Why do you own your 73-77?

[Firethorne77]

The recent thread by Michigan Muscle got me started on this one, because of the idiots out there that think our cars are sub-standard to the rest.

I can bet you all have stories to tell on why you own yours.

Share them... If this is a duplicate from an earlier post.. so be it..

I look forward seeing some stories posted.

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The poll is a general gauge to see responses....


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My '77 was my first car. Plain and simple.. thats the WHY.
Glad to have never parted ways.. I think if I ever had to lose this car, it would be extremely difficult. To many years, Too many memories.
I'd let this car go to dust before anyone could lay hands on it..


Went to look at it in May of my senior year in high school.
Dad pointed out an ad in the paper as I was looking for rear wheel drive v8 coupe.
I wished I saved the ad...

" 1977 Oldsmbile Cutlass Supreme. V8. 2dr. Red w/White top.
43k orig. 1 family owned. Must see. "

I turned the corner of that street in Randolph Ma, nearly jumped out of the car. She was big, beautiful and sooo sooo original.
Drove her around the block, Dad knew then I wanted it soooo bad.
She ran soo nice. Drove so smooth. That Rochester 4bbl was perfect!
The white interior made it such a bright space while cruising.. you couldnt help but to be in a good mood behind the wheel.
At the time the car was 14 yrs old, and there were none then left on the road up here in Mass. Salt ate these ones alive.
We paid good money back then to get it, but did she was worth every penny.


Now she is almost 33 yrs old.. and I never see one on the road up here.

[rickman]

Actually, my 2nd car, 1st was a 57 Chevy, but that's another story.... My best friend's dad had a 76 Supreme, silver, black interior, bucket seats, loved the car. I was 18 when I wrecked my 57 so I thought about Mike's Supreme and started looking. I found a beautiful '76 Salon, metallic blue, white interior, full white top, with T-tops and power options. The guy ordered it brand new, had it for two years, 21K miles, and the underneath was as clean as the top side. He had bath towels over the floor mats the same color as the carpet so he wouldn't get the mats dirty.
He had a 57 black 4 door Ford he drove in messy weather and the Salon had only been in the rain twice in two years because he wrecked his Ford and had to drive it until his Ford was fixed. He told me a story about going to pick up a date one night when it was raining and, of course, drove the Ford. The girl thought the car was ugly and told him she would not ride in it, he would have to go get his "pretty car". He told here he didn't drive it in the rain and she said if he wanted her to go, he would have to go get it. He said oh well, and drove off......good to me.
Anyway, I sold the car around '89 (BIG MISTAKE) and wanted it back a few years later. It took me 6 months to track it down due to lack of information and driving "route 3" a few hours every Sunday looking for a certain house. When I found it, it was totally trashed. I bought it anyway for $300 and plan on restoring it...one day. I have bought six additional 76 and 77 supremes to ensure I have enough parts (never can have too many parts ). I restore cars for a living but stay too busy with customer's cars to work on my own. I guess you could say the Cutlass' got into my blood because I also have two '71 Cutlass conv, two '72 Cutlass conv, a '74 442, a '75 H/O, and an original '76 Salon w/ only 43K miles "a little old lady had". Oh yeah, you know the wife has just got to love me....

[damaged442]

I know this has been posted before, but my 77 was my first car, purchased May of 1992 for $1658.50! It was the car I found out I could afford. I registered and insured in August because I didn't have enough money in May when I got the car. This May, I will have had the car 18 years! It's crazy when you actually think about it! 18 years! Damn!

I always loved cars, but turned into an Olds guy the second I got a ride in a 70 442 W-30 at an early age...let's just say it left an impression. 20 years later, in 2000, I got my own 442, my 73. The longer I keep them, the more I appreciate them, and the more I realize how few of us there are left! Proudly not rocking a "me too" car!

That's about it!~

[jmoney]

i wanted a car and i was not going to buy a 2000 or up cars because i do not like them and i wanted to fix my own car, u know how hard it is to fix up a 2001 car. it SUCKS!!!! so i got the first good old car that i liked and it was the 1973 442, witch a always wanted a 442, so i got it.

MY FIRST CAR IS A 442, i love it.


