Junkyard Find: 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Custom, With Bonus 1993 Newspapers
The full-sized Olds 88 was around for decade after decade, and we’ve seen a few of them in this series so far. There was this ’67 Delta, this ’70 Delta, and this ’84 Delta Royale Brougham, and of course many of us remain fans of music devoted to the now-defunct marque. Here’s a ’73 Delta 88 Custom (whoops, it appears to be a ’70) that I photographed in a Denver self-service yard last winter.
When you find old newspapers in a junkyard car, you can assume that they date from the period just before the car was parked and forgotten. In this case, I found a March 16, 1993 edition of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News (a paper just as defunct as Oldsmobile now, though the Rocky outlived Oldsmobile by five years). Look, trouble in North Korea!
Just as we saw with the 1982 papers I found in the trunk of a ’65 Chevy and the 1970 papers I found in a ’60 Plymouth, the classified ads from 22 years ago show some pretty good deals on now-insanely-priced cars. How about a ’65 Porsche 356 in good condition for $9,500? That’s about $15,600 in inflation-adjusted 2015 dollars, plus the costs for 22 years of storage and maintenance add up quickly, but it would have been a good bet. The ’83 Renault Fuego Turbo for $1,000? Still worth about $1,000 now!
All those hot summers and snowy winters haven’t been kind to the paint and metal on this car.
Some good interior and trim bits were available here and there, though. This car has been eaten by the crusher by now, so it’s too late to mourn.
Delta 88, Delta 88 nightmare!
If you’re ripping apart a ’73 Delta 88 in search for microfilm (like Popeye Doyle looking for Marseilles heroin in a Lincoln), you’ll find that it’s a well-built car.
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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An eternal mystery...why does a website called "The Truth About Cars" never correct mistaken articles like the this one or the other periodically mis identified junk yard finds? Seems a simple fix. Maybe the truth is a flexible concept here. It's called a correction and is a basic, accepted, journalistic practice.
A couple of weeks ago there was a Renault Fuego turbo listed on E-Bay for $7000. Unlike Capt. Renault I'm shocked it was listed for that much. Back in 1993 it was worth $1k but they were rife with cooling and electrical issues.