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Rough Start: The Cheap Car Ultimate Gamble: Will A $900 Oldsmobile Pay Dividends?


Rough Start: The Cheap Car Ultimate Gamble: Will A $900 Oldsmobile Pay Dividends?

Five thousand dollars in your hand should provide you well when it comes to car shopping in general. You can find plenty of reliable, well-used vehicles on the market for that kind of coin. But project car fodder will be a bit thinner. It’s not impossible to find something fun, but you’ll have to work at hunting for what you want, or work on getting a full-scale model kit of a car together to have what you want. There’s a trade-off to going cheap…either you drop the desirable factor or you up the amount of work you’ll have to throw in to make things better.

Using that logic, spending no more than a grand on a car should be a desperation move, right? I don’t think so. My first hands-on project car, a 1979 Chevrolet Caprice, was picked up for $150, needed an intake manifold, carburetor, and a set of wheels and tires that weren’t dry-rotted to the point of dangerous. Those three items turned a car that was sitting in some scotch broom bushes into a running, driving car that ran really strong. Consider the $1,000 challenge the boss level of car hunting, if you must. For a low-buck budget ride, you really need to think about what to purchase.

That said, this 1983 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale looks like a solid shot. It’s a GM B-body…the 307 Olds under the hood could have rods sticking out of the block and we’d still say purchase. If the 307 runs, clean the Quadrapuke up and move on. The ride height looks very similar to my Caprice’s towards the last time I saw the car, which means we’d go ahead and look to see if the coils have been heated or clamped. We’d also start looking for anything to ditch those late 1980s minitruck wheels. A Washington State car, we suspect that a mild Comet washing will bring the paint out to a respectable level, one that will hold off a trip to Maaco for a couple of years.

You’ll have at least four grand in your pocket, and if you’re a good wheeler-dealer, maybe a bit more. Surely, you can come up with a plan to make this 88 decent for a bit on a budget, right?

Craigslist Link: 1983 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale


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6 thoughts on “Rough Start: The Cheap Car Ultimate Gamble: Will A $900 Oldsmobile Pay Dividends?

  1. john t

    if you had a wormhole to Australia you could move cars like this for 8 – 10 k all day long…

  2. Henrik

    At 900 dollars i would not hesitate buying it. If it turns out to be a Real turd im sure you could move it on for the same amount, or most could take a 900 dollar loss without going broke. It could be a Nice everyday driver with little effort. And i would take an old olds over a modern toyota every day of the week.

  3. Matt Cramer

    At $900, it’s a decent buy as long as the right side is in the same condition as the left. Two door full sized GM products are pretty rare, and he leaves enough room in the budget to turn that into a GRM $2018 Challenge car even if you have to discard the whole drivetrain.

  4. jerry z

    If the car is solid underneath, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Too bad it’s on the wrong coast!

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