[StealthBird]

Olds fought their stodgy image throughout the 60's, and I think they did a pretty good job convincing the street crowd that by 1968, they were in the Musclecar wars. The 64-67 442 were also rans to the GTO (unless you ran into one of the handful of 66/67 W-30's, which was highly unlikely). In 68, the 442 and Hurst/Olds garnered some attention. Oldsmobiles problem, and why they were never considered a performance division, was that they only had one platform (the Cutlass) that they built on. The 442, W-30, W-31, Hurst/Olds, all were based on the one A-body they had. The rest of their lineup were stodgy old man cars. No dual quads or tri-powers (except the 442 in 1966) within their lineup. The Toronado was marketed as upscale elegant, not as a performance car.

Pontiac, on the other hand, used aggressive advertising, dual quads, and factory backed racing (up to 1963), and tri-powers were available on most of their model lineup up to and including 1966. The Catalina, Bonneville, Ventura, Grand Prix, and 2+2 were all available as high performance cars, with the GTO of course leading the way. Then in 1967, the Firebirds brought even more youth and performance to Pontiac, followed later by the Judge and Trans Am. Pontiac never had a problem with their performance image.

But Olds only had one performance car, and that was the Cutlass. They made some powerful Toros, even some police package Deltas, but they maintained a stodgy image. I think they finally broke the mold in 1968, with the new styling, the Hurst/Olds, and the W-31, but Olds would just never be identified as a GM performance division. The photos from the 1968 Auto Show really show how hard Oldsmobile was trying to attract the youth market.