Oldsmobile Cruiser 1970 vs Ferrari FF 2012

One is a glass-roofed American wagon with a 455-cubic-inch big-block under the hood, the other is a V12 shooting-brake from Ferrari that sends 651 horsepower to all four wheels. Decades and continents apart, both cars solved the same problem, serious performance in a body built to carry more than just a driver. Which one would you actually park in your garage?

Your choice?

Two cars, three decades apart, both built around the same unusual idea: a high-performance engine wrapped in a body shaped for hauling people and cargo, not chasing lap times. One is a full-size American wagon with a glass-topped rear cabin and a big-block V8 under the hood. The other is a V12 shooting-brake from Maranello that happens to send power to all four wheels. Neither looks like what a speed-obsessed engineer would design from scratch, and yet both were exactly that. Which one actually deserves the garage space?

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The American Wagon With a Skylight

The 1970 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser earned its name from the fixed-glass skylights mounted over the second-row seats, a feature paired with a raised roofline and side glass over the cargo area that made the whole rear cabin feel like a greenhouse on wheels. That year‘s redesign sharpened the car’s lines and gave buyers the option of dropping a 455-cubic-inch Rocket V8 under the hood, good for roughly 320 horsepower in period SAE gross ratings, serious power for something that could also swallow a family’s luggage and a third row of seats.

The Ferrari That Broke Its Own Rules

The Ferrari FF broke with tradition in almost the opposite direction: a 6.3-liter V12 producing 651 horsepower and 504 lb-ft of torque, routed through a first-of-its-kind all-wheel-drive system Ferrari claimed was roughly half the weight of a conventional setup. Wrapped in a three-door shooting-brake body with four full-size seats, it hit 60 mph in 3.6 seconds and kept going to 208 mph, numbers that would embarrass most sports cars, let alone something with a hatchback.

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