pg26Bowties

Here are some pictures of a 1971 Oldsmobile 442 that a friend and I rescued from a salvage yard

in the South. You can tell it's in the South because it's February and the grass is still green.

Several years ago a friend and I were cruising back from picking through the junkyards

when I spotted the nose of this car, with a white stripe, sitting along side a fence. I shouted, "stop the truck!"

The car was stored in a salvage yard repair shop on the side of a steel fence. After talking to the proprietor

I learned that the car had been in the yard for several years (this was back in 1998) and was owned by a truck

driver that traveled a lot and wanted to restore the vehicle "some day." On a regular basis I would call the

salvage yard owner (a very nice gentleman), to see if he would get in touch with the owner of the vehicle and ask

him if he wanted to sell the vehicle. After several years of on-off contact the salvage yard owner finally

gave me the phone number of the mystery man.

It turns out that the "mystery man" was the original owner who bought the car when he was 21 years old after

returning from Vietnam. I thought this was too good to be true, but it is. Pinch me!!!

After a week of talking on the phone we met the car owner at the salvage yard and I walked away as the proud

new owner of a very original 1971 442. The car has 76k miles and is a strange mix of options.

It has the original paint with sport stripe, no A/C (odd for the hot humid South), a W-35 wing option, bucket

seats with a dual gate shifter console, and a sport steering wheel. The 455 engine is totally original.

The trunk, and passenger side floor pans (front and rear) are totally rotted, with the typical fender and

quarter rot on the bottoms, but none of which is terminal. I plan on doing a frame-on restoration starting some

time this year, which should be finished in two years.