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jmoney with the 73

[77 350]

My dad always had olds except a 60 starliner, I still think of our much loved black 56 super 88. my first was a 55 hol red on white. as for 73/77 I have to say 74 salon had a 76 that was the gold standard in our little town after seeing that car I was bitten. at the time I had a 73 455 4 speed cutlass and it was sold for a 73 442 that I had for a long time then a 74 455 auto car that was real healthy. from that point its been Mark and myself and our as our wifes will say addiction. this is my 5 th 77 cutlass, I cant count marks cutlass numbers LOTS

[MrRocket]

My first car was a Ford Maverick, a four door with a 302 that smoked a big puff of white smoke when you first started it up. I wouldn't have picked it but my uncle got it for me, I was excited to have a car at least. I wanted a cooler looking car and at least a two door for crying out loud! I had been looking at a 1970 Monte Carlo with a worn out 350, different motor as this Monte used to be the fastest car in town. I also almost bought a 1970 Impala, as we were test driving it someone bought it sight unseen on the phone. I was hacked! So, I got the Maverick. Anyway, this isn't about Mavericks...So I'll continue...after I moved out that next summer I had a mishap on a gravel road and flipped the Maverick on it's hood. I crawled out and ran to the house and called my friend from Sunday School to come and get me. A bit later he shows up in his 1970 Buick Lesabre (yes, with the monster 390 horse 455. What a sleeper! Can't count the number of Chevelles and 5.0 Mustangs he ate for lunch in that old brown Buick) I go to Church with him and there I met for the first time, my future wife. She mumbled under her breath: " scuzzbucket! Who calls his friend in the middle of class to come get him?! Anyway, that's another whole story. So I was car-less, and I went shopping. I loved the Buick and I wanted to find one like it real bad, so that's all I looked at for awhile. Then started looking at other cars and trucks. I remember looking at a 69 Mustang fastback, a 59 Chevy Impala, a 1971 Ford Ranger. God must have had other plans for me because they all fell through for some reason or another. Then I remember hearing about a cheap car that I should go look at. A 1974 Cutlass Supreme. It was cold and there was a recent heavy snow on the ground, problably 5 inches or so. I went to the house and talked to the guy that owned it and said "it's in the back". I said "can I have the keys?" "Will it start?" I got the keys and with a turn it started. I loved the fact that it had bucket seats and a console, since my buddy's car had a bench seat. I couldn't drive it because of the snow but I was hooked. I asked him how much he wanted for it and he said $750.00, I talked him down to $700.00. We agreed on a later date to do the title. A few days later I went back and closed the deal. Never drove it until I bought it. Didn't know it had a four barrel carb. til I romped into it on the way home. I was so excited I had to pull over and look at it. ( yep, never even lifted the hood until I bought it) When I popped the hood I saw the word "Rocket" on the air cleaner. I thought of those things as a bonus. I loved that car so much! We took it almost everywhere and all my friends would sing along with the Beatles "We all cruise in the Yellow Oldsmobile, Yellow Oldsmobile, Yellow Oldsmobile... ( instead of Yellow Submarine). Great times! I sold the Cutlass a couple of years later, I regretted it soon after. Had a 66 Chevelle and a 65 Chevelle after that Cutlass as well as a 69 Ford Ranger and 72 Chevy Pickup and a 69 Chevy Pickup. I always remember how much I loved driving that Cutlass and nothing else ever made me feel like that behind the wheel...EVER! So, I went on the hunt again. By this time, I had married the girl who called me a "scuzzbucket". And I found a 1974 Cutlass Supreme that looked just like the car I sold earlier. This one had hubcaps instead of the sslll's and it had single exhaust, my other one had duals. Other than that they could have been the same car. So I put the sslll's on that I had saved from my other Cutlass and ran duals with glasspacks. Now I had the "same" car again. I loved it too, it was in much better shape. But then, it wasn't practical for a family car being a two door car...so...after a couple of years I ...sold it...again! To my cousin, so I can at least say that it stayed in the family. He blew up the 350 and parked it. Then he put a 327 Chevy motor in it...told him not to do that. He never could get it to run and stay running( had a crack in the gas line on top of the tank). Told him to check that but he yanked the 327 out and sold it. Then parked the car on his dad's farm( my uncle who got me the Maverick). Always planning to "get it going" he eventually gave it to me several years later. I found a deal on a worn out Toronado with a fresh 425 in it and have been piecing it together again ever since. My first Cutlass was bought in 1984 this one was given back to me in 1998, have had it ever since. I vowed to myself that I wouldn't be stupid three times and sell it...we'll see how that goes, so far so good. I'm not anywhere near done with it and I haven't gotten tired of it either. I think I learned my lessons.

