1968 Oldsmobile Hurst/Olds: The 455 That General Motors Said Could Not Be Built

The first Hurst/Olds began as a Pontiac that General Motors would not allow. Ate Up With Motor's history of the car records that in 1967 George Hurst proposed a limited-edition Firebird with a 428-cubic-inch V-8, and that Pontiac advertising man Jim Wangers helped present the idea to John DeLorean. DeLorean liked it, but the plan needed corporate approval, and Chevrolet general manager Pete Estes refused, because the Firebird competed directly with his Camaro. Estes, in that account, suggested that Hurst take the idea to Oldsmobile's John Beltz instead. The Hurst/Olds therefore started life as a consolation prize, and Hurst took it.¹

The obstacle was a rule, not an engineering problem. According to Ate Up With Motor, General Motors capped its intermediate cars from 1964 through 1969 at 400 cubic inches and one gross horsepower for every 10 pounds of curb weight, while Ford and Chrysler imposed no such limit on themselves. The 1968 4-4-2 lived right at that ceiling. Over-Drive Magazine's fact sheet lists its standard 400 at 350 gross horsepower with manual transmissions and 325 with the automatic, and a W-30 Force-Air version at 360. The engine that would break the ceiling was already in Oldsmobile's catalog: the 455, which the Hurst/Olds Club of America identifies as the Toronado's.^1,2,3

Jack “Doc” Watson found the way. Ate Up With Motor describes Watson as a former GM man who became Hurst's roving technician and ran the Hurst Performance Center in Detroit, and it credits him with proposing that Hurst, an outside company, install the engines in a limited run of Cutlasses that Oldsmobile dealers would sell. Beltz, whom the same history calls Oldsmobile's assistant chief engineer, championed the project after his requests for an Oldsmobile pony car had been turned down. The Hurst/Olds Club of America's history gives the collective credit plainly: George Hurst conceived the car, Watson developed it, and Beltz personally added the red plastic inner fender liners.^1,3

The build was a relay across Lansing. Ate Up With Motor says Oldsmobile's plants built the cars without engines and Demmer Engineering handled final assembly and the cosmetic work, beginning in April 1968. The club history agrees that production started late in the model year and adds that Demmer had only about 30 days to convert a planned run of 500 cars. That run became 515, it says, to satisfy a Lansing-area Oldsmobile dealer who demanded more. The finished cars went to showrooms as Oldsmobiles with Hurst's name on them, and the arrangement is the reason the Hurst/Olds exists at all: the division sold a 455 intermediate that General Motors' policy would not let it build itself.^1,3

The engine was a hot-rodded 455 from the Toronado, as the club puts it, rated at 390 gross horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 500 lb-ft at 3,200 in Over-Drive's listing. Ate Up With Motor distinguishes two versions: the W-45 for cars without air conditioning, with freer-breathing heads, a hotter camshaft and a 3.91 axle, and the W-46 for air-conditioned cars, with different heads and a 3.08 axle to spare the compressor. Both carried the same 390 rating and cold-air snorkels. Nearly every car used Turbo Hydra-Matic with Hurst's Dual-Gate shifter, and Over-Drive's engine listing ties the 390-horsepower Hurst/Olds 455 to the automatic transmission.^3,2,1

It was dressed to be noticed. The club describes Peruvian Silver paint accented with black stripes; Ate Up With Motor adds white pinstripes, walnut dash trim and the red wheel-well liners. The price is reported two ways. Over-Drive's table gives factory prices of $3,905 for the Hurst/Olds sports coupe and $4,059 for the Holiday coupe, while Ate Up With Motor rounds the base price to about $4,200. Either way, the premium was steep: Over-Drive lists the regular 4-4-2 sports coupe at $3,087 and the Holiday coupe at $3,150, so the Hurst/Olds Holiday coupe cost about $909 more than the 4-4-2 it was built from, on those figures.^3,1,2

The numbers make it a footnote to the 4-4-2 by volume. Over-Drive's table counts 34,624 4-4-2s and Hurst/Olds cars combined, so the 515 Hurst/Olds cars were about 1.5 percent of that total. The table splits them into 64 sports coupes and 451 Holiday coupes, and Ate Up With Motor gives the same split; Wikipedia, without citing a source, gives 56 and 459. Both versions total 515, and both are kept. The regular 4-4-2 divided into 4,411 sports coupes, 24,556 Holiday coupes and 5,142 convertibles, with the Hurst/Olds offered in no convertible form. Across all Oldsmobile intermediates, Over-Drive counts 255,632 cars, against which the Hurst/Olds amounts to about one car in 500.^2,1,4

Oldsmobile's own performance ladder shows where the Hurst/Olds sat. The 4-4-2 had become a separate series for 1968 on the new 112-inch two-door body, with the W-30 Force-Air 400 as a $264 option that went into 502 cars, 129 sports coupes and 373 Holiday coupes and no convertibles. Below it, the new W-31 350 put forced-air induction into the F-85 and Cutlass for $250, and Over-Drive counts 742 of those. At the other end sat a $237 Turnpike Cruising 400 with a two-barrel carburetor, rated at 290 horsepower, for buyers who wanted the 4-4-2 look without the fuel bill. The Hurst/Olds was the one rung the corporation had not approved.^2,5

How fast was it? The measured period test in hand is of the ordinary 4-4-2. Car Life's June 1968 Holiday coupe, with the 400, Turbo Hydra-Matic and a 3.42 axle, ran 0 to 60 mph in 7.0 seconds and the quarter mile in 15.13 seconds at 92.2 mph, with a top speed of 115 mph. Those figures belong to that car. For the Hurst/Olds, Ate Up With Motor offers only a generalization: that a W-45 car could run the quarter mile in just under 14 seconds with a good launch, and that air conditioning cost about half a second. That is a description of the breed rather than a timed result, and it is reported as one.^5,1

The experiment worked well enough to be repeated. The club records that the 1969 Hurst/Olds went to the opposite end of the palette, white with gold stripes and a functional hood scoop, and that Motor Trend called it “The Hairiest Oldsmobile”; it counts 906 hardtops and two convertibles. The rule that had made Hurst necessary did not outlast the decade either. Ate Up With Motor dates GM's displacement limits to 1964 through 1969, and for 1970 Oldsmobile's own literature lists a 455 as the standard engine in every 4-4-2. The 515 silver cars of 1968 had already shown what some of Oldsmobile's intermediate buyers would pay for.^3,1