Junkyard Find: 1989 Oldsmobile 98 Regency, Old Glory Edition
I love the wrecking yards in my adopted state of Colorado, but you can’t beat the high-inventory-turnover big chain yards in urban California when it comes to weird Junkyard Finds with enjoyably incomprehensible backstories. Today’s San Jose find, an extremely patriotic 11th-gen Olds 98 sedan, must have a fascinating tale behind it… if only we could puzzle it out.
The paint stripes and star decals appear to have been done professionally, with no evidence of half-assed bugs-in-the-paint backyard work.
The stars and stripes are sufficiently weathered that it’s possible they were applied when the car was new. Maybe some Olds dealership used the car for Fourth of July parades?
You don’t see many Fred Thompson 2008 presidential campaign stickers these days (nor did you in 2007), but this car has several. Thompson dropped out of the race early, after coming in third in the South Carolina primary.
If you’ve got a red-white-and-blue Oldsmobile, you need at least one “NEVER FORGET” 9/11 sticker. This car has two, if you count the half-peeled one on the driver’s door.
Joshua Robert Rodgers came from Carson City, Nevada, so it’s possible that this is a Nevada Olds that made it to the San Francisco Bay Area late in its career.
This sticker refers to Ignacio Ramos and José Compean, two Border Patrol agents who were jailed over a shooting incident near El Paso in 2005. President Bush commuted their sentences in 2009, so this car is starting to look like a 2007 time capsule. Note the spelling correction on the sticker.
Not quite 130,000 miles on the clock.
The body is solid, but the interior is heavily sun-damaged.
Buick V6 power under the hood.
9% financing on the 98 Regency in Canada!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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These cars were very dependable and would last forever with basic maintenance. When new, the styling was quite crisp and tasteful. Like many GM cars at the time, the drivetrain lasts forever but the interior would just fall to pieces over time.
That's not a Olds 98 Regency, it's a TOY Olds 98 Regency ! check out the '75 model like the one I owned. This would fit in it's TRUNK ! https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTs1FKDzdgnXTC_ysY6oHEZKKEHK8NT6b-3c6057Gj_-dmzMPp4WA