled and how it did not feel like the sloppy big car I anticipated. Unfortunately, my trade-in and teacher’s salary were maxed out by the Cutlass. I saw Cutlasses everywhere I went in those days. The big Olds coupes were a far rarer breed.
Beautiful car! Oldsmobile Super Stock wheels are one of my all time favorites and I think they look so good on this car.
The 403 was an excellent engine. My mother’s ’79 Ninety-Eight had it, and the car was smooth and remarkably quick for its size. I learned to drive on that car (and do smokey burnouts), and so the ’79 Olds will always be loaded with good memories for me.
Funnily enough, long before I met her, my wife also learned to drive in a ’79 Oldsmobile, much like this featured car. In her case, it was a Silver Delta 88 Holiday Coupe (with red vinyl bucket seats!), but carried the wire wheels and landau vinyl roof, which I think were more common than the clean look of this fine green Delta.
Actually the 403 doesn’t have a great reputation but if you took care of them and didn’t beat on them they were ok in their day.
Good point. I think it was a case of “best available” for the time, as well as being a good application in this type of car. We had our Ninety-Eight for about 4 years (probably around 60k miles), and other than my very occasional teenage misbehavior in it, the car was driven respectfully and always well maintained. It did what it needed to do for its role as the top-option family car motor.
Is that because of the webbing in the block?
I’m still driving my 77 with a 403 and I can’t kill it.
Hope to hit 250,000 miles soon and the engine has never been apart.
Not the webbing i don’t think, it was just that it was an over bored small block and not robust in several areas when pushed.
In normal use they were fine.
It was a weird seemingly pointless engine but like Ford’s 400 it was probably (i’m guessing) an attempt to meet government regs on the cheap at the time.
Like many of the weaker engine designs, in certain applications they’d be ok.
Like if you bought a late 70’s GM diesel and maintained it carefully, used excellent fuel, put mainly highway miles on it and weren’t flooring it around town all the time AND GOT LUCKY it would serve you well.
A family friend bought a 78′ ish Olds wagon with the 5.7 diesel and ran plumbing sales calls around Houston and it was a DISASTER.
Another friend had a 78′ ish 5.7 diesel Chevy pickup that primarily was driven with a very light touch from Houston to Austin every week and was a good truck overall for many years in that scenario.
Would love to hear more 403 reliability anecdotes. I recently purchased a ’77 GMC motorhome with the 403.
Absolutely gorgeous! The car isn’t the only thing green; I’m green with envy for this car. Always had a thing for 80s(ish) B bodies and rwd A and G bodies, and Oldsmobile. I like the wheels with the no-vinyl, looks clean and sharp. Perfect way to cruise the summer away.
My dad had a string of Olds 88 company cars spanning 1967 through 1983. That included a ’77 and a ’79, both 403 cars. They had some hustle for their day, and were an extremely pleasant place to be on the open road.
The little Olds Rockets on the blunt rear quarter blades were almost personal to me. My 13 year old brain thought they would be perfect when the ’77 came home, and in ’79 Olds was good enough to oblige me.
The ’79 was his first with power windows, which was enough for me to call the package loaded as it had essentially everything but the sun roof and the vinyl top. It did not have the new for ’79 Brougham interior, which was fine by me. The Brougham seemed to be too much for the 88 line, something that should have been reserved for the Ninety-Eight.
Dad’s had a green interior about the color of the exterior of the subject car. The exterior was an unusual pale green that you could call green / white. I wasn’t a fan at first, but it grew on me.
Back in the day, the 88 coupe roofline was not my favorite among the B / C coupes. The rear quarter window seemed unresolved with the rest of the design. The various vinyl top treatments didn’t help, so this subject’s slick top is perfect by me. On the plus side, the roof line was exclusive to the Olds B body, making it truly unique. No complaints about that roof today!
