Now this, my friends, is a car. This 1974 Oldsmobile Cutlass sedan isn’t a car that any of us would probably have drawn in art class, or in math class rather than paying attention, but it’s a car that a lot of us grew up with. You know, a real car. It’s listed here on eBay in Red Lion, Pennsylvania and there’s a $5,995 buy-it-now price listed. Thanks to local_sheriff for sending in this tip!
Are you sitting down? This car has four doors! I know, the humanity. Not only that, but it’s brown. BROWN! A brown four-door sedan from the mid-1970s. Those aren’t negative things in my world, they’re positives. This is not a muscle car or a wild exotic, it’s the car that a lot of us grew up with. Whether it was an Oldsmobile or a Plymouth or a Ford or whatever, this is the reality of what most cars were in this era. I hate to break that to you.
And, what a car it is. It’s a fourth-generation Cutlass and the seller says that it’s a one-owner estate vehicle. They were made from 1973 to 1977 and they were known as Colonnade designs because the rear side window didn’t open on two-door cars. In the era of smoking almost everywhere, it had to have been horrible on road trips to be trapped in the back seat.
There are no underside photos and this car spent its entire life in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area where they get snow and I believe, they also salt the roads. They don’t mention rust and it sure doesn’t look like there is any. With 89,900 miles, that’s only around 2,000 miles a year so maybe it was never driven in the winter. The brocade seat fabric is fantastic and it looks perfect in the front and the rear.
The engine is the smaller of the two available in the Cutlass in 1974, Oldsmobile’s 350 cubic-inch V8 with a four-barrel carburetor and 180 horsepower. The 455 was the other engine and by then it was down to 250 horsepower. A six-cylinder would be available in 1975. There was a 350 available with dual exhaust which added 20 horsepower. The seller says that it runs and drives great and it sure looks great to me. Did any of you grow up with a four-door sedan like this Cutlass? Ours was a 1969 Plymouth Fury III.
This car is just down the road from me at a dealer. Naylor Automotive. My aunt had one just like this but it was a burnt orange color. I grew up in the rear facing seat of a ’77 Custom Cruiser Olds wagon with a 400 in it. Learned to drive in the ’84 Olds wagon that followed. Parents had an ’89 after that as well. I actually prefer these “normal” finds because they are so real for many of us.
I know the ’77 was actually a 403! remembered that after
Lets see if i can remember them all, 73 chevelle SS, 73 olds cutlass, 73 Laguna or was that a 74? 74 buick 4 door, 73 grand am GT, 75 chevelle, 76 pontiac le mans, that one had a 260 olds motor, it was a slug. I am sure i had a least one more but the late 70’s early 80’s were a long time ago but i really did like these cars for what they were then, cheap and easy to work on
Yes indeed, a true classic from the awesome 70s and I dig it. As scooter6 states above, this was the reality for most of us of a certain age. Roomy, functional and got the job done for a great many people. Most of us probably rode in a car like this at one time. Buy it and drive it and savor a different era.
I sure could use it’s floor pan.
Wow. The Colonnade 73-77 Cutlass was one of my favorites. I was just a kid when these came out. I remember one of the teachers at my Elementary school driving a new beige 4 door just like this. I wanted a 76 or 77 Cutlass Supreme 2 door really badly when I was in high school, but it just never happened. A family friend had one that was white with a blue padded vinyl top and a blue bucket seats with a console, it was really nice. I would be very happy to have this 4 door now. It looks like its in great condition in the photos. I would leave it exactly the way it is, I wouldn’t change a thing. I would just maintain it. Like the saying goes, they’re only original once.
I know that brown/root beer metallic had a bit of a surge in popularity in the mid to late 70s and the color therefore is very typical of the period, but just about any other color would have me more interested in this car.
I will say, that for once, a seller has a very reasonable B.I.N. price…for what you are getting: a very lightly used ” older ” car.
My mom bought a 4 door Cutlass Supreme in the same color as this one. The Supreme had slightly different grille and taillights. It also had a hood ornament. The rear windows did roll down on the 4 door models. You can see a little of the window crank in the back seat picture. It was a comfortable car to cruise in but it had problems with the pollution control equipment. I bought a ’75 Cutlass Salon and it ran much better due to the switch to electronic ignition and catalytic converter.
I never liked any of these 1973-1977 GM intermediate cars. No vent windows in the doors, and rear quarter windows in the coupes did not roll down, so air conditioning was a requirement. They are heavy cars with tall rear axle ratios which makes them slow, they get lousy gas mileage in an era when gas prices were going up very fast (and are again today), they have room for a spare tire and not much else in the trunk with a too small trunk lid; the frameless door glass squeaks and rattles after a few years, especially when rolled part way down.
These cars are perfect drivers, normal cars, no esoterica, you’ll really enjoy it.
I am an enthusiast of late ’70s early ’80s Oldsmobiles and if i had the room I’d jump on it.