[zodiacblue442]

Pete - good poll and I don't think it's a duplicate.

My 74 Cutlass Supreme was my second car. (My first vehicle was a 67 El Camino). Very short version of the story was my grandfather and my dad almost always owned Oldsmobiles. My dad bought the Cutlass from a friend of a friend back in 1991. It was your typical "little old lady" car and was ultra low miles and in great condition. He was going to clean it up and resell it for a nice profit, but once he drove it, he got that "Oldsmobile Feeling" again and said, "This car is staying in the family." He needed a truck so he traded me the El Camino for the Cutlass. Another reason why I think he wanted me to have the Cutlass was because he didn't want his kid driving a Chevy. The Cutlass was my daily driver to engineering college and then to work for several years. Eighteen years later I still own it!

My 73 442 I bought from a friend of mine in the spring of 1998. It was mostly complete, but pretty tired. I spent 3 years restoring it to show car quality and it's a really fun car to drive. Time goes by fast... I've owned my 442 for over eleven years already.

My 75 Cutlass 4 dr. race car, DONUTRUN, was a very tired car that was probably destined for the scrap yard. I bought it from a friend in Dec. of 2002. It's got new life as a bracket drag racing car!

In years' past, I've also owned a 73 Cutlass Supreme, a 74 Cutlass S, a 75 Cutlass Regional Car, and a super clean / low miles 76 Cutlass Supreme Brougham.

[73431Cutlass]

When I was able to drive my parents let us ther 79 Olds Cutlass wagon. When I killed that car, I had to buy my own. So I fought with my dad over a 79 Sunterd and a 76 Cutlass. I won and bought the 76. Had it from 1988 to 2001, and parted it out for the 73 I have now. The 76 needed floors in under the rear seat, 1/4's and inner ond outer wheel houses...... Got the 73 from an old co-worker who was selling this and an 88 442 to fund his mom's funeral. His dad was broke because the towing business and the junk car sale to a junk yard/ scrapper were in the toilet. So I bought it without seeing it and it was worse than when I saw it in 1989, but not that bad. It sat from 1982 to 2000 when I got it. When all said and done he hates it now, due to it being blue and white not black as it was when original. The original owner traded in a 70 SS 454 LS& Chevelle for this, imagine that car now!
I went Oldsmobile due tothe fact that all my buddies had Chevys.... I was and am always different!!!!
Steve

[resmith]

This is a great thread...

My first car was actually a 1971 Pontiac LeMans wagon. Not a bad car, but not the coolest thing to drive when you're 16 years old. Now that I think about it, it was wise of my dad to give something like that to learn on without getting myself killed or locked up. Midway through my senior year in high school (January 1982) I was driving past a used car lot in Austin where I saw a Cameo White 73 F37 Cutlass coupe. I did a fast U-turn and looked it over and fell in love with that body style with the beautiful taillights (Great work, Len). I took it for a quick test drive and just loved the smoothness of that Rocket 350. It was about as basic a car as you could get (rubber floor covering, untinted glass), the only options being A/C and Rallye wheels, but that was enough for me. Two days later I drove her home.
I had more fun in that car than any other before or since. (dates, road trips, cruising). Shortly after buying it, I met a guy who owned a 73 Cutlass S. We struck up a friendship that lasts to this day over these cars. In the summer of 1984 I sold it to a friend's brother who later blew up the engine (ran it out of oil) . For years afterward I regretted selling my 73, but I made myself a promise that one day I would own another.
One day in January 2006, I was browsing through evilBay and saw a 73 Cutlass S for sale in PA. The pictures looked good, but I just was'nt sure. I gave myself that weekend to think it over, then on Monday placed my bid. The auction closed without reserve met, but the owner contacted me through evilBay offering the car for LESS than my original bid. I accepted the offer, then flew to Cleveland, rented a car and drove to Erie, PA where the car was located, closed the deal and drove her home without incident-what a great road trip that was-it was like going back in time.
This car I aim to keep till I die...

[442MUCH]

It was the first car I ever bought by myself. I've owned her for 30 years (2009). Brad surprised us again. Look at the beautiful 77 442 in Dec JWO.