The Super Stock wheels on the subject appear to be the correct version for the 88 line. Those wheels were almost ubiquitous on the Cutlass line, but the slightly differently trimmed version on the 88 was rather rare. The dual sport mirrors on the subject are also somewhat rare.
I would absolutely love to have one of these cars, and the subject appears to be about perfect in terms of equipment, and the color, which really takes me back in time.
Make mine a slick-top 98 sedan, black with red pillow-tufted leather and smooth wheelcovers….and chrome mirrors, the sport mirrors are too sporty for a 98.
When I think of big coupes, I also think of droopy, LONG doors. I really prefer sedans.
I like that light green…looks good on the car. I briefly had a Cadillac bustleback Seville…maybe 82 or 83, in a similar light green with beautiful olive green tufted leather. I bought it to flip, and made a few bucks on it, sold it on ebay to a guy from Kansas City. I know some people get weird about green cars, but they can really be attractive on the right car, with the right color.
I think that light green was called Princess Green. I used to have a ’35 Plymouth street rod that we painted that color. People used to insist to me that it was white or gray. Parked next to a white car, it was very apparently green. People still ask me if I still have the white car.
The guy I sold it to told me that he once almost got into a fist fight with someone who called him a liar for saying the car was green.
Regarding the wheels, I just found this great article on Hemmings about Olds’ Super Stock I, II, and III wheels: http://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hmn/2008/04/Oldsmobile-s-Super-Stock-Wheels/1610020.html . I probably misquoted the ones on this car as being SS III’s, as they are not body-colored (as CincyDavid pointed out). Geeber’s probably right that these are SS II’s, though those wouldn’t have been available for ’79.
Stock or not completely-stock, they are Olds-specific, period-correct, and look great on this car!
“Stock or not completely-stock, they are Olds-specific, period-correct, and look great on this car!”
No question about that.
I may have to retract that the wheels are absolutely correct for the car. My brain dredged up that the version on the 88s had a unique center cap that covered the lug nuts.
In the ’79 brochure, they show two styles of wheels for the 88, one with the center cap I recalled, and one a near dead ringer for this car, except the text says it should be body colored. Running changes are entirely possible as well.
The text.
Right, Dave! This was the brochure I researched (I love oldcarbrochures.com), and the thing that threw me was that these wheels were not body-colored. I do like the argent finish of these wheels, though – it compliments the use of chrome on the window-surrounds and lower-body, without coming across as ostentatious.
There were a couple of styles of wheels available on these Deltas over the years. In 1977 and 1978 the Super Stock wheels were not body colored, and were called custom sport chrome wheels. Then in 1979 they offered Super Stock III body colored wheels and a silver custom sport chrome wheel with a different center cap than the SSIII wheels. The very rare custom chrome wheels are a unique sight when you see one of these Oldsmobiles with them. For years there was a brown 1979 98 Regency Coupe in my neighborhood with them. They were discontinued after 1979.
My favorite factory wheel of all time and this car looks awesome with them! My ’64 Cutlass hardtop coupe came with wire wheel hubcaps from the factory but they were lost long ago before I got my hands on the car. So I installed a set of Super Stock III wheels from a ’78 or ’79 Cutlass back when those cars were plentiful in the wrecking yards. Because it is “Olds-specific” it is the only non-original wheel I would put on my Olds!
The only way this could be better is if it was a 98 Coupe. Love me a Big Oldsmobile from back when you could get greater than 307 cubic inches under the hood.
One of the most appealing versions of this generation B-Body; much nicer than the coupes that came in 1980. It’s one of the last coupes I can think of that evokes that classic 60s feeling. Now if it had just been an actual hardtop. 🙂
Joseph, many of your in-motion shots like this one are highly effective, as they really evoke the sense of movement, dynamism, as well the experience of the owner. This picture really tells a powerful story. Great shot.
Thank you so much, Paul. I’ve got more.
The top pic is beautiful in that green paint and fancy road wheels. There are few cars as nicely styled on the roads today , most everything is jellybean shaped with huge gaping fish-mouth front ends ugh!
