Finding an intact late-'70s Cutlass Aeroback like today's Nice Price or No Dice Brougham is rare. Finding one with a five-speed manual behind its Olds V8 makes you wonder if you should start checking your chickens for dental work. Let's see what such a rare odd duck could be worth.
Daimler-Benz debuted its ultra-luxury personalization service—Designo—in the late 1980s. For an added cost, the Designo program gives buyers a selection of unique paint and upholstery options to make their car more their own. One has to wonder, though, where the company came up with that name: Designo. It's a real word in Portuguese, meaning "to designate," but it sounds like somebody's cringy attempt at an Italian accent.
That's a question for the ages. More germane to our interests was the question of whether the 2001 Mercedes-Benz CLK 430 Designo convertible we looked at last Friday was worth its $6,700 asking price. It checks a lot of boxes: a strong maintenance history, special-looking Designo baseball-mitt leather in the cabin, and Mercedes' legendary M113 V8 under the hood. A few of you still warned of the perils of owning an older German car, but in the end, the yeas outvoted the nays, awarding the CLK with an overwhelming 82% 'Nice Price' win.
Aeroback OFF!
In the 1970s, Steve Martin introduced a bit in his comedy routine entitled "Let's Get Small." American carmakers at the time were way ahead of the banjo-playing balloon-twisting comedian, spending much of the decade putting their model lines on crash diets to improve fuel economy across the board and better compete with more sensibly-sized imports. The era when luxury was determined by size was over.
As General Motors set out to replace its mid-size (or huge in modern parlance) Colonnade A-body platform with a smaller model for the 1978 model year, the company made two strategic errors in the new model's design. First, it offered two of the new models—the Buick Century and Oldsmobile Cutlass—in an odd fastback body style for the two- and four-door editions, dubbed the "Aeroback." Chevrolet and Pontiac, meanwhile, were provided more traditional three-box designs for their Malibu and LeMans models. How big a mistake was this? The two-door coupe Cutlass was the best-selling car of its era. The Aerobacks? Not even close. Sales of the fastback models trailed their traditional counterparts significantly until they were dropped in the early 1980s.
Another issue was the decision not to offer openable rear windows on the four-door models. The idea was that removing the mechanism let GM sink the armrests deeper into the doors, giving the back seat a greater sense of room. It also allowed front seat occupants to "Dutch Oven" their rear seat captives with little mechanism for escape.
A lover, not a fighter
The 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon Brougham we're looking at today is one of those less-popular Aeroback sedans, though its ungainly fastback styling still stands out with an odd, "what were they thinking?" appeal.
What really makes this Olds A-body stand out, however, is what's under the hood and sticking out of the transmission tunnel in the cabin. The engine in this Olds is, in fact, an Olds. It's a 260 CID (4.3-liter) edition of the Olds V8, an engine line that debuted in 1949 and was built in various displacements until 1990. In the late-1970s Cutlass, the engine breathes through a Rochester Dualjet two-barrel carburetor, giving it reasonable economy. This is the Malaise Era, though, and that engine was tuned to make a miserable 110 horsepower and a slightly more respectable 205 pound-feet of torque. In the engine's favor, it did prove to be smoother and more durable than the V6s that were offered in the same line at the time.
Behind that engine is this car's biggest surprise: a five-speed Borg-Warner T50 box intended to eke every mile out of a gallon of gas that '70s Oldsmobile engineers could muster. And it's a dogleg to boot!
Other things to note on this Cutlass include its upmarket Brougham trim, which means a softer suspension than the base car, and full instrumentation, including a tachometer. What a weird car for the time this thing is.
Better than you might expect
According to the ad, this is a one-owner car ordered to these specs when new. It's been garage-kept its whole life and has only 43,000 miles on the clock, so that one owner must not have had much time to drive it. The seller describes the car as a great project, though they caution that the transmission is a low-torque unit, not capable of standing up to any increased output should hotrodding be on the next owner's to-do list.
Befitting its one-owner garaged status, this Olds looks to be in surprisingly good condition. Yes, there are a few bumps and bruises in the bodywork, and a broken bumper snood in the back, but it's otherwise pretty solid. A set of full wheel covers is really all it needs.
The cabin looks amazing, despite age, the sun, and some unfortunate scuffing on the hard surfaces having taken their toll. Having not been optioned with A/C means not having to deal with old-school R12, but it does make those non-opening rear windows appear extra egregious. Fortunately, the rear-most glass does pop out slightly for some ventilation.
Somebody needs to preserve this
So, is this a great car? No, it is not. What this is, though, is an odd outlier. It's the weirdest of the weird, a true unicorn hiding in a haystack while clutching a four-leaf clover in its rainbow hoof. For any truly rabid Olds fanatic, this is like finding a leprechaun's pot of gold.
Could that make it worth $6,500 for that right Olds buyer? For that amount, the car comes with a clean title and a current Pennsylvania safety inspection. It's offered as "by owner," not through a dealer, but through a detail shop. How it got there is another story we'd all like to hear.
What's your take on this odd Olds and that $6,500 asking price? Does that seem fair given the car's unique—nearly one-of-a-kind—status? Or does the malaise-era miasma cloud your judgment?
You decide!
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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