Posts tagged Custom

1970-72 Oldsmobile Ads and brochure pages along with some factory photos, a couple of factory sponsored drag cars, and a few magazine photos from these years where you will notice the Michigan plates dated 70-72. As with our 64-69 Olds ad video I can now spot at least two ads that were mistakenly left out: A variant of the blue 71 Vista Cruiser and an alternate red 72 Cutlass S from Ebony magazine. Regretfully some ads or pictures are lost or overlooked in shuffle from the photography to the uploading. The closing shots shows John Beltz who was Oldsmobile’s chief engineer in 1964 and one of the prime movers of the Toronado project. Beltz was promoted to Oldsmobile general manager in 1969 when Harold N. Metzel retired. Beltz passed away in 1972 from cancer. According to legend John Beltz and his staff led Oldsmobile through undoubtedly its best years and the Oldsmobiles from 1949 to 72 define Olds as the Rocket division of GM. Beltz is posing with some experimental Olds engines mostly different 455 versions that never saw production. Here are descriptions of these engines not neccesarily in the order of appearance: 1. The 0W-43 all aluminum 455 with 4 valve per cylinders, four overhead cam Weber engine. With a redline of just under 8500rpm it was originally conceived for CAN AM racing. At 3000rpm it put out 300hp and at 6000rpm registered over 600hp. The top output recorded for this engine in the Lansing dyno facility was 700 real hp at 6800rpm. Tests were run with both …