User:Donnie Park/Oldsmobile F-88

The Oldsmobile F-88 was a dream car created by Oldsmobile in 1954, with initial sketches made by Bill Lange. It used the chassis of the Chevrolet Corvette and shared its 102 inch (2,591 mm) wheelbase, the F-88 was also made of fiberglass. Oldsmobile F-88 was a concept car built by Oldsmobile for General Motors' Motorama in 1954

The car used a 324 cubic inch (5.3 litre) Super 88 V8 engine with a four-barrel carburetor with a small, flat air cleaner. The Corvette-derived rear axle had a ratio of 3.55:1. The console was modified from the 1953 Oldsmobile console with a tachometer added and customizing the fascia of the gauges. The instrument panel of the F-88 was later used on a Cutlass. The F-88 was and is considered by some as a car that changed the style of cars for the new era.

Less than five F-88s remain. One sold at the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction to John and Maureen Hendricks for over three million dollars, once a BJ record. Today it is on display in its own showroom at the Gateway Colorado Automobile Museum. Another F-88 met a grim end at a fire between display shows.

Design

The XP-20 project, widely known as the F-88, was a creation of a design team consisting of Bill Mitchell, Ken Pickering, Zora Arkus-Duntov; led by Harley J. Earl to design a Chevrolet Corvette based roadster for Oldsmobile, utilizing the brand's design cues at the time such as elliptical grille mouth, "hockey stick" side trim, and bullet tail lights.

Preliminary sketches was by Bill Lange and Art Ross headed the final design stages. The interior was designed by Jack Humbert, who designed Oldsmobile interiors in the early Fifties, Humbert later became Pontiac's chief designer.

The F-88 was powered by a 324 ci V-8 seen in the Oldsmobile Super 88 with stock four-barrel carburetor with a tiny, flat air cleaner. The engine's 9.0:1 compression ratio plus additional modifications raised its horsepower to 250 horsepower from Super 88's 185. Power is transmitted through a four-speed Hydra-Matic transmission to a 3.55:1 Corvette rear axle. Its instruments was taken from a production 1953 Oldsmobile, converting the speedometer to combine with a tachometer.

The car was painted metallic gold with metallic green inside its fenderwells.

Motorama

The F-88 debuted in the fourth running of the Motorama show on January 21, 1954, taking place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, sharing stage with the Oldsmobile Cutlass fastback coupÈ for six days.

It then became part of a series of traveling Motorama shows that was travelled to Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, attended by two million people.

Post-Motorama

As its primary purpose was completed, it was usually turned over to its sponsoring division, then as executives decided on its fate, unable to sell these cars, they eventually looked to destroying it like many of its past show cars which was often overlooked per company policy.

The F-88 was saved by the persuasion of its head of design, Harley J. Earl, who opposed to them being destroyed and was willing to give them away, they often went to favored dealers, business friends, or relatives. The F-88 found itself being shipped from its styling department in Detroit to Oldsmobile's engineering garage in Lansing, Michigan, around late March or early April 1954. It was found with a complete powertrain which engineers got it running.

The other F-88

Earl, unwilling to let it go, built a second identical but painted in red F-88 after the first was transported to Lansing. This became his other daily driver alternating sometimes to the 1951 Buick LeSabre, proving to be simplier, economical, lighter and easier to maintain to the latter.

The red F-88 made appearances at least two Sports Car Club of America road races in 1954, of the known appearances, one at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, in which the F-88 and the 1951 Buick XP-300 was on display. The other at Atterbury Air Force Base near Columbus, Indiana, both on May; Earl was in attendance to watch his son, Jerry, compete in his Austin-Healey, the father stepped in his F-88 and drove it around the track, delighting the crowd.

Fate of the F-88

A number of stories have surfaced about the fate of the golden car.

One story was one of the F-88 believed to have its engine caught fire when it was being loaded onto a trailer, its handler was unable to open the hood, therefore the car was destroyed. This was though denied by a number of GM employees.

Another story was that Harold N. Metzel, its chief engineer, drove the golden Oldsmobile F-88 from the Lansing engineering garage to his home, with his son as his passenger. When parked the in his driveway, the engine caught fire, this have been denied by him.

Some reports suggests that the gold F-88 is likely to have survived in Lansing for a year in 1954, believing to have disappeared after that

Further story claimed that the surviving F-88 escaped the crusher by being disassembled, crated, and shipped off to Errett Lobban Cord's Californian residence, although its is then not certain whether its is the gold or the red model. Included in this package was a shipping list mentioning that the goods were "surplus materials," and among the items detailed on this particular sheet were "obsolete parts and required engineering blueprints.

Cord was the owner-manager of the Pan-Pacific Auditorium, that staged the Southern Californian leg of Motorama, hence how he took hold of the F-88. Cord sold the car to Bill Barker, whilst disassembled and in crates who then sold the car to Jim Brucker for $1,000, still disassembled. He kept the car for another six months before selling it to its seventh owner, Leo Gephart, a classic car dealer from Phoenix, Arizona for $3,500. Soon, the chassis arrived with Corvette Blue-Flame six-cylinder engine with three sidedraft carburetors.

Gephart later traded it to an Ohio based Oldsmobile dealer for a new GMC pickup who intended to assemble it to publicize his company. This never happened, therefore with the help of Gephart, the F-88 was sold partially assembled to Ed Lucas of FEL Classics in Troy, Michigan in 1980.

Lucas carried out some assembly work then traded the car back to Gephart for a collection of Duesenberg parts. Gephart then sold the almost complete but unpainted F-88 to Lon Krueger of Sun Valley Classics for a car and cash. Krueger, who kept the car in his home in Scottsdale, kept the car there and did not start work on the car until 1988, during restoration work by Krueger, he discovered that its inner fenders and the bottom of the floorpan was metallic green, the same color as the original Motorama car. As a few parts were missing, although the crates had many more than needed, Krueger had to produce the missing parts himself.

Further examples

Aside the two built, a third (Mark II) and fourth (Mark III) example was built in 1957 and 1959. The 1957 version appear different with its quad headlights and blade-like vertical tailfins and the 1959 version appears distinctly different to the others. Neither examples survive.

Barrett-Jackson Auction

At the Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson Auction in January 1991, the Oldsmobile F-88 was sold to Bruce S. Lustman, who kept it for six years, sometimes making appearances in Chicago and at Pebble Beach. In 1997, it was sold to Don Williams, of the Blackhawk Collection, who displayed it in his showroom. Later that year, it was borrowed to Oldsmobile for its 100th centenarary. However, it was damaged in transit, in which the transport company hired Sun Valley Classics to repair the damaged fiberglass body and repaint its body, after which Williams sold it to Gordon Apker.

The F-88 was held by Apker until he placed the car back at the Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson auction in 2005, selling for $3,240,000 after a fierce bidding war, the highest price at the event. although a number of questions about its history is yet to be answered.

The winning buyer was John Hendrick of Colorado, founder of Discovery Channel; who intended to store it in his Gateway Auto Museum.

External links

• Oldsmobile F-88