By 1970 the performance wars of the Muscle Car Era had reached a crescendo and Detroit was starting to feel some pushback in the press as well as soaring insurance rates on higher horsepower vehicles. Pollution controls were already a thing and looked to only get tighter in the future. The leading edge of the Baby Boom generation was graduating college and entering the workforce & starting families.
The hot new vehicle was the "personal luxury coupe", which had been around in cars like the Thunderbird and Eldorado for a while, but was starting to spread downmarket. Mercury had a plusher Mustang in the shape of the Cougar. Olds and Buick had the Toronado and Riviera. Then came the workingman's personal luxury coupes: In 1969 Pontiac launched the Grand Prix based on the midsized GM A-body, but with a stretched snoot to give it those classic long-hood, short-deck proportions. For '70 it was joined by a Chevy platform sibling, the Monte Carlo, which had a successful first year, moving almost 160,000 cars despite a two-month labor strike at the Flint, Michigan plant where they were built.
Oldsmobile wanted some of that market share, but while Monte Carlos started at $3,100 and MSRP for a base Grand Prix squeaked a few bucks under four grand, the Olds Toronado was a plush, high-tech car with a Corvette-like over-$5,000 sticker.
The solution for 1970 was to take the A-body Cutlass Supreme and take a chunk out of its fastback profile, giving it a more formal roofline and the name "Cutlass Supreme Holiday Coupe". With a $3,100 base MSRP it could go right at the Monte Carlo and Cougar on price.
This Rally Red 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Holiday Coupe has, at some point over the last half-century wound up with a Cutlass S badge on the nose, but the notchback roofline says it's a Supreme. All Cutlass S coupes had the fastback roofline.
The standard motor for the Cutlass Supreme was the 4-barrel 350 cube Oldsmobile Rocket V-8 with a single exhaust pipe, requiring premium fuel for its 10.25:1 compression ratio and rated at 310 SAE gross horsepower. Optionally, the buyer could get the SX performance package with either the L33 320 horsepower 2-barrel 455 or the 365 horsepower W32 four-barrel 455 Rocket V-8.
This one was photographed with a Canon EOS 7D and EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS zoom lens in April of 2023.
Bit of a head-scratcher here. The paint job looks like it's in pretty good shape and possibly not too old, but both bumpers show signs of impact and the driver side is missing some trim and the rear quarter window.
ReplyDeleteIt’s hard to say. It might have had one restoration already, been sold, gotten dinged up, sold again, and is destined for eventual donking.
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