sdrake

Helping my mother-in-law thin out the garage after the loss of my father-in-law... sorry I'm short on details on the car here, we just need it gone.

This is a light yellow 73 custom cruiser wagon. I know my father-in-law bought the car new and has taken well car of it. It was painted about 2 years ago and hasn't been out of the garage since. I know many pieces were re-chromed and there are two new new bumpers to be installed. Under all of the dust, this thing looks good.

It has the 455, the crazy electric clamshell gate on the rear and enough room on the inside to haul a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood!

It hasn't been started in about a year and many of the trim parts are off the car as well as the fender skirts and some of the interior in the rear of the car. My guess is that it could be put together in a long weekend into a finished car. All parts are there.

We would love to get this wagon sold to someone who would put it back together and use it. I don't want to sell it to be parted out... it meant too much to my father-in-law to do that.

If there is any interest, please email me with any questions and I would also be glad to try to get some photos of the car.

It is located in a warm garage in Charleston, WV.

thanks guys,
Scot

2blu442

Hi Scott, welcome to the site and good luck selling the car. Yes I remember these huge highway crusier that could take the family, mother-in-law, and the dog on a road trip in relative comfort! It would help to add some pictures to the thread, just to get the interest up on people who are close enough and might want to add a car like this to their collection. Also if you have some idea on the price range it would help to post that as well. John

sdrake

thanks John - I'll try to get some pics next weekend.

As to price, I have no idea what this thing could possibly be worth to be completely honest!?!? Any suggestions anyone? Let's start at $1,500??

2blu442

Hi Scott
If you were close by I'd come look at it for that price. Hopefully you will find someone interested at your starting price.

This has been discussed often. A car is worth what someone will pay for it. If you found someone who used to have one of these cars and has been looking for a nice one for a while, you'll have no problem getting top dollar for it. If you can't connect with a person like that, then you'll have to experiment with the price until it reaches a point that some Olds nut will say "I wasn't looking for a car like that, but at that price a car this nice would be hard to pass up". It does sound like you've got a nice car there and I do hope you can find someone who would enjoy finishing the restoration your father in law started. John

jaunty75

Hey, I'm in southeast Ohio less than 90 miles from you. When can I come and look at it?

I've sent you a PM on this.

sdrake

jaunty75 - sent you an email - thanks

yzzerdd

If it's still available around June, I'd be interested. My fiance and I are moving up to Sutton, about an hour and 45 minutes away, north on 79. It'd be nice to have another Oldsmobile wagon around. Plus, I like the old Custom Cruiser's, almost more than the Vista Cruiser.

--Ryan

Olds64

Hopefully you post pics. Good luck selling it.

ent72olds

Try to get some pics please..... And if it does sell, make sure to let us know!!!

sdrake

Finally got some pics - did the best I could with the car in the garage.

See below -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/3662900...7623098079483/

This thing could really be a great car again with just a little work!

Scot

Allan R

What a great looking car. Very close to the one I had. Looks to be in really good shape. How many miles on this beast?

sdrake

Just under 103,000 miles. About 10 miles since she was painted.

2blu442

X2, really cool car

jaunty75

It's bought! Scot and I just reached agreement, and I'm getting it on Saturday. My wife and I went down to take a look at it last night, and it was everything Scot said it was and more. We're looking forward to getting it home, getting it all put back together, and getting it on the road. I'll post more photos when I get it home and it's ready for its debut!

2blu442

Congrats! Both to you for the new car in your fleet and to Scott for selling it to an Olds guy who will appreciate it!!!

jaunty75

I did most of my learning to drive on a '73 Custom Cruiser, and sitting in it last night brought back lots of memories. (I took my driving test, though, in our other car at the time, a '71 Ford Pinto, which was a LOT easier to parallel park!)

Allan R

Way to go Jaunty!
I also did a lot of my early driving in a 72 CC. The inside of that car was dead on for the one I had. I know you're going to have a blast. Can't wait to see the pics of here back together. Congrats again!!

70 cutlass s

Congrats on the car. I love it when a plan comes togather.

Homestar

Mom bought a 71' brand new but she had a hard time with parking spaces so she traded it in for a new 72' Delta 88.
The Delta 88 was a heleva car me and my brothers used as a first car.
It was a Party Car!!! Could smoke the rubber off the rim.
Those were the days.

jaunty75

2blu, Allan, and Cutlass S, thanks for the kind words!

Homestar, no surprise on the parking problem. Driving one of these in tight spaces was not for the faint of heart! The Custom Cruisers were built on the 98 chassis and so have the same wheelbase (127 inches), but, interestingly, the 98 was always an inch or so longer overall than the Custom Cruiser in that era ('71-'76). For 1973, the 98 was 230.3 inches long while the CC was 228.3.

