1975 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser 98

1975 is pretty rare.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1975-Oldsm...ash=item2f36e5b253:g:0EAAAOSwX5hdhTs3&vxp=mtr

 

I sure like this one better than the ‘76 that was for sale a while ago on this forum.

 

I like wood grain, but no wood grain looks so clean.

 

A mix of options. I see A/C, AM/FM radio (but no 8-track, apparently), power tailgate, third seat, cruise control, and tilt wheel, but no rear defogger, luggage rack, power windows, locks, or front seat.

He gives the mileage as just "00," but we can see the odometer in one of the photos, and it says 06458 (I believe--reading it reminds me of visiting the eye doctor). That's certainly 106,458 if not 206,458, but it doesn't look like a 200,000 mile car.

Overall, it does look ok, but there is another minor issue. He has a "Ninety-Eight" script just behind the front wheel just below the chrome trim strip on each side. That's not correct. These cars never had that kind of badging on them. For a non-woodgrain Custom Cruiser, the "Custom Cruiser" script is just ahead of the taillight on each side above the chrome trim strip. This car has that in the correct location. The location behind the front wheel should have no badging.





Another interesting tidbit. This car was just sold for $7370 at a Sotheby's auction at the end of August. Now he's trying to flip it for about double the price. I think $7370 was a fair price for the car. I don't think twice as much is.

He did put whitewalls on it, and it does look better.

https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/...ldsmobile-custom-cruiser-station-wagon/806387

 

good pick up on the ninety -eight on the front fenders. That suggests a repaint and probably the front clip off a sedan.

 

I don't think so. The '75 Ninety-Eights had the fender script low on the rear fender just below the side marker light, not right behind the front wheels. This was true for both two- and four-door Ninety-Eights. Also, the '75 Ninety-Eight had rectangular headlights whereas the Custom Cruiser didn't get rectangulars until the '76 model year. If this car needed collision repair, they'd have been better off taking the fenders and front end off of another Custom Cruiser or a Delta 88.

Plus, it would have been a pretty bad collision to require replacement of BOTH front fenders. That suggests a pretty severe head-on collision that would have done significant damage to the front end and might very well have totaled the car.

I think the answer is simpler than this. I think it's more likely that, for whatever reason, a prior owner simply thought it would be cool to stick Ninety-Eight scripts on each side no matter how silly it looks.

I wondered why the ebay auction title is "1975 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser 98." I thought it might have been because he was trying to have the auction turn up under as many different search terms as possible. But now that we SEE that there are Ninety-Eight scripts on the side, it's probably the case the guy selling the car, who we've already seen is a flipper who has owned it less than a month, probably thinks the correct name for the car really is "Custom Cruiser 98." It's not.

 

your probably right. When i looked at the ebay ad, the engine compartment looks intact and original to the car. It is quite dopey to put 2 badges on the car on the same side. It's a long car, so maybe if you forgot what it says, there is another reminder. Much like printed tape and wrapping paper, the redundancy is good to create a nice face print or match a seam.

 

1975 was a fairly weak recession-era auto model year for the US market. Nothing sold well.

 

Here's total production (two and three-seaters) for the '71 to '76 Custom Cruisers. I put the rank in parentheses afterwards.

1971: 13,981 (6)
1972: 24,994 (2)
1973: 38,921 (1)
1974: 15,916 (5)
1975: 16,068 (4)
1976: 22,316 (3)

Yes, sales dropped off after 1973 most likely due to the Arab oil embargo which began in October of that year and would have been expected to hit the sales of large cars hard. That's reflected in the 1974 number, which was second lowest after 1971. 1971 values can probably be discounted because of the fall 1970 GM strike which delayed the start of GM's 1971 model year and reduced sales across the board over what they might have been had there been no strike.

But overall, 1971, 1974, and 1975 models would be about equally "rare" today as their production numbers were similar. Sales rebounded a bit for 1976 to turn in the third-best year for that era of Custom Cruisers. I would attribute that to the easing of the recession, general acceptance of the new reality of higher gasoline prices (59 cents per gallon in 1976 versus 36 cents per gallon in 1972---those numbers seem small today, but that was a huge increase then), and the fact that families still needed large vehicles.