1970 was the final year for the eighth generation of the Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight. This iteration had debuted in the 1966 model year and, along with its GM platform mate, the Buick Electra, saw a light restyling and a 1" wheelbase stretch, to 127 inches, for 1969.
The '70 Olds Ninety-Eight was available in a variety of coupe and sedan configurations, as well as a convertible, like this Rally Red example parked at a local shop (the same one that works on my rides.)
The Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight and Buick Electra convertibles were the top of the General Motors totem pole for the buyer who wanted a sporty luxobarge, stickering over five grand when optioned out. The Olds started at $4,914, equivalent to almost forty grand in 2024 dollars, which was spendy for the time, but still over a thousand bucks less than a droptop Coupe De Ville.
The Ninety-Eight ragtop only came with one powertrain in 1970: A 455 cubic inch Rocket V-8 hooked to a Turbo HydraMatic 400 3-speed slushbox. Featuring a single 4-bbl Rochester carburetor and a 10.25:1 compression ratio necessitating premium gas, it was rated at 365 SAE gross horsepower, enough to move two and a quarter tons of ragtop with reasonable alacrity.
Sorry for the somewhat potato-quality photos. The autofocus of the little Canon PowerShot SX500 IS budget superzoom gets confused and hunts around a lot in the light misty drizzle. (Also, I had inadvertently left the ISO set to 800 from some evening shooting I'd been doing the other day, and the little 1/2.3" sensor is crazy noisy at anything over 400.) On top of that, it's a budget consumer point-and-shoot, so it doesn't shoot RAW; these are straight-out-of-camera JPEGs.
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