Just to whet your appetites, here's a couple of photos of the dash from the second seat. It has its original AM radio as well as some sort of CB radio attachment hanging just below. 1973 was just a couple of years before the big CB craze would hit the country, and everyone was "good-buddying" and "ten-four-ing" everyone else. I think the truckers hated it and were thrilled when the fad passed, everyone in a "four-wheeler" put their CB radio away or at least stopped using it, and they could have the airwaves to themselves again.

It has the original, color-matching Oldsmobile floor mats, and Scot tells me has has located all the original purchase paperwork, including the original window sticker.

That little bag hanging off of the turn signal stalk has a bottle of touch-up paint of the same color as the paint job, should any scratches or nicks arise (perish the thought!).

Note the thoroughness and quality of the paint job in the area around the driver's door hinges.








This photo was posted by Scot on his flickr page, but I put it here again to remind you what these looked like from the front. The front bumper was removed for the repaint and was sent out to be rechromed. It is still in the wrapping that the metal plating shop put it in when they returned it, and it's one of the first things I'll be putting back on the car.

ent72olds

Nice to see someone get it who will finish it and appreciate it! Looks like a nice car!

citcapp

Congrats on your new additon to the family. Big baby it sure outways your other kids. Looking foward to more pictures and stats. Hope the new mom enjoys the new kid as well

sdrake

Sounds like this old girl found the right new owner!

Thanks to everyone, my father-in-law would be very pleased that his old wagon is going to a fellow engineer that will get her back on the road.

Scot

jaunty75

The Mrs is behind this 100%. As she put it many years ago when I got the first old car, the '64 Jetstar, back in 1991, "after all, you COULD be in a bar every night!"

jaunty75

Thanks for the kind words, Scot. One condition my wife put on this purchase was that we respect the memory of the man who bought and preserved the car originally. I would have liked to have met him.

elwood565

Congrats on the purchase! It's always great to see one of these fantastic old Custom Cruisers find a new, caring home. I still miss the '73 CC that my father and I had, which was the same color as yours coincidentally, but with the woodgrain.

Enjoy it! Can't wait to see more pics of it enjoying the road again!

-Bob

jaunty75

The one I learned to drive in was maroon with a white top (when's the last time you could buy a car with a two-tone paint job!), and it had the woodgrain, too. This one is yellow all over, but it's nice. I'll get pictures up as soon as I can get it back together.

jaunty75

I had this in my collection of Olds stuff. I bought it many years ago at an antique store and had it hanging in my office once. I never realized that I would one day have a real reason to have it. It'll have to go back up on the wall!

Allan R

Better yet Jaunty, put it into a plastic sleeve protector and add it to the provenance items you are waiting for Scott to get you (original docs and dealer window sheet). It would be awesome to have at a car show. Hanging on a wall, only you will see it (that's good too) but I'd want to have some stuff with the car to show it off as part of a package.

jaunty75

I will definitely do this. I used to do this with my '75 Delta convertible, for which I had some nice advertising stuff. I'd hang then in frames on my den wall and then take them all down and with me to the car show whenever I went to one.

Redog

Congrats on the buy.

I would have bought that car for that price

jaunty75

I'm glad I got there first!

87customcruiser

I thought about checking into it, as I'm also not far from Charleston. I asked a couple of friends in car clubs if they could recall seeing it.
The wife, said one wagon is enough, although I might convince her otherwise in a special case.
It looks like a great car, hope you have a great time with it.
PM me sometime, lets see how close we are to each other.

jaunty75

The car arrived at its new home away from home tonight. We were originally going to rent a U-haul car carrier and tow it with Scot's Nissan Titan. But that idea got shot down for two reasons. The car/trailer combination would have been too heavy for the Titan, and the width of the wheels on the Custom Cruiser is too large for the U-haul carrier, anyway.

So then I contacted several auto transport services like you see advertised in Hemmings, got quotes ranging from $175 to $495 for the 90-mile trip, and settled on one that quoted $225. Best $225 I ever spent as the service was fast and professional, and even though these only promise a window of several days when they will pick up the car and will give you a call 12 to 24 hours before the pickup, this service did it within a half-hour of when I had hoped they could do it on the very first day. If anyone needs a car transported, I highly recommend Cromco Transport Group out of Clinton, Ohio. A photo of the sign on the side of the truck is below.

I've attached a few other photos of the move. It was night, so the photos of the car on the carrier are rather dark, but you can see it. There is also a photo of the car as it sat outside the garage where it had been stored for many years in Charleston. Those spots are rain drops as it chose that minute to drizzle slightly, but we had no rain on the trip home.

