My Favorite Ride: Where is this 1961 Olds Delta 88 now?

Editor's note: Laura Lane is out sick this week so we reached into the archive for this My Favorite Ride column from January 2016. In the column referenced the previous week, Laura included a photo she found on her camera roll taken Aug. 27, 2011 and guessed it was at a Brown County car show. If you know who owns this car now, call or email Laura at 812-318-5967 or llane@heraldt.com.

That car from last week? A 1961 Oldsmobile 88, I’m pretty sure. A fancy one, with an incredible custom paint job. I had hoped to hear from the owner, but alas, did not.

Many of you guessed and nearly 20 got it right; almost everyone knew it was an Oldsmobile. “Or maybe a Buick?” one reader wondered. “A Ford?” asked another. Nope, an Olds.

Retired scrap yard owner Tom Greene identified the car as a 1961 Olds 88 two-door customized hardtop. “I recognized it right away, without the help of a computer, as I have sent many like it to the car crusher,” he said. “We have crushed thousands of cars over the years.” At the scrapyard his grandfather won in a poker game 80 years ago.

Now there’s a story.

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Ron Chatlos and a handful of others said the car was a 1961 Olds Starfire, and for a while, I was with them. “Not that easy with just the patoot showing,” Chatlos wrote. “It’s a 1961 Oldsmobile Starfire hardtop.” Then, I discovered that in 1961, all Starfires were convertibles; the hardtop version came in 1962.

And this, from John Cronkhite. “The auto in question is a 1961 Oldsmobile. When other cars were getting into the Coke-bottle look for the rear fender, Oldsmobile was unique in proudly displaying a sloping rear fender,” he said. “May be one of the reasons the brand is now extinct.”

Steve Clark in Bloomfield offered no identification — how could he? The man doesn’t care much for cars and lacks my deep appreciation for vintage automobiles.

But he thanked me for writing a column he has no use for. “While there’s no compelling, essential information I need, your column is always interesting, and the only part of the Saturday paper I always read,” he wrote. “While I’m not much of a car person, I do enjoy the personal, historic and down-to-earth aspects of your writing.”

I love him. And suspect that many readers of this column may not be car people, but appreciate a good story.

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John Tilford related a car tale about a 1961 Olds Starfire. “One of my best friends in the Marine Corps, Jim Marshall, had one. He was one of the two of our group who were married before we deployed to Vietnam. Got to live off base with his wife, had a nice car. I could barely stand him,” Tilford recalled.

Reader Don Harris did try to identify the car online, and after two hours, gave up. “Could be an early 1960s Buick, maybe a Ford,” the 66-year-old wrote in an email. His first car was a 1960 Chevrolet Impala convertible, a true classic. Harris recalled trading cars with his grandpa back in 1972, because his 1967 Camaro wasn’t roomy enough to haul his two kids around.

He ended up with grandpa’s 1965 Buick LeSabre, a boat of a car with plenty of room for children.

Steve Knott identified the car, “without a doubt, a 1961 Oldsmobile Super 88 or perhaps a 98 two-door hardtop.” He said the removal of some chrome made a positive identification a challenge.

But Knott, and maybe others, have had enough of this Rusty Roadside Relic tangent, this identify-the-car feature. “Please, enough already with the rusted relics,” he pleaded via email. “The article title ‘My Favorite Ride’ sort of indicates the car would be able to move under its own power enough to take one or more people for a ‘ride.’ A rusted relic can’t do that.”

He’s right, but there likely are more to come. And I appreciated his parting remark. “I believe that you have learned a lot in the last 15 years, but there is much more to be learned.” That’s for sure.

My Favorite Ride has been a staple of The Herald-Times since 2001. If you have a story to tell about a car or truck, contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Identifying a 1961 Olds Delta 88 by just its 'patoot'