Our 70’s brown family 4 door sedans were Dads ’68 Mercedes 280S and Moms ’79 Pontiac Bonneville. I learned to drive in both of those brown sedans.
I don’t believe for a minute that the rear windows don’t open. It’s not an 80’s G-body.
Correct, the rears did indeed open, maybe halfway? The next generation had stationary windows, but the rear vents opened.
The rear windows on 4-door Collonades did indeed open. I was a GM dealership service tech back in the 70s and remember these cars well. Look closely at the interior rear door photo on the eBay posting and you can see the window regulator crank. GM’s later generation midsize cars, (i.e., ’78-’81 Cutlass Aeroback 4-door sedan) had fixed rear door windows.
Thanks for the clarification, guys.
I got that info from Outrightolds.com, “Cutlass models in this era (73-77) were known as “Colonnade” bodies because of their fixed rear side windows.”
And, from Hagerty: “Cutlass models in this era were known as “Colonnade” bodies because of their fixed rear side windows.” And, “Roof and greenhouse designs varied by trim level and body style, but all models featured a fixed rear side window.”
2 doors have a fixed rear window, the sedans and wagons have roll down down windows, the Colonnade name was from the pillared roof, nothing to do with the roll down windows.
Colonnade definition is – a series of columns set at regular intervals and usually supporting the base of a roof structur, nothing to do with windows or them rolling down.
Being the owner of Outrightolds, I had to check this out as I sometimes do to make sure my info is correct. Would change it if it is incorrect or worded wrong.
If you look at even the 4 door- it has a fixed rear window. It is behind the roll down-able rear window. Thats if you want to be technical. I’d say sure, the 4 door version really isn’t a “Colonnade” style. I also have this written elsewhere on the site:
Colonnade: When used in an Oldsmobile model name, describes a car body that has frameless door glass/window yet kept a center pillar like a 4 door would. Typically the colonnade term was used only on 2 door body cars, but GM also used it on 4 doors, which some believed to be ad agency gibberish. (Dictionary definition: ‘a series of columns usually supporting the base of a roof structure’.)
Hey, you can’t expect someone that gets paid to write about cars to actually know stuff about cars…..
I had an 80 Cutlass LS, it was the biggest dissapointment ever in an auto. Looked great, but it wasn,t. It died twice on out of town trips. Nobody could fix it.
Believe it was a V6.
Traded it in for a brand new 626 4 speed stick shift with AC. Lost my pants on the trade, but, it was GONE. We drove the 626 for many years till the kids got too big.
It was fun to drive everytime we got in it. My wife handled the 4 speed great. I wish we woulda kept it. That and a Ford F100 I bought with a Canadian 300 six cyl that began knocking 6 months after purchase scared me off American cars. How could the Canadian assemblers mess up an engine I knew was a solid engine, then Babbit Ford in Flagstaff fixed it poor and it never was any good, burned oil and had slap. SORRY Bastards, I emailed Babbitt Ford 40 years later and told them all about that incident. A man actually emailed me back and appologised to me, then he tried to sell me another one. LOL
You gotta love em, their just trying to make a living before some damn robot takes their sales job.
WHAT would happen if we consumers ALL got together and just rejected all this coming tech automation job stealing crap. We could do it if we d all just refuse it.
Complain, complain, complain. Don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for you because you didn’t have the sense to contact the manufacturer to get help. And if you say you did, why didn’t you keep after them to get resolution. If you throw your hands up in the air, don’t expect anyone else to care.
Sorry to hear about your P.O.S. experience. I’ve been there with a 90s GM car(apparently built on a Mon or Fri)and it sucks. It was not a simple matter of complaining to the manufactuer and the lemon law process was new and difficult.
Unfortunately the only practical solution was to cut your losses (mine involved trading it in at a huge loss for a 4runner).
I don’t expect sympathy from random people who mean nothing to me. I’m just empathizing with someone who got stuck with a lemon. That said what would be wrong with having a little empathy for a guy who got stuck with a trash car.
Oh, Oh, Oh, pity me. I’m so taken advantage and can’t do a thing about it.
Why don’t you grow up?
You’re so angry and not making sense. Get some help man.
My friend in college had an 80 Olds Cutlass LS. This was in 1995 – 1996. He drove it from California where he lived to North Carolina for college and back. It had the V6. It was fine.
That’s probably because of all the money Robert Eddins put into it!
If you don’t like American cars, you’re posting in the wrong place. If you haven’t noticed, most people here are fans of them.
ACZ honestly you need to listen yourself. Your responses don’t line up at all to what these people are saying. It’s like you’re trying to be a bully on an old car discussion site and are embarrassing yourself.
Looks like @ACV has some unredolved anger issues.
Looks like ACZ was having a bad day or has some anger issues to address. The topic is our experience with cars like this one, even if the experience was bad.
Brown, plain sedan that was once everywhere but somehow I love it. Looks roomy and comfy. 10/10 would daily.
