Im with this guy...
I was offered $9k. My "screw it" number was 10k.
Ill take $15 Million 🙂
-Gonz
Mecum H/O
- Thread starter Doug Chahoy
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I was offered $9k. My "screw it" number was 10k.
Ill take $15 Million 🙂
-Gonz
When I bought my 85 442 new, I knew even back then it was a pig. It wasn't fast, but it rode better than my friend's GN. Not as fast as his car, but the GN rode like a buckboard IMO compared to the Olds. Plus whenever I got to my destination, I could just hop out and leave the car. He had to wait for his minute or so cooldown just to turn it off. 🙂 It wasn't about the money, since the 442 was comparable in price to the GN. But compared to many 85 offerings, it wasn't the slowest turd in the race, though. But I didn't buy the car to race. I loved the legacy, the ride, the overall styling, and the oddball-ness of the car. Although we would line them up at the lights all the time whenever we were out cruising around. Just a lot of fun. I'm betting dime to donuts most of those cars I used to run light to light against have been recycled.
But even back then, we knew bang for the buck was the LX 5.0. Ugly as sin, but light and very fast for the genre. We would go test drive them at the Frod dealer every now and again because they never went with you and we would run the pee out of them, then be like, nah...looking for something a bit bigger. Face it, in the mid-80s, there wasn't much in the name of true factory performance.
For my car to ever roll across the auction block at Mecum or BJ and drag any sort of "collectible" price will likely be a cold day in hell even though only 3000 442s were built in 85. I just don't see it. There's always the "emotional" factor waiting in the wings with some buyer with more money than brains would offer a good price for, but that's like a lightning strike. Highly improbable. But I don't care.
I'm not doing this for others. I do this...
But even back then, we knew bang for the buck was the LX 5.0. Ugly as sin, but light and very fast for the genre. We would go test drive them at the Frod dealer every now and again because they never went with you and we would run the pee out of them, then be like, nah...looking for something a bit bigger. Face it, in the mid-80s, there wasn't much in the name of true factory performance.
For my car to ever roll across the auction block at Mecum or BJ and drag any sort of "collectible" price will likely be a cold day in hell even though only 3000 442s were built in 85. I just don't see it. There's always the "emotional" factor waiting in the wings with some buyer with more money than brains would offer a good price for, but that's like a lightning strike. Highly improbable. But I don't care.
I'm not doing this for others. I do this...
And be in an ugly car doing it, fast for the time, just homely. A lot of us just did not like the Hot Hatch Fox Body Mustangs style. What did your Mustang run stock? I saw a mid 14 second on Motor Week for them as well. Maybe Hotrod or whoever did that article lied with what was actually done to that W31, maybe it was a press car ringer. Two former Olds employees, Dave Bunch and Dave H, both who have passed swore on the 350 HP Gross number, again gross, they were employees during that time. Dave Bunch W31 ran mid 14 second 1/4 mile. They were factory blue printed motors. You are forgetting the awful Autolite carbs on the AMC motors, the highest rating I have seen was 715 cfm, most were around 600 cfm. The AMC Dog Leg heads kicked *ss, Dodge basically copied them for the Magnum head.
The week I traded my '86 GT 5.0L Convertible for a '89 LX5.0L Convertible, I drove it to Texas Motorplex and it ran 14.55 @ 97 100% untouched stock. I took out the airbox Silencer and put my short belt I used when racing my '86 and it went 14.2 @ 99 mph.
With drag radials (that didn't exist at the time) I'm pretty sure I could have got a 13.75 out of it with only a little better air. Best 1/8 mile on regular radial tires with a short belt bypassing the power steering was 8.96 with the top down.
This was convertible with A/C Power windows & locks, Power top, cruise, stock 3.08:1 rear axle.
With drag radials (that didn't exist at the time) I'm pretty sure I could have got a 13.75 out of it with only a little better air. Best 1/8 mile on regular radial tires with a short belt bypassing the power steering was 8.96 with the top down.
This was convertible with A/C Power windows & locks, Power top, cruise, stock 3.08:1 rear axle.
Auto Fox 5.0L Mustangs are mid 15 seconds cars stock. Swapping in 3.73's will get them to run a high 14 stock, but the same mods would make a 5 speed run a second faster.
