I’m guessing you folks are starting to notice that I have a thing for big old cars that have been cherished. This 1970 Oldsmobile 98 certainly seems to fit that description, having been driven only 46,000 miles from new. It’s located in Wellpinit, Washington and is up for sale here on eBay, with a buy-it-now (and bidding, for some odd reason) price of $4,900.
Honestly, I’d feel better about this car if the seller had stated there was “no” rust, but I certainly can’t see any. The paint looks very unusual under these lights, but I think I’ve included a better shot in the next picture that’s more representative of the actual color of the car. The chrome looks nice, and I’m guessing based on the condition of the vinyl top and the interior that this car has spent most of its time in a garage.
Here’s the color I think the car really is. It’s also a great indicator of (a) the car really might not be rusty, based on the sill here, and (b) GM panel and trim fit was really pretty bad back then! The paint even looks pretty shiny based on the reflection at the top of the picture!
Ok, if you don’t like late 60’s/early 70’s brocade interiors and harvest gold, stop looking right here. There are what seem to be acres and acres of the stuff in this car, and it all looks nice! Actually, better than nice!
Just look at that pristine dash and factory floor mats! Even if you don’t particularly like this type of car, you have to admire the condition it’s in. I’m guessing this is the car of an older person that has passed, just because of the condition of it. The seller tells us that it has a tilt and telescoping steering wheel as well as power windows and a power seat. No word on air conditioning, so I’m assuming not.
Here’s that wonderful Rocket 455 engine! The seller explains that the car runs and drives, but that it’s been in storage for many years. They feel it will require “minor repairs” which they describe as rebuilding the carburetor, tune up and adjustments. Are you the one willing to take them on?
it has A/C, i see some of the parts under the hood, but who knows if it works. i think there are some cruise parts showing in that photo also. i do not know how the seller got the starting bid to match the BIN but i think the buyer needs to click on the BIN not the Place Bid. looks like it would be a nice daily driver. great find.
Wow looks like a huge trunk!
Too many doors
Doors aside, nothing says old people ( and now I am one) like a brocade interior!
Ha! Soooo true!
Before the Arab oil embargoes, these cars were the boss. Beautiful. 4 doors on a big car like this say luxury to me
I’m cool enough to put big wheels on it and roll in style. It takes a certain type and at $4,900 I would be a buyer if it were closer. Cool car for the money and it has a 455. Good driver
Ah, great way to being wrecking an immaculate, virgin car… Big Goofy Wheels always make the car go faster, look better than new, make it worth more, draw prostitutes like flies, and make it totally undesirable to anyone but the Big Wheels fanatic. Maybe lower it to the rocker panels and install some dingle balls inside the glass and a cast iron male genitals hanging below the rear bumper. Roll in style!
Get your head out of the the dirt boy! Big cars look good on twenty inch wheels, it’s what they were missing in the seventies, fits the proportions of the car better than a little out dated fifteen inch wheel and all new cars and trucks come with up to twenty inch wheels these days. I personally have no problem telling the prostitutes to stay away from my cars, and as quick as you put down someone’s style, remember not everyone is like minded. I don’t get small cars, but I see them on here daily and keep my comments civil when I make them. If muscle cars were any more expensive I couldn’t afford to have the collection I do, all stock restorations by the way, thats just how I like them, at least for now. I enjoy your opinions, but some readers have thin skin and no sense of humor. I have stepped on a few toes from time to time so I know. Things like dingle balls and 13 inch wheels go on low riders, big wheels are a totally different look altogether. It is the invested effort and talent of fabrication that makes me take notice with any vehicle wether I like it or not.
I agree with Jason… those gigantic wheels with tires that have 1-inch sidewalls look like clown shoes on a good car that never came with them. I’ve seen more SS396 Chevelles and countless other beautiful vehicles turned into rolling jokes by those monstrosities.
…and makes the car ride like crap inherent with large-diameter wheel scenarios too, with much more shock to the suspension parts for lack of adequate sidewall height. No thanks, at least not for me anyway. Car like this is meant to cruise in the sortof cushioned comfort only achieved by a tall sidewall (read: original wheel diameter)..
Jason you couldn’t be more right. What a way to ruin a fine old car.
This is a 1970 LS!! I had one in the late 70’s. Loved it. If it were not for the fact that I am now into Corvettes…..I would buy it in a heartbeat!!!
