1969 Oldsmobile F85

The Eclipse project mostly stalled after about a year and with my friends at the time mostly driving v8s I pivoted away from Mitsubishi into third gens (Camaro, Firebird). These projects like the Eclipse largely got started but then stalled. I liked the third gens but I really wanted a proper muscle car but assumed they were all out of my price range.

As the snow melted in April 2007 a good friend offered to sell me his Oldsmobile for what he had in it. It was a little more than I wanted to pay but we still made the deal. My Grandma loaned me the money to buy it and I fortunately drove it over for her to see it right away as she unexpectedly passed away about a week later.

When I bought it it was in need of an interior restoration and to this day needs paint but it ran and drove great. It was the fastest car I had ever owned or driven at that point. It had a 355ci SBC and a Th350 trans. I felt like the coolest guy on the road every time I drove it that first summer.

The car came with some new interior pieces and my friend offered to help install them. We did the door panels and dyed the dash black to get rid of the pea green.

The next summer I manually downshifted from 3rd to 2nd on the beltline and the transmission completely destroyed itself. I decided I wanted to swap in a manual transmission instead of replacing/rebuilding the th350. After taking the car apart life happened and it would be 4 years until it was back on the road…but it did have a manual then!