Auto 5.0L's would go to the track once, unless it was some dudes girlfriend.
Interesting the 3.35 first and 3.08 gear equal the exact same number as a 2.52 and 3.91 gear in the W31. Of course the Olds suffers much bigger drop between gears. I would assume Olds used a bowl hog cutter when installing the 2"/1.625" valves, otherwise why bother. I never seen any published W31 flow numbers but early heads with just that mod flow 210/170, not great like most Olds heads but about a 20 to 30 cfm improvement.
The FAST and Pure Stock guys are in the 10s with "a couple tweaks".
And this very motorcycle sold at Indy for about $1300 more than that modded Elky. Big deal. So maybe the new owner of the Elky got a good deal, too, or maybe he got taken. Unless the same buyer is spending the coin, auction prices don't mean much in the real world. Like any other auction, you run the risk of not getting what you think it's worth.
You can't really directly compare G-bodies with today's vehicles, just as you couldn't really compare the 70s musclecars with their 1940s counterparts, or even today's cars, once again. It's akin to saying in 1973 that the newer 70s "smog" cars could run circles around the stock early 1920s vehicles. Things need to be held in perspective. Even today's "fast cars" will likely be eclipsed soon and will be dated. Or if the snowflakes get their way, they'll be buried. Evolution happens. In ways we like, or ways we don't like. Time will tell. The gas crunch of 1973 really altered the automotive timeline and de-nutted the late 70s cars to unprecedented levels. Similar to what the Covid-19 did to our economy in 2020. Who knows where automotive technology would have gone without that first (and second) gas crunch? It took GM almost 10 years to start getting back in the swing of things performance-wise. Which means the entire G-body era existed in the "dark times".
A more real comparison would be like being able to run down to your local car dealer today, plunking down a couple grand more than the regular SUV and running the 1/4 around 9 seconds. The lack of today's mechanical efficiencies of old meant that cubic inches had to replace that back then.
I, for one, am happy to have lived to see both muscle car and G-body eras and how they evolved. They're both ancient history in automotive lore now. And they'd literally be dinosaurs if they went by cell phone technology evolution standards. The newest of them 33 model years old now. Those "70s" muscle cars are around 50. And here we are all that time later, a handful of us still mucking around fixing these tired, old cars to how we want them to be. They won't be as efficient as new cars. In my eyes they shouldn't or time is standing still. And mother nature is fighting us to reclaim their souls every step of the way. F**K mother nature. Keep up the good fight, however and whichever way you do it.
You can't really directly compare G-bodies with today's vehicles, just as you couldn't really compare the 70s musclecars with their 1940s counterparts, or even today's cars, once again. It's akin to saying in 1973 that the newer 70s "smog" cars could run circles around the stock early 1920s vehicles. Things need to be held in perspective. Even today's "fast cars" will likely be eclipsed soon and will be dated. Or if the snowflakes get their way, they'll be buried. Evolution happens. In ways we like, or ways we don't like. Time will tell. The gas crunch of 1973 really altered the automotive timeline and de-nutted the late 70s cars to unprecedented levels. Similar to what the Covid-19 did to our economy in 2020. Who knows where automotive technology would have gone without that first (and second) gas crunch? It took GM almost 10 years to start getting back in the swing of things performance-wise. Which means the entire G-body era existed in the "dark times".
A more real comparison would be like being able to run down to your local car dealer today, plunking down a couple grand more than the regular SUV and running the 1/4 around 9 seconds. The lack of today's mechanical efficiencies of old meant that cubic inches had to replace that back then.
I, for one, am happy to have lived to see both muscle car and G-body eras and how they evolved. They're both ancient history in automotive lore now. And they'd literally be dinosaurs if they went by cell phone technology evolution standards. The newest of them 33 model years old now. Those "70s" muscle cars are around 50. And here we are all that time later, a handful of us still mucking around fixing these tired, old cars to how we want them to be. They won't be as efficient as new cars. In my eyes they shouldn't or time is standing still. And mother nature is fighting us to reclaim their souls every step of the way. F**K mother nature. Keep up the good fight, however and whichever way you do it.
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