Al's 1983 Olds page

I've only had 1 1983 Oldsmobile, but it was a good one. I ordered a 15th anniversary Hurst/Oldsmobile in September of 1982 as my first new car.  It finally arrived in February of 1983 and was #504 out of 3,001 built that year.  It was built on 12/21/82 and arrived at Cars and Concepts on 1/4/83 as #452 into the modification facility.  For whatever reason, they obviously didn't go through C&C in the same order as they rolled off the line in Lansing.  I owned the car for about 5 years and then sold it to come up with down payment money for my 1st house.

The '83s were all manufactured in the Lansing Olds plant and then shipped to Cars and Concepts (they owned Hurst at the time) in Brighton, Michigan for final modifications.  I took a little road trip (in January of '83) to try and see the cars being manufactured.  Olds wasn't giving any tours in Lansing, but I did see some of the cars outside the plant before they were shipped to C&C.  In Brighton, they only had a couple of H/Os inside at the time, but had a lot out back with over a hundred completed cars waiting to go back out.  While I did get to see them doing a little bit of work on the H/Os, what they were busiest doing was taking air chisels to the roofs of brand new Mustangs and Capris and making convertibles or installing T-tops in them.

The inside Cars and Concepts manufacturing photos below were sent to me by Owen Miller back in '83.  I'm not sure how he managed to get someone to take these for him (it's my understanding that most of these are of his car) because they wouldn't allow me to take a camera in with me when I was there.

If you have an '83 H/O and don't know what the sequence number is (1-3,001), drop me a line (al@mantei.com) with your VIN and I'll look it up for you.  I've got an Oldsmobile "1983 Hurst Olds Owners list as of 6/20/83" that gives the VIN, dealer number, production date, sequence number, and owners name and address as of that date. I've finished entering this report into a database and I've come up with some interesting statistics.  See them here.  I'll also be adding "registry" type information to this as people ask about their cars.

Click on the photos for the larger versions.

	I've got to start with my car.  Here's my '83 along with the '68 of Pat Moores and '69 of Jeff Curro as they appeared in the May '83 issue of Car Exchange magazine.  They used my car for the photos rather than the one Olds provided.  An interesting note on the car they had from Olds.  It was actually a white 1982 Cutlass with a paint job and painted-on stripes.  I have a copy of the original shipping docs from the car.  It had all of the "right" H/O pieces for everything, so I'm presuming it was a pre-production or final prototype version of the car.   I'm also guessing that this is probably the same car that Olds showed photos of during the intro at the August '82 National Olds meet in Lansing.  By the time Car Exchange got it, it had been hammered on pretty hard by all the other press that had gotten it first.
	I took this photo outside of the plant in Lansing.  It's a car ready for shipment to C&C.  Notice lack of hood scoop and spoiler. I also saw a few that didn't have the stripes applied yet, but were black over silver.
	Here we're inside C&C and they are using a jig to drill the holes for the hood scoop.
	Here they are swapping out the deck lid torsion bars for heavier versions to support the additional weight of the wing.
	On goes the front air dam.
	The air shocks were installed at C&C as well.
	In go the Lightning Rods...
	Final touches inside...
	Want to see a couple of H/Os?  There were well over a hundred in the side lot hiding behind semi trailers waiting for shipment out when I was there...
	Here's the interior of my car.  Note the '83 Toro steering wheel.  A very nice touch (again thanks to Owen).
	Here's me and my car at the '83 Nationals in Itasca outside of Chicago.
	An H/O going on the track as the pace car for the ARCA race before the '83 Miller 200 in West Allis, WI.
	Here's the H/O I really wanted!  Warren Johnson's '83 Pro Stocker.  From his '83 press kit.
	WJ's car with a stock H/O.  Also from the press kit.
	Here the main window dealership poster for "The Great Olds Road Show Sales Rally" campaign of 1983.  I had the complete dealer kit for almost 15 years.   Its pieces total about 17 feet wide by 4 feet tall.
	Here's a scan of the dealer display mobile.  They are made of stiff cardboard, printed on both sides, and  the big piece is 44-1/2x15".  I sold this recently, but I don't know how many of you have seen, or remember these...
	This was the vinyl outdoor banner.  It is about 13 feet wide and was made to be hung between light poles in the dealers lot.
	There were also these "for sale" placards that were part of the kit.  I've got a number of these for sale if you interested...
	These "warning" tags were hooked around the lightning rods.  I reproduced these for a little while, but they are too much of a pain to cut out, so I've quit doing that. I also gather that they are available elsewhere...

This page last updated on July 18, 2004.