I’ve ragged on about GM’s badge-engineering Deadly Sins, but like all sins, one has to learn to take advantage of them. Tired of your Chevy El Camino’s dull and boring front end? A complete face transplant awaits at the Pick and Pull. What will this summer’s fashionable El Camino wear? Pontiac? Buick? Naw; an Oldsmobile.
Just make sure to pick up some of the Oldsmobile badges while you’re there, to make the transformation complete.
And don’t just stop with the front clip; get the doors too, so that you can enjoy the upgraded comfort of genuine Cutlass Brougham door trim. And are those Cutlass seats as well? Only the hard core Cutlassphiles can tell us that. A dash transplant get a bit more complicated though…
There’s just the problem of the non-matching paint. That’s why I always drive a white car; one can always find suitable donor cars in that color. I’m trying to figure out what new front clip I can graft onto my Xb; I’m getting tired of it. Too bad they didn’t make a Lexus version.
Nice lookin ute and an easy upgrade, primer grey is good easy to match an cheap.
Too expensive. A trip to Bunnings and a couple of rattle cans will do.
Why swap for Olds door panels if you aren’t going to do the steering wheel too?
I was about to comment on how I did not recall the manual transmission being offered on these when I noticed the column shifter. Either that or he has an automatic with 4 overdrive ratios.
It’s been quite a while since I shot that and talked to him, but my memory tells me he replaced the engine and transmission too.
What a fantastic creation. The slot mag wheels go with it quite nicely too.
Love it! For all the trash-mouthing of badge engineering, it opens the door for some creative re-assembly with just garage tools. Like the Volare cab with an Imperial front end, that I drove for a shoestring suburban cab company. Or the Thunderbird-Ranchero I once saw. Or my YJ-CJ Jeep…the possibilities are endless, limited only by free time and willingness to dismantle, possibly destroy, maybe the only car you can afford.
Auto styling for the beer-belly-unemployment set. Time, wrench set, beater, and Pick-A-Part. GO!
A buddy of mine collects Oldsmobiles and a couple of years back at the nationals, there was a guy that actually made a conversion like this one with a ’76 or ’77 Cutlass front end. He called it “El Cutlassino.”
A while back, saw on eBay an El Camino with the driveline, and much of the interior, of a Buick Grand National. Black, of course.
Locally, there’s a guy with an S10 pickup sporting the front clip from an Olds Bravada – plus full Oldsmobile badging. It’s painted a light blue that I suspect was a Bravada factory color.
And xB, really? You could make it a Toyota bB, of course.
I really like the results, as there is for me something special about Oldsmobiles, surely just because they were not sold in Chile, where I live.
Here is a similar project, but with a better result.
http://ripituc.blogspot.com/2011/04/oldsmobile-cutlass-el-camino-supreme.html
Interesting. For me, though, this doesn’t work–something about the lines of the Cutlass nose vs. the El Camino tail makes it look like it’s high in the middle and sagging at both ends. Still interesting for creativity’s sake.
I do love transplants like this though (especially when they’re made more subtle by matching paint). I’ve seen on the web an El Camino of this generation with the header panel from a 1979 Grand Am, that I thought worked a little better. Of ones I’ve seen in person, here in Richmond there is a 70’s Ranchero with a Mercury Cougar nose (painted General Lee orange with “01” on the doors no less) and in Durham I spotted a 1991 Audi 200 Turbo Avant sporting front sheetmetal from a V8 Quattro.
I love these Caminos but that front clip is just wrong.
I had a 79 GMC Caballero (El Camino) and the stock front end with single rectangular headlamps and chrome bumper looked far better than this.
Those aren’t Oldsmobile seats. Look like top of the line Chevy 50/50 seats.
I assume the gear stick also runs on batteries as a stand-alone device.
LOL good one!
What’s up with the insulation on the shifter? I’d brand it “Old El Mobile”
I think this El Oldsmobile has a better looking nose than that of the Chevy El Camino’s nose.
My favorite swap is the 2 door Lincoln Versailles. Clean, neat job!
This past week at the filling station I saw something similar done where someone up graded his GMT400 Blazer/2 Door Tahoe into a Escalade. Of course I didn’t have my camera handy.
