Morning Symphony: A Nitrous-Infused Wheels-Up Cutlass Launch


Morning Symphony: A Nitrous-Infused Wheels-Up Cutlass Launch

I never got to drive either one of the 1979 Olds Cutlasses I owned. The green one, the most useable, had a 260 Olds V8 that was making enough white smoke the one time I got it running that it fog-banked the entire property. The other, the gray car, was a parts car, with rotted floors and the like. When you’re a kid with no useful money on hand, the best I could do was sit behind the wheel of the car as it was parked against the fence and row the shifter, picturing every time you were going to hand a 5.0 Mustang it’s hind end on a platter with garnish. To an outsider, they just saw a kid playing in a dead Oldsmobile. In my head, that car was swinging it’s tail with the smoke pouring off of the hides while second gear fought for traction. Not much changes in adulthood, it seems.

But with a bit of coin and a lot of work, this is what I would’ve probably done: a strip terror. I wanted power like none other as a kid. We had plenty of hot rides in the yard about that time, and I had grown accustomed to tire smoke and lots of noise. I wanted the hit of the throttle to knock the wind out of my lungs, so that my first words would come after the fun was over. I wanted to be scared to death of what the gas pedal was capable of. I wanted mechanical violence. In short, I wanted my car to do exactly what this Cutlass does: straight up move!


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