Prolly rides like a cloud too
I had a 73 olds 98 and it was a fantastic car; 4 door hard top, 455, drove like a dream. Alas, I had to sell it to buy (gag) a 95 Voyager. Kills me every time I think of it. The guy that bought the car from me had it for 3 months, busted a motor mount and sold the engine to a guy to use in his jet boat. Sigh. Every time I see a jet boat in the river here, I wonder if it’s the ghost of the Olds…
sweet
I have one in my garage, gold with white vinyl top. It’s been in my family since new, with 105,000 miles on it. I was clocked at 150.3 mph in a sanctioned test. My car has been driven 95% highway travel and use to get 6 mi/gal of premium leaded fuel, but now gets 22 m/gal. The difference! It had 2 four-barrel carbs (my Dad ordered that), and now has a 2 barrel carb. I still have all the ingredients to put it back to a 2 four- barrel system, [actually the parts that came off the car].
Took my drivers test in one of these
Try to parallel park this
Need harbor pilot
LOL! I had a 1972 Olds 98. Put a Craig 4 channel 8 track surround sound in it. So fun! Great to have people bringing back memories. Thank you, Mike.
I would never take my drivers test in one of these. If the DMV guy told me to do a parallel park, I’d drop him off at the office and come back the next day in an Isetta.
I took my drivers test in the middle of a July heatwave in 1967. My Dad’s car was big and had a/c. A/c was not a common feature on cars of the day yet. Anyway, with the a/c blasting away, I think as long as I did not run over anybody I would have passed that day.
Add says it was ordered without a radio, I would imagine that was a pretty rare occurrence! Really nice car, would love to have it!
Why, why, why would anyone order a car like this without a radio??
Could’ve been hearing challenged. I’ve seen a couple of cars before that are heavily optioned yet with a factory delete plate in the Radio spot, and one of them was accurately traced to a deaf original owner.
…original owner didn’t need the radio since there was enough room in the back seat for an actual 4 piece band to ride around with him
Back when you could walk into a dealer and option-out almost the entire build of a car, there was always a crank factor. Some crank or another would decide he wanted power windows but no power locks. Or a shaker hood or towing package with the weakest 6-cylinder available. Or everything BUT a passenger-side visor. The reasons ran from weirdly-calculated cheapness to safety rationalizations now lost to the shifting sands of folklore. But frequently, it was just someone being a crank and insisting no car of his was ever going to have that new-fangled lockable glove box if he ever had anything to say about it. Made a man feel like a man, doing things that way.
Brings back memories from the dealership.. These cars rode like sitting on a white puffy cloud.. Much better ride than the 88’s. This one is very nice and will bring someone a great keeper.. Lots of fun.
Great find..
Many great memories !! Of the huge back seat. Dated a girl who’s parents had one.
I never minded taking her car instead of my Datsun !!!!
👍
I need that steering wheel for my ’70 Toronado! Well, a dark brown one actually…you never see them in this condition.
Love it love it! I just saw it on ebay and a few hours later, it’s been posted here. I have a “Thing” for the 69/70 Olds 98s. I have a 69 98 Convertible and a 69 98 Luxury Sedan in my garage so this car really hits the spot for me. I do like the front of the 69 better than the 70 model. It looks like a loaded car but really strange with the missing radio option. This is the top of the line Luxury Sedan, “LS” and it even has the split front seat, a very rare option only offered on the LS hardtop. I like the sedan with the center post even better than the hardtop sedan, it’s much more formal looking. I would take a 98 over any Cadillac, Buick Electra 225, Lincoln or Imperial of the same era. If it’s as good as it looks, 5k is cheap for this car. My vote for the nicest looking car for today.
Any car with a center pillar is a “sedan”. Any car without a center pillar is a “hardtop”. There is no such thing as a “hardtop sedan”. The stupid term itself is an oxymoron.
Oh Yeah the Olds Rocket 455 they could past anything on the highway except a Gas Station. I owned a 73 Buick Electra Limited bought it right before I got married, had that car for many years, it had a rebuilt engine in it when I bought it, and right at 100,000 miles on the clock. I bought it for $750.00 when I got rid of it had over 300,000 on it and it was towed to the car dealer as a trade in.
A Ninety-eight without a radio !!!!!
Yea Luke, something strange about the missing radio and this car is really loaded including automatic air and cruise control which were both really rare options. The top of the line LS model came standard with power windows and seats and from the dealer booklet I am reading, a radio also came with the LS. I wish the guy took a closeup photo of the missing radio area. I really like this car and sent him an email asking some questions but he has not bothered to get back to me or does not look at his emails very much. I would think someone selling a car would check his emails more often. It does look like there is a face plate where it should be. I bet that item is impossible to find anywhere.
The only thing that is as impossible to find as that radio blockout plate, is someone who actually needs one.
The GM radio is easy, it’s the block plate that’s impossible to find. Just put a Bluetooth set on the back shelf and run music off of your phone. There is no need for systems and wiring in your car any more.
This is a fantastic lump of metal. I could only wish there was a 225 as nice.
