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At the height of his Hollywood fame, actor James Garner raced a specially built Oldsmobile 442 called the Goodyear Grabber across hundreds of brutal miles of Mexican desert terrain. That race car vanished for decades before resurfacing in 2008, bought for just 1,000 dollars by a buyer who had no idea what he’d found. Read on to find out how a movie star’s off-road racer connects to one of Oldsmobile’s most celebrated muscle cars.
1970 was the year GM finally let Oldsmobile drop its biggest engine into the Cutlass 442, after years of a corporate ban on big-block mid-size cars. The standard 455 made 365 horsepower, but the W-30 option pushed that to 370 horsepower and a sub-15-second quarter mile. See the seven Cutlass body styles offered that year and the Rocket V8 that finally gave the 442 room to breathe.
By 1972 the GTO wasn’t a standalone model anymore — it was an option package on the Le Mans, its trademark Endura bumper no longer exclusive and its horsepower quietly dropping year over year. By 1974 it had drifted even further, becoming an option on the compact Ventura and drawing comparisons to a Chevy Nova in drag. Read on to find out how the car that arguably invented the muscle car category spent its final three model years fighting to stay recognizable.
The Malibu spent nearly a decade as a trim level before it was ever its own car — riding as the top of the Chevelle lineup from 1964 through 1972 and quietly picking up the SS-396 package, front disc brakes, and a full restyle along the way. When it finally split off as its own model in 1973, the depth of what had been built into that trim for a decade suddenly became obvious. Read on to find out how a badge became a bloodline.