Paul has commented that this car, in it’s diesel form, was popular even in Europe. I wonder how they ordered it? With the bright colors, expressive wheels, and opulent velour interior, like this handsome specimen. Or perhaps more subdued and basic like the Impala in the previous post. Either way, what a great way to get around.
I also had a deep appreciation for the full size GM coupe designs and I had quite a few of them. My mother ordered a ’73 impala in what they called green gold . one needed an appreciation for that color. I had a 1980 Oldsmobile 88 Royale Coupe , DIESEL , in light blue with one shade darker on the interior. What a great car for its day. She had power everything , a very good looking coupe topped with the diesel engine. When I found it on the local Olds Cadillac dealers used lot in the spring of 1982 , I did some quick research and bought it before someone else claimed this beauty. This was a beautiful car in light blue with a slightly darker landau padded vinyl top and the wire wheel covers discussed here in this forum. I was on a mission to see just how many miles I could accrue before having serious mechanical problems. Unfortunately it met its demise when I hit a pole and she was obviously totaled. I still think of this car often and wish I had it here today. In terms of comfort , we have nothing today which even vaguely compares.
My cousin Barbara drove one of these, very much like this. Bought it new. She always liked the big RWD American cars, especially in coupe form!
I’ve always thought that this Olds-only coupe roofline was the most awkward-looking of the downsized B/C body coupes. In my opinion the square quarter windows somehow clash with the sweep of the roof.
As I mentioned in another thread, you could pretty much skip GM’s entire full-size line up during the 1980s and not miss all that much. These cows were milked well past the point where the product got sour.
GM had marketshare upwards of 40% when this Oldsmobile was still a solid buy in the marketplace. Unfortunately GM was benefiting from a temporary wave of dominance due in large part to Chrysler’s mismanagement, Ford’s limited R&D budget which tends to get overlooked these days, and the slow ascension of the Japanese who wouldn’t offer anything quite like this until the far more expensive Acura Legend coupe came to be. I would argue that vehicle was at least two clicks above in terms of price and everything else. The closest ‘future’ competitor to this Olds, had it survived, would have probably been the third generation Toyota Camry coupe which offered an ‘adequate’ smaller engine along with the more robust option that most everyone wanted.
Overall these vehicles were murdered by a combination of volatile oil prices, GM’s borderline psychotic embrace of front-wheel drive vehicles, and a management mindset that embraced technology and marketspeak bullshit instead of legitimate continuous improvement of the product.
Great shot of a beautiful car! Not enough of these came off the line without the vinyl roof, it really looks good without it. Now if it was a Holiday 88 it would be perfect.
This picture really shows in all its glory the immense size of the rear overhang. That is one looong trunk. Where Ford generally tried to go with the whole long-hood short-deck theme, it seems to me GM generally went with a long-hood long-deck theme, which resulted in long, somewhat shallow trunks on the GM vehicles. Not that the Ford overhang was any shorter, but the styling was certainly different.
A friend’s mom still had her ’66 Oldsmobile when my dad had his ’77 and ’79 88s. Now that car had a long hood and long deck. They were rarely in the same ZIP code at the same time!
We put an old fashioned wood bench style picnic table in this beautiful booty and took it to their lake property………..
I was going to comment on the long trunk, but didn’t want to sound like Johnny One-note, harping on overhang all the time. I’m glad I’m not the only one to think this. At the time I was always amazed at the large overhangs on American cars. Nowadays it’s even more obvious.
This lovely Olds would still be a good-looking well-proportioned car with a foot chopped off the rear. Save that weight, get better economy and performance through not carrying so much empty space around with you.
And now folk drive pickups…. 🙂
The trunk lid got even longer when the ’80 restyle made the backlights near vertical. I read at the time that they wanted the cars to look bigger, so they made the greenhouses smaller. Not an improvement, IMO.