Yeah, there’s an Escalade pickup in town; he’s always at car shows with a for sale sign on it. It is really nicely done.
I’ve seen pictures of Dodge Magnums with 300 front sheet metal. They were apparently sold in Europe like that.
Yeah… Late ’90’s Chrysler Voyagers/Grand Voyagers had been assembled in Österreich with the Dodge Caravan front-ends…OR…Dodge Caravans and Grand Caravans had been badged as Chrysler (Grand) Voyagers??? Who knows???
God bless badge engineering. You could do the same throughout many years of the midsize FoMoCo lineup with the Ranchero. Enjoy your Fordcury Rancyclo.
Needs a vinyl roof!
Folks in Europe are joking on Chevy badged Daewoos… Finally some black humorous lads came out with a salty slang “Daewoolet Camaro”…
Rancyclo. I like it. Quite a lot!
The name as well as the car/truck.
The base car isn’t new but the donors are also getting scarce. Don’t know how putting an olds engine and trannie in this truck could be an improvement unless he had the 3.8 chev originally. sbc probably has the most bang for the buck available unless it’s the 350 derived 4.3.
Agreed that if he had the Chevy 229, just about anything is an improvement. Also, for the first couple years of the Malibu, the base engine was the Chevy 200 V6. As gutless as the 3.8 was, the 3.3 must have been even worse! A 307 would be an improvement over either of the V6 options or the 267 (though only a minor one in the case of the 267).
SBC would make the most sense here. The 350 *may* have even been available in the El Camino at one point so it’s not too far off correct.
Badge engineering isn’t anything new.
Edsero?
Love. It.
That is all.
For those “inquiring minds”, Chevy offered the El Camino in the late 70s / early 80s with a floor mounted shifter for the manual transmission. The V6s COULD be had with a 3 speed (an el strippo mino?)while V8s got a 4 speed. I’m not sure which would be harder to find.
I’m still kicking myself for not buying the new 79 El Camino (baby blue, V6 manual)that I ran across in California.
I always thought GMC should’ve used B-O-P front sheetmetal for the Caballero.
Or how about this? http://www.arcar.org/chevrolet-chevette-72385 In South-Americas the Opel Kadett-C series / Vauxhall Chevette / Pontiac Acadian-T1000 / Chevrolet Chevette (U.S., Canada, Brasil) had been marketed as GMC Chevette…
Only in Argentina
But which one? I think this nose, as well as the “slanty” 80’s Regal nose, looks unbalanced. Needs to be more blunt to work with the back. Maybe stick with Olds but stay with the sedan nose and fenders?
This front end looks better than the Chevy one. Dash could come from the Grand Am shown a couple of weeks ago. Those slotted mags are BEAUTIFUL.
I saw plenty of Malibus with Pontiac dashes swapped into them. Although I will not claim it is easy, it must be highly doable.
Haha…that’s good with the badge engineering… With just only few minor changes everybody can rescale or upscale its current vehicle… Like for example a VW Golf Mk1&2 with an Mk3 dash, a Chevy S-10 small truck with the Oldsmobile Bravada grille, Vauxhall Astra Mk2 with the Pontiac (Daewoo) Le Mans trim, etc., etc. … This Chevy El Camino combined with an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme (?) front is just another vehicle in the line…like the same basic El Camino with the Pontiac Grand Le Mans fornt… By the way an old gentleman a member in the north-american car club of ours broke the front of his Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser and as he got a dismantled Chevy Caprice Wagon already…he just replaced it for the well being of his still drivable Custom Cruiser. Or a late ’70’s crashed Caprice Classic had been repaired by the front end sourced from a Buick Park Avenue, etc.
Yeah, but what is going on with the passenger front fender? Something’s out of alignment, but Earl and Randy would be proud to own it!!!
A paint job in an Oldsmobile color, and some more Oldsmobile trim, would finish it off nicely.
“Cutlass Cruiser pickup” or “Cutlass Vista Hauler”..
I like it but maybe if one colour or even just painted in the same colours but in a differiant way it would look better. the 2 colours right now work well but look a bit odd than again repainting it might be the plan for it too
We are in Earl Hickey’s territory here…