442 By Oldsmobile - A True Muscle Car

The Oldsmobile 442 

From 1964 - 1980 

 

A Helluva Production Run

From 1964-1980 was the production run of one the most famous American-made cars ever, the Oldsmobile 442. Beginning around the mid 1960's the term muscle car started to surface in the car industry. It seems now that the kinks had been worked out of the standard automobile and safety had been somewhat covered, now drivers wanted to go fast. At the time of course the Muscle Cars where considered state of the art in the automotive industry. 

Since the most popular sport here America and mainly the rest of the world then and still is today is Auto Racing. Car makers quickly came up with the idea of selling consumers a little taste of what they longed for. Someway to identify with their favorite Race Car Drivers. The idea was brilliant and took off immediately. By definition, A large V-8 stuffed into a 2-Door Rear-Wheel drive Coupe could back then fit a lot of models coming off the production line. But to make it even more surreal the automakers designated one specific model as their show-case "Muscle Car" and commenced to build their "Go Fast" marketing around that model. 

Throughout all the competition to build the perfect "Muscle Car" one emerged that was truly unique, different by far from the rest. By 1961 the term Muscle Car had caught fire and was now being looked at by car makers World-Wide. The competition was heating so to speak as everyone had their version of their own Muscle Car. Back then the big 3 Here in America, Ford, GM, and Chrysler all had their Muscle Cars firmly established here in the U.S. as top choices...

Then it happened, in 1964 a little off-shot company, a subdivision of automotive giant General Motors, a division called Pontiac released the Oldsmobile 442. Even though there were already firmly established well known Muscle cars already selling everyone knew this was something special. 

In its initial year 1964 the car had relative unusual look to it, especially for an American Coupe. It was slender with really bold accessories and chrome splashed loosely all around. The '64 convertible became an instant classic. The 442 sold great in its first year of production, but the best was still yet to come. 

The Olds 442 was a perfect every mans car affordable, Sexy and fast! One of the reasons it was such a unique car was the configuration obtained somehow in a perfect balance to produce an enormous amount of power. 

• 4 - Barrel carburetor

• 4 - Speed Manual Transmission 

• 2 - Dual Exhaust 

This car was special it had the complete package, meaning it could produce immense power with all 4 Barrels simultaneously dumping gas into the carburetor , the power being displace nicely evenly between the 4 gears and the dual-exhaust emitting twice as much twice as fast! It was a perfect machine and ran like a heart, in tune, in rhythm always on beat. The 4-Speed manual let you feel the power especially with that long-toothed 2nd gear it was famous for.  The car turned out to be extremely popular and sold well over the next few years.  

In 1968 the second-generation was introduced. The car had been redesigned and actually looked better and a little more power was added. The 68 model was car unlike any other on the streets at the time. The boldness of the front end coupled with the perfectly rounded tire wells gave the car a nice fast look. Known for the most part for its classic rear-end and nice hips stabilizing the back end. The best quality of course was that it looked expensive, but wasn't.

The real game changer to the 68' model was the newly added Hurst shifters. That pretty much sealed the deal now everyone wanted one. The 1968 looked better than the Corvette and was much cheaper, it was out right faster than the Mustang. Overall the "Racing Stripes" just made it look cool. 

The 442 continued on up through the seventies as the "the" Muscle car to have as Oldsmobile continued making improvements to it here and there such as the "Ram-Air" option introduced in 1970. The body style did seem to change a bit over the years eventually producing 5 generations of the 442.

Due to gas shortages and other environmental related issues beginning in the early 1980's opinion shifted, Muscle car was now a "bad" term as it used up too fuel and was classified as a strain on the planet (yeah figure that one out) seems we were over using the planet and everything had to be smaller. So Oldsmobile ended production of the 442 in 1980 and with it went one of the most coveted Muscle cars in Us History, The Oldsmobile 442.