Cutlass door panel fun

[81X11]

So the wife went shopping this morning, the kids were watching cartoons, and I snuck off to the garage for a little short Saturday project.

First a short history lesson:
In 1988 Oldsmobile was bringing out the new front-drive Cutlass Supreme, and '87 was supposed to be the last year for the older rear-drive car, but they had parts delays and productions issues on the new model....and the very old rear-drive Cutlass was still selling, so they renamed the old car a Cutlass Supreme Classic...worked for Coke, right? The '88 rear-drive car (my car) ran only for part of the year, and as the new front-drives finally came online, the rear-drive was finally killed off.

Now back to the topic of the post. In 1987 and older Cutlass Supremes, the cars had door panel script chrome emblems. Well either to save a buck, or because Cutlass Supreme Classic might look a little long on the door panel, Olds just left the emblems off the doors for '88 (they DO have them on the exterior C-pillars).

Well I found a good set of non-sun-faded '87 model panels with the emblems...and I like emblems, besides the plasti-chrome trim on my '88 panels was pretty much worn off, so I needed to do something with those anyway.

The new panels are in nice shape, but the plasti-chrome on them was pretty bad too. I was debating about painting the trim, buying chrome decals, or...... Well I got as much of it off as I could, then dug around in the garage boxes and found some black and silver body pin stripes that I'd bought a long time ago for the exterior of the old 86 Caprice Classic. They were just about the exact same width of the plastic-chrome trim on the Cutlass door panels. So I put that stuff on. Would love to hear what you guys think!

Old '88 door panels

Fixing the trim on the "new' used '87 panels

Installed '87 panels

Fun-Fun!


-Mike

 

[88hurstolds]

Very nice!
I like the clean look myself but good job on the striping, that Mylar trim always fades and flakes off.

 

[88Classic]

Nice. My panels look different though. They look like this:

Is this because my car is a Brougham?

 

[Blake442]

Nice. My panels look different though. Is this because my car is a Brougham?

Yes.

 

[81X11]

Yep and I really like your Brougham door panels with the long pull straps. Those were also used on the Cutlass Salon and the 1985 442 models. What's on my car is the mid-level trim. There was a more basic trim as well on the older Cutlass models, but in 88 it was either what I have or if it was a Brougham what you have.

I've looked for those Brougham panels for my car, but here in Texas the upper are near the windows fade out really bad on those. It's also hard to find the newer ones with the lighter wood, like you have. Most you see are on older cars and have the darker burled wood, which does not match my dash and console.

Nice Brougham by the way!

-Mike

85 442 door panel

Here is the base-level Cutlass door panel, for the 80's cars. The 78-80 were different too.

And here is the 78-80 door panel design.

 

[Chris Van]

Mine's a Bro Ham too.....
I just thought it was the difference in the years or something....
Learn something new every day.

 

[Chris Van]

Okay.... those brown ones up above are what mine looked like from the factory....

 

[G-Body_Vet]

I love that blue interior! I've had burgundy in a 442 and 3 SS's and the sun usually does a number on them.