It did start and run on the two-year old gasoline as I needed to be able to drive it onto and off of the carrier as well as up the driveway at my home. There's a photo of the car in its new garage next to its stablemate, the '67 Delta 88 convertible. This really is a scene right out of "That 70s Show." It's dirty but in real nice shape and needs lots of TLC.


I don't think it ever was treated as a collector or show car by the original owner, at least up to the point he died, so it's unlikely it would have been on the car show/club circuit.

Maybe if he had lived to finish the restoration, he would have started showing it. From my so far very quick look at the maintenance records, it looks like the car was no longer driven regularly after about 1995 as the regular records like oil changes pretty much stop by that point and receipts from places like Fusick start appearing. 7,000 miles were put on the car between 1995 and 2005, which is when its last registration sticker was issued. It expired in March 2006 and wasn't renewed.

I have the original window sticker and title, as well as what looks like a broadcast card or build sheet. It's about the size of an old-style computer punch card (3.5" by 8.5"). I'll scan it and post it here along with the window sticker in the next day or so. The original sticker price was $5,994.80, and the dealer offered a discount of the $994.80 part, so the selling price was $5,000 even. There's probably an original bill of sale in all the literature, but I haven't found it yet.

The car was originally purchased at Royal Oldsmobile, Charleston, West Virgina and was originally titled on April 19, 1973. The build sheet/broadcast card shows a production date of 4/3/73, so this was car sold quiclky after it was built. I don't know if it was a special order, and maybe there's some paperwork on that, too.

jaunty75

more photos, these taken in my garage

Allan R

Great story. Can't wait to see the pics of her all back together again. BTW I am really glad to hear that you got great service. Not easy to come by these days.
Your garage looks like it has plenty of space to work around in. Must be at least 24X 30 or bigger to still have leftover room to walk around in?

jaunty75

I went ahead and scanned some documents.


Here's the window sticker. It looks like it tore a bit in the middle when being removed from the window, which I think was a more difficult operation back in those days and often required a razor blade. The tear was repaired.





I think I was wrong in what I said above about the build sheet possibly being the broadcast card because I found another document that actually says "broadcast" on it. It shows a broadcast month and day of March 30. Here it is.





Here's what I had found earlier and what I guess must be the build sheet. It says production date 4/03, which I'm guessing means April 3 (and not April 2003!). All the pencil notations were made by the original owner, who was apparently noting what options were actually on this car. I don't know what the addition down in the lower right would have been.

jaunty75

Yes, it's a pretty big garage, with a raised work area ahead of where the cars sit that you can't really see in these photos. But it could always stand to be bigger!


Here, just to show you how big it is, and as the documentation I needed to win the bet with my wife that this car really would fit in the garage, here's a photo of the rear of the car with the garage door shut. No room to walk back there, but we're out of the weather!

Allan R

Jaunty, looks like you got one of the good ones with the 3 seat option. The second photo is a broadcast sheet for sure; I have one like that for my 72. The green one with the codes and extra options printed on it? I'm not that familiar with it, but it appears to have your VIN on it, so it's got to be the real deal. Maybe that is the build sheet for 73?? And wow! 5416 pounds of Olds with a gross of 6720!! Massive car with a huge payload. (that's the combined front and rear vehicle weight rating that you weren't sure about on the bottom right of the build sheet)

jaunty75

Yes, it does have the third seat, and thanks for figuring out what that addition was! Should have been obvious.

One thing that supports the idea that the green-ink card is the buildsheet is that it has the zone and dealer code on it, and the number, 09-734 matches the number at the top of the window sticker next to the dealer's name and address. Also, the on the right end of "color" line on the window sticker, it says "8181", and that matches the body and roof color codes on the buildsheet.


Those weight numbers are interesting. Add the figures here and you get 5,416 lbs. In the reference section of Setting the Pace, the weight of the 3-seat '73 Custom Cruiser is given is 5,177 lbs.

In one of the pieces of dealer showroom sales literature that came with the car, the weight of the 2-seat version is given as 5,113 lbs (no 3-seat weight is given), while Setting the Pace gives the weight of the 2-seat as 5,058 lbs.

Not surprisingly, the CC was easily the heaviest Olds built that year and probably in any year it was built. The next heaviest '73 Olds was the Toronado at 4,794 lbs, and the heaviest 98, the Regency Sedan, wasn't far behind at 4,709 lbs.

The base prices of the two as given in Setting the Pace are $4,556 for the 2-seat and $4,690 for the 3-seat. Total production was very different, though, with 12,417 2-seat models being built that year while more than twice that number, 26,504, of the 3-seaters left the factory that year.