The colour is the most characterful thing about this car. While I like it, it’s also quite generic. Some years back I tried to CAD model a typical American car of the 70s, something capturing as many of the oft-used details of the time as possible. If my model had turned out like this Olds I would have been pleased: it would have looked nameless.
I didn’t finish the model. The file got too big for my laptop to handle.
Everyone here waxes so poetically about the Chevy and Buick of the 1977-79 period, but I will take one of these Oldsmobubbles every time. There was something so square-shouldered and muscular about this car, right down to the gorgeous sound that came out of the exhaust pipe that was every bit as unique to Oldsmobile as the Na-Rayre starter was to Chrysler.
Either a genuine Oldsmobile 350 or a 403 with a THM was a great combo. I would even argue that the 88 was actually more attractive than the 98 in this series. When the 1980 restyle came out, I couldn’t believe how they completely ruined the car. Great shot, Joe!
These were probably the last cars to have that Oldsmobile burble. My 307 ’82 88 always sounded like a corporate GM engine.
The 350 did seem plenty stout in these, very comparable to my ’76 350 / 350 Cutlass. Dad’s business 403s were very nice though – a nice torque thrust off the line.
I think the 88 coupe is far more attractive than the 98 coupe in the ’77-’79 era. For the sedans, my opinion is reversed.
So which is the nicer sound, Chrysler’s starter or Oldsmobile’s V8? 😉
Sadly the 403 Olds V8 was not available in the Delta 88 sedan and coupe for the 1979 model year unless you were buying a Custom Cruiser wagon. It was still also offered in the larger C-body line such as the 98 and Park Ave coupes and sedans. The Rocket 350 was the top gas fired mill in this 1979 example and is still a very good mill in it’s own right. Other engines this car could have are the Buick 231 V6, the Olds 260 V8 and the Pontiac 301 2BBL engine. Naturally the 5.7 oil burner was also offered but the less said about that the better.
My favorite of this line is the Holiday coupe option which upgraded the coupe with bucket seats and floor shift, sport mirrors, a suspension upgrade and several choices in wheels including the rally’s as above.
My neighbors growing up had a medium blue 1977 Delta 88 Royale Coupe with a light blue top and cloth interior. I know for a fact they special ordered their car, as they were very angry that it took so long for it to come in from the factory and were close to cancelling their order and buying a Bonneville instead! They had the custom sport chrome wheels on theirs, too. It was a fairly loaded car, but they didn’t order power door locks which I found strange. It had the 350 V-8 and was very durable. They had that car for years!
Holy crap, Joe, that photo could be from a brochure! Beautiful photo of a beautiful car! I generally consider the 77-79 Delta 88 to be my least favourite B-Body of those years but it is clear that in the right colour with the right wheels it can be beautiful.
” being driven by a General Motors pensioner who had worked hard on the line, didn’t have to do it anymore, and had wanted to enjoy retirement in a much classier chariot than he (or she) had driven to the shop and back for years.”
Beautiful imagery, and yes he or she did deserve it. factory work is hard.
Love this! Back then, it seemed like every parking lot was full of Cutlasses and Delta 88s, though I don’t remember many green ones. It was like as soon as you got the decent job and the nice house in a good neighborhood, you got an Oldsmobile.
Such was the case with my Mom; in 1982, she landed a sweet job with Uncle Sam and immediately traded in our awful orange ’74 Volvo wagon for a burgundy Delta 88 coupe. I loved that car so much, I picked up this ’84 88 for my daily driver 4 years ago. The last of the great cars from GM.
When I was a kid in the 80’s, we had a triple burgundy ’98 Regency 2 door which looks a LOT like this same bodystyle. That was the ‘family car’. I remember not much liking it, since even though it was a 2-door the whole look and flavor with the velour interior, emblems, wire hubcaps/whitewalls just made no sense on a coupe. On a sedan, sure. It just came off contrived….and still does. Dad scrapped the geriatric rolling stock for a set of Kelsey-Hayes wheels off a Buick and some RWL tires. That helped out a LOT. As in this 88, just a set of interesting looking, performance flavored wheels/tires can make or break a car.