This would be a blast to turn into a 442-4.
or a 444 LOL.
This is the car to buy, and enjoy – while you spend the rest of your life and savings on a 2 door fastback pony car that you’ll probably sell anyway
If I didn’t have a Crown Vic that I really love I do believe I would try to offer a little less and buy this. I have absolutely nothing against 4 door cars. In the very early 90s I had a 4 door Cutlass. White with a…odd to shade of painted green roof. Factory colors. Green interior of course. It was very much like this in other regards though. Excellent car. Her name was Emily. Don’t ask why, just seemed to fit her. Yes I positively would be a player because the price overall seems fine. But I love my Vic dearly and hope to own it until I die. Which hopefully isn’t too soon. Lol
I knew a girl who had a 74 2 door brown Cutlass with tan top tan interior, never liked brown, but with spokes it looked good back in the late 70s. Her sister had a 74 Triple black Ford Elite, and th other sister had a 75 Riviera, big cars were in back then
Always nice to see a Colonnade that’s not missing half its’ doors!
The nice thing about the sedans is they had the good roofline with the good visibility even if you optioned them up. On the coupes, the slightest bit of spec meant giving up the big triangular windows they were clearly meant to have for various gunslit opera windows and/or louvers. This one is even free of a vinyl top so the roof flows into the tulip panel.
Like this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7DFv8ZnQN0
Why is this still for sale. Absolutely love it. If I didn’t already have 15 cars I’d add this one. Love the plain brown wrapper and as .most everyone has mentioned, this type is what we rode in. Not the high end, high hp special editions that were offered. Growing up we had a 72 Galaxie 500, gold with white vinyl top. Mid grade better than the custom 500 but not as luxurious as the LTD. Once upon a day I bought a 73 Olds Cutlass 2door in blue. Got it off the dealeds bone row just as it came in on trade. No recon or anything. Paid 100 bucks for it. Should’ve kept that cutlass.
Our Mom’s wonderful mom passed in ’86 and my big brother and I got to drive her 1974 all creme in creme 2 door Cutlass in high school. We were stoked to have any car since our gardening money didn’t amount to much, but we didn’t expect much out of the car. Turns out Grandma ordered the 455. It may have been “down to 250 horsepower” but that seemed like a heckuva lot to us, we couldn’t believe how fast it was. We raced the Mackenzie brothers and their trans-am and seemed like we held our own. Powerful too – we towed tree trunks at the local farm with it. The repeated carbon monoxide leaks into the cabin during winter drives to high school were the end of that car for us but it was a big ole blast while it lasted. We replaced it with a ’79 lime green Ford Fiesta we bought for $600.
A buddy of mine had a ’75 Supreme 4 door as his first car in ’79. It was a hand me down from his Dad who kept it in immaculate shape. I recall it being a smooth cruiser, but not exactly the coolest car for a High School kid. He traded it a year later for an ’80 4 cylinder Mustang coupe. I preferred riding in the Supreme.
My grandparents drove the Buick version of this, a 75 Buick Century 4 door sedan. It was green with a white vinyl top and a green vinyl interior.
This Cutlass – talk about a car that was super popular, but now you don’t see any as a 4 door car. They’re just gone. 47 years of time passing will do that. This is in much better shape for 90,000 miles than I would have thought, especially the interior. I don’t know who preserved this one, but it’s nice that they did.
Scott, when you say side rear windows don’t open…do you just mean the door window in the back seat? On the eBay listing it clearly has window cranks on the back doors but, maybe I’m misunderstanding which window everyone is talking about here.
Why so angry ACV? It’s just car talk.
Lovely looking car. I remember cars like this from my childhood. I was born in 1973, so I remember cars of this vintage. I hope whoever buys this car enjoys it.
Perfect car to keep one of those little siren/light combos in that they used on “Kojak”.
Popular when new. This is how they made ’em. Neighbor had a light blue ’73 LeMans sedan that was sparsely equipped like this. I still remember it’s new car smell. Another neighbor had a ’74 Nova sedan. Dark red with black interior. Same deal. Not everything back then was a 442 or GTO.
My mother had a green 76 Malibu Classic just like this. Living in upstate NY at the time, the car rusted within a few years, and was notorious for stuff falling off the car all the time. One of my childhood memories was a windshield wiper flying off during a rain storm. Also, the backseat always smelled like exhaust fumes. I was glad when someone bought it and drove it away.
A lot of these ended their days as Enduro cars in the mid 1980s. The first Enduros nearly any make and model car would enter, but as time went on, people began to see that the Collonade cars were the cars to run. v8, not too big and could still take a beating. I ran a 73 Malibu and later a 74 Supreme that was this same color ( of course I painted it before I raced it !) As for the gear issue someone mentioned , there were gear choices- I took a set of 3:08s out of a wagon and my Olds flew .
Daytons,Flaked-out candy brown paint, dumped in back, raised in front. Soldier-of-fortune unicorn dolphin airbrush mural on decklid.Home