REPLY TO GARY I:
If Big Goofy Wheels look so good on 1970s cars, why weren’t they installed at the factory? Could it be because your Big Goofy Wheels were invented by pimps and prostitutes for 90’s Cadillac Escalades? If those great folks have so much “talent of fabrication”, they’d be working at Ford and GM designing cars, not marinating their health and brains on STD’s and drugs.
20″ wheels, dingle balls, pimps, lowered cars are all brewed from the same pot of automotive flotsam. If you want to trash up this poor Olds with all that, be sure to leave it that Stinkbarf Yellow some fool repainted it. It’s so East L.A. and takes neither talent nor fabrication. And you don’t even have to add two more doors.
Comparing 1970s styling [sic] to the even uglier trash being offered today is like comparing sushi to blueberry pie. Have you considered a 2012 Blackwood with Go-Fast! 28″ wheels and wheel covers that still rotate while the car’s standing at a stop light?
Now, there’s some talent…
Hey Jason.
“..Stinkbarf Yellow…”..
…That’s funny.!!
For reals! I read it in the Official 1970 Oldsmobile Accessories catalog. It’s a special Limited Edition color that only came with the Ghetto Cruiser Package, which included De Luxe 28″ Circus Wheels on 1″ b/s/w rubber-band tires, front and rear Dingle Balls color-coordinated to the brocade interior, custom-altered rear doors that open suicide style, trunk-mounted speakers designed to wake the dead in Mexico City, and a floor-operated laser switch that rotates the rear license plate within five seconds of holding up any 7-11. Someone had one on eBay last month and it went for $1,347,446.66.
Jason H.. That was hilarious.. Thanks for the free belly laugh..
And thank you. If everyone would laugh just once a day, it would add a year to our lives! Thanks again.
They didn’t make Lincoln Blackwoods in 2012, if that’s what you were referring to Jason, they were made only for the 2002 model year. But I agree 100% with how you feel about the “Big Goofy Wheels”!…..Thanks for the laugh!…..I like to say that there are lots cheaper ways to ruin a vehicle than to spend thousands on those Big Goofy Wheels!…..just run it into a pole!…..either way, you’re still ruining it……right?
Mea Culpa on the 2012 Blackwood, Charles. Ever wonder how it feels to be stupid? Just look at me…! (Don’t worry – I do brain surgery better than I do late-model cars.)
I was referring to whatever that Lincoln is that has $80,000 worth of extra tail lights stapled onto a Ford Expedition.
And, yes, running it into a pole accomplishes the same objective. Of course, we won’t be able to cruise for ho’s along Whittier Blvd. later tonight…
(In my old hometown) there was an enterprising lad who opened a small business @ 7yrs ago with the idea that guys would want to rent those huge tires and wheels as a package to make their ride look sweeter…They could be rented for a weekend and returned…
…
It’s now a liquor store..
What a car….This car has more trunk space than all the Kardashians combined..
Leave the 20 inch wheels and dingleballs to the idiots who have no appreciation for vintage luxury cars that are as nice as this one is. All they’re trying to do is ‘one up’ each other to show who the top dog on the block is. Cars like this should be left alone and enjoyed by someone who would appreciate the way it looks as is. It really irks me to no end how someone can take a car like this and ruin it with stupid crap in the name of ‘bling’.
Yeah Jason, you have a point on about not being able to cruise for ho’s!…..hey maybe you could give me a deal on some brain surgery?
Shure, I got mi medikal lisens at the Ohio Home for the Numb. I can take a dingleball car owner’s brain apart and put it back together jes like you due a AMT 3-in-1 kit. But you hafta qwalify 1st. Snce I do volunteer work for the poor who cant pay me, I often take they’re olde cars in trade for mi services. If you have a Jan-U-Wine 1970 Olds 4-door hardtopsedan Ghetto Cruiser with factory original Big Circus Wheels, we can make a deal. Euell hafta see my pimp to work out the detailz. An I also take drugs, hos, pot, dope, booze and them new sweet smellin plastic ciggies 2. I am home in Sanova Beech, Calif.
LOL Jason… . You come up with the most humorous comments.. aks me,, go ahead,, aks me.
A ’70 98 LS was one of the first cars I ever drove. As a family car, we liked it quite a bit less than the 1970 455-equipped 88 that came before it. Delivered about one mile less per gallon, which in these means about a 10-15% difference. The 98 rode well, but while the 88 only felt dull and concrete-blockish around corners, this thing felt positively brontosauriffic. Had about 20 degrees of play in the steering. Really, the whole thing seemed like a downer until you got your foot into it. That 455 could reverse the earth’s rotation, if only slightly. A few minutes after the fun you were headed off to a Union 76 to fill it up again.
Sold
Going to Sweden