My first car was a 1978 Delta 88 coupe. Red inside and out. 350 4bbl I wish I still had it.
Without the vinyl roof and the Super Sport II wheels, I thought for a moment this could be an 88 Holiday Coupe, a new for ’79 model that resurrected Old’s old name for hardtops, and came standard with the hi-back bucket seats, a sport steering wheel, center console, and color keyed mirrors and wheel covers.
(Curious aside. While confirming my memories on imcdb.com, it seems from the brochures that Olds only offered the Delta 88 as a Royale in ’77 – the base Delta 88 returned in ’78, followed by the Holiday coupe in ’79. Is this correct? Very odd, and my memories aren’t any help…)
The 88 (not Delta 88, at least for ’79) Holiday was the performance Olds B-Body as it were, probably a response to the LeSabre Sport Coupe. I remember of my friend’s father had one, in a kind of burnt red with a tan interior. But he stuck with the standard wheel covers over the Super Sports, IIRC.
The LeSabres remain my favorite downsized B-Body coupe, but these are a close 2nd, bare tops, of course. That short rear window and large C-pillar gives these coupes a bit of a personal luxury car feel – an echo of earlier Eldorados and Toronados, and preview of their ’79 replacements.
Great photo. What kind of camera do you use?
Thanks, Robert. I use the entry-level Canon SLR, the Rebel T3, with the kit lens – out of the box. It has been a great all-around camera, and I’d highly recommend whatever their entry-level SLR is these days to anyone.
I, too, like the 88 Holiday! For me, I’d probably give the nod to the same-year Buick LeSabre Sport Coupe because, well, I *am* from Flint. 🙂
Thanks, for the camera info, Joseph. And having inherited a ’78 LeSabre Estate Wagon from my folks, I heartily agree!
I love the Super Sport II rims, especially when they’re color matched. Best choice by for for any of the larger GMs of the period.
My friend’s folks bought one new for 1977. No air, 403, am/fm stereo. Very nice car for the day.
1977 was also the year that some Oldsmobile Delta 88 and Cutlass models ended up with 350 Chevy engines. That was because there were not enough Oldsmobile 350 engines for these cars since they were in high demand. Also, from 1977-80, the Olds 350 and 403 was used in full size Buicks and Pontiacs sold in California since they burned cleaner than the Buick and Pontiac V8s.
We had a 77 Delta 88 Royale coupe that we got in the spring of 1981. It wasn’t until recently I realized it was not a Holiday, but it had an option package with bucket seats and floor shifter. It was a god car that served us well for 4+ years. We drove the crap out of that car. We traded it for our crappy 1985 Mercury Capri RS, which, in hindsight was a mistake.
I found a pristine Delta when I was still living in Georgia, but our move to Michigan was imminent and didn’t want to spend the money right then. Ah well.
Don’t think buckets, consoles, and floor shifters were available in any B body in 1977 or 78.
Beautiful photo, as usual, Joseph. That car looks so immaculate! Love the green paint as well–it seems perfect for the era and perfect for the car.
The timing is interesting–around the same time as you photographed this 88, I started seeing an 88 coupe in front of a business I pass on my way home from work. It’s also a ’79, also sans vinyl roof, with the color keyed Super Stock III wheels and the larger center caps that cover the lug nuts. Nowhere near as nice shape as the one in your photo, nor as good a color (slightly faded tan) but it’s complete and catches my eye due to its rarity and its style.
Here’s my low Km 79 Holiday 88. I LOVE THIS CAR! I’m the second owner, bought 10 years ago from the original owner – who stored it winters – with about 85k kilometers on the clock. It has the Olds 350, all the Holiday options including buckets, console shifter, air, sport mirrors, bumper guards, new silver paint and red interior, power everything including sunroof, and some other cool options that make it unique and a head turner (at least for those who appreciate cars from this era). I store it winters too so I’ve only added another 85k Kms – just breaking the engine in. Always maintained, she looks and drives great. Strong and smooth on the road with a trunk that won’t quit. I have the GM manuals, the 1979 Olds dealer brochure, and spare sunroof glass and other parts.
