Muscle By The Numbers

Editor Ben Klemenzson takes a look at one of the General's rarer and most under-appreciated muscle cars, the 1966 4-4-2, with the W-30 fresh air package...1966 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 W-30

- Ben Klemenzson

By the mid-Sixties, all the big three Americancar manufacturers had latched on to the lure of muscle cars. They were beloved by men of all ages, much as they are today. Young men loved them, because they were ‘chick magnets’ and could be used to demonstrate their machismo and prowess in street fightin’ races at the stoplights or at the dragstrip. And they were loved by old men, because… well, they made them feel like young men!

General Motors had been particularly successful in capturing this marketing magic with its Pontiac GTO, which was launched in 1964 as an option package on the Tempest/Le Mans. It was a car which combined a genuinely fast intermediate/big engine package, with a slick marketing campaign orchestrated by Pontiac divisional manager John DeLorean and Jim Wangers, automotive marketing genius at Pontiac’s Campbell-Ewald advertising agency.

Pretty soon every GM division wanted a piece of the action, with Oldsmobile offering its version the same year, as the 4-4-2/B07 Police package, which was offered on the F85/Cutlass line of intermediates. Oldsmobile had long been recognised as GM’s technical innovation division, with previous glories including the introduction of the world’s first fully automatic transmission, Hydra-Matic and the Rocket V8 of 1949 (later innovations would include the front-wheel-drive Toronado and airbags). So, in a way, it was only fitting that GM’s ‘tech division’ should come up with some of the most technically interesting aspects of mid-Sixties muscle cars.