To us, it is not that hard to find the most awesome muscle car any company made. There are a few exceptions but basically you go to 1970, check out all the available options, and select all the good stuff leaving you with some of the most powerful cars with the most hardcore equipment Detroit ever turned out. Yes, the Pontiacs of the early 1960s stand perhaps counter to this but even Olds peaked in 1970 as far as performance goes and this rescored 1970 Olds 442 W30/W27 car is a restored example of peak Olds muscle car era performance. They only made like 200 cars in this configuration and it’s as close to a “factory lightweight” as the brand ever created.
The car is basically devoid of luxury and comfort options, it has the W27 aluminum center section rear axle, which ranks among the most prized, rare, and wild muscle car era options, a 3.91 rear gear, a close ratio four speed, the rip-roaring 455 engine, original paint, and only 2,300 original miles.
This would not have been the cheapest car to buy in 1970. For starters it is an Olds, so lightly up market and then you start to kind of heap on some of the optional equipment, particularly the axle, and the cost climbs pretty well. The sale price of nearly $4,200 placed it within $1,000 of a 1970 Corvette. The person who bought this knew exactly what they were doing and they ended up with a car that could stand toe to toe with the rest of the stuff on the street or the strip. While the less hardcore 442 may have skewed a little more toward luxury bruiser status than drag strip dominator, this stripped down street fighter was right there with the Cobra Jet powered Fords, the rat motor Chevrolets, and the mighty Hemi Mopars. Fun stuff.
The price has come up a little. You’ll need $130,000 to buy this car. Yowza.
eBay: This 1970 Olds 442 W30/W27 is a restored example of peak Olds performance
Although not mentioned in the Bangshift article, nor the Ebay listing; I believe the front wheel wells were plastic as well. Thus the odd orange color. I recall this from magazine articles from 50 years ago, so I may be incorrect. Anyone else recall these plastic wheel wells?
BTW: Beautiful car!
It was solely on the W-30
Yes, the wheel wells are plastic. Even on the regular versions but those were black and the W30 cars had the red.
I’d never heard of the aluminum center section, that’s a slick piece. How much extra was that on the option sheet?
The W-27 aluminum rear axle carrier and cover was a $57 option. Porosity problems lead to them cracking and splitting open, which led Olds to reducing the option down to just the aluminum cover. Other popular “W-” options were: W-25 was the $157 dual intake fiberglas hood, W-26 was the $76 console with Hurst Dual-Gate shifter, and W-35 was the $73 rear decklid spoiler. The W-30 package was $369 on the 4-4-2 only. The W-32 was a special performance package on the Cutlass Supreme. It used a 365 HP 455 and cost $141. The W-31 package with the 325 HP 350 cost $368, and available on select F-85 and Cutlass S models.
$130K??? Seriously??? Must be made of pure unobtanium.
The cam on the 4-4-2 W-30 4-speed had so much duration that there was insufficient vacuum at idle for the mandatory front disc brakes. Got that, Popeye? The cam for the TH-400 auto trans had less duration, therefore you could get power brakes for those. Olds figured the 2.2:1 converter ratio, plus higher-than-normal stall speed, made up the difference in cam duration. “Factory” dragstrip ETs were usually within a tenth of each other.