[retengw31]

I was in charge of the Oldsmobile side of the production engineering coordination on the 68 and 69 Hurst Olds while an assembly engineer at Olds.

All 68's and 69's were driven off the line with the 455's and driven to Demmer. We put in a 442 style console shifter (without the console) and threw the carpet in the trunk. In 69, they used a standard 4 barrel aircleaner to get the cars over there.

The 68's were painted all silver at Fisher and the Olds plant except the deck lid itself which was black. The 69's were all white in the Olds assembly process. As Rusty said, the red engines in the A bodies really did help identify the cars coming down the line, as did the black deck lids on the 68's.

All Hursts built on line were automatics, the 4 speed car was an engineering prototype. There were other engineering cars also at Olds, Demmer, and Hurst including one or more convertibles.

The vehicles had normal Olds VIN's (hand stamped on the LH side of the engine block and on the trans) and roll stamped on the frame in two places on the upper surface below the front seat area and behind the rear wheels on the drivers' side. The cars were titled "Hurst Olds", not Oldsmobiles to get around the 455 in an A body GM prohibition.

Interesting sidelight on another GM "edict" was the minimum of 10# per adv hp. On the 68 W31s, the title weight is 3250 and the advertised hp is 325 (surprise, surprise). That's not the peak hp as it was closer to 375. They spec'd it at 5600 RPM to stay within the edict, and anyone whose driven one knows there's a whole lot more all the way up past 6500. It also kept it under the 350 adv hp on the 68 442's to avoid a little more embarassment there.