mongooz
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Jay Sletten can relate to that often-recited quote from the famous film “A Christmas Story:” “Some men are Baptists…others Catholics…My father was an Oldsmobile man.”
Sletten’s father, Norris, had a long string of Oldsmobiles starting way back in the 1950s. The last Oldsmobile to catch his eye was the 1954 Super 88 two-door sedan on these pages, and it was probably the Olds he kept the longest.
“Dad was always an Oldsmobile guy,” Sletten recalled. “He had a ’49, the first overhead-valve one — a 1949 88 two-door Club Sedan, the torpedo back one. Then he had a whole string of them every year or two or so, including another ’54 from ’56 to ’61.”
Oldsmobile created a lot of “Oldsmobile men” when it came out with its overhead-valve V-8 in 1949. Along with Cadillac, Olds made a new kind of performer by building a V-type eight-cylinder with overhead valves and an over-square design in which the bore was greater than the stroke. Oldsmobile dubbed this new engine the Rocket, and with a very responsive 135 hp in 1949, the engine earned its name.
read more: https://www.oldcarsweekly.com/car-of-the-week/car-of-the-week-1954-oldsmobile-super-88-coupe