Sadly, I’m looking for a new custodian for this wonderful example of automotive memorabilia. If interested, or just want better pics than this quick snap, let me know.
Are you on BC? I may be the original owner who sold you the car from Winnipeg, Mb. Can you send me some pics of the car and your asking price? Nice to see that you still have the car!!!
Hi Bob! yes indeed, you are the original owner. And we have really loved owning this car. I had the car painted a few years ago and in the process we found the build sheet in a door panel so I have that too! I have arranged to have the vinyl roof and headliner replaced in a week or so – plus a few other interior makeovers – and I’ll take photos after this reno and post them here. As you know, this is a rare car in wonderful shape so I have not fixed a selling price as yet. I’ll entertain serious offers though. Contact me at jimonsolarflair@gmail.com
Is your car still available and if so could you please provide some photos and contact info. Thanks
Bob
Finally got our Holiday88 back from restoration. She’s looking very nice with new vinyl top, new paint, new headliner and other goodies. Here’s a snap that I took the other day. If you’d like more send me an email that I can send to.
She goes into winter storage this week.
Hi Jim
Car looks great. I would really appreciate some extra pictures including interior shots if you don’t mind. Who did the paint work for you? I noticed that you did not install the body side mouldings adter the repaint!!
Thanks Jim
Bob
Recent traffic on this thread prompted a visit so I’d like to remind folks that my ’79 Holiday88 is still for sale. Paul had asked for some interior shots so here you go:
From the passenger side:
Roomy back seat:
Dash:
So beautiful! Love that floor shift and buckets!
Here’s a snap I took last summer …
I wish there were published data on the proportion of big cars sold without vinyl roofs in the Brougham Era. Image searches of 70s Cadillac come up with almost nil (I don’t think they were available on the Calais). It would also be interesting to know where vinyl fell from favor first–the West Coast or the Northeast? You’d think rust would have killed their popularity sooner.
My first car was a 79 88 Royale coupe. Brown with an aftermarket tan vinyl top that didn’t go down the b pillars which looked better. Someone had deemblemed it, all that was left were the rocket emblems on the rear fender ends and I put a straight rocket hood ornament on it. It had Cordoba wire wheel covers with the emblems blacked out. These cars often had the front springs get weak, so it sat like a NASCAR, down in front a bit. It had the Pontiac 301 so it wasn’t quick but I lived in a city so it didn’t really matter. Only had it a couple years but decades later right before I could really afford it somebody was selling almost the same thing but with a 403 in the same color for just a little bit more than I felt right about spending. It was just before broughams started to get popular. I regretted not getting it for a while but a while later ended up buying a 71 Olds 98 four door hardtop.as a hobby car so it all worked out in the end
My best friend bought a mint green metallic ’77 Delta 88 Royale from a retired Bethlehem Steel steelworker around 1995 that had only 70k miles, a nice no-rust original with a 350 4 bbl/THM350. He tired of it and the mediocre gas mileage so bought a new Cirrus and I bought the Olds from him for $1000. Other than a few dings and slightly faded paint it was very clean had had a like-new plush velour interior. It ran very strong for a ’77, and with 3 kids still at home it made for a great family transporter and commuter car. Sadly one evening a deer crossing in front of us at dusk with us travelling at 50 mph sacrificed his life and the Olds’ RF fender, headlight, front panel, bumper, grille, and hood. With the rad leaking we still made it the 5 miles to home and it overheated just as we were pulling into our driveway. With a value of around only $1200 at the time it consequently was totaled by LIb Mutual and unceremoniously towed away about a week later. Still my favorite of all the ’77 to ’79 GM B bodies, it was a great driving car. I still have the owner’s manual… just in case.