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By the mid-1970s, most of Detroit’s original muscle car nameplates were dead, killed off by emissions rules and a fuel crisis nobody saw coming. The Hurst/Olds partnership should have died with them, but instead kept reinventing itself — from a leaky experimental T-top roof in 1975 to a 15th anniversary tribute with a distinctive small-block rumble in 1983. Read on to find out how this nameplate survived a decade that killed nearly everything else it touched.
The Hurst/Olds returned in 1972 for an unlikely reason: a fatal Indy 500 pace car crash the year before left the race without a manufacturer sponsor, and a shifter company stepped in to fill the gap. This guide covers all three model years — 1972’s cameo white pace car, 1973’s Colonnade-body redesign, and 1974’s final, rarer run — along with the engine options, cowl tag codes, and details that separate genuine cars from tribute builds. Read on to find out what made this low-production special worth chasing.