Talk:Oldsmobile 88

Actually, Interior Room Was Adversely Affected in 1977
Here are the usual facts for four door models (which can easily be found in sales brochures and data books):

1971-1976

Headroom f/r 38.9/38.0

Legroom f/r 42.3/38.8

Shoulder room f/r 64.3/63.5

Luggage cap. (cu. ft.) 20.9

1977-1985

Headroom f/r 39.5/38.2

Legroom f/r 42.2/38.9

Shoulder room f/r 60.6/60.5

Luggage cap. (cu. ft.) 20.8

The EPA has published annual fuel economy guides since 1978. These guides categorize cars based on "interior space" which is defined as the sum of passenger volume and trunk or cargo volume. For example a midsize car has 110 to 119 cubic feet of interior space and a full size has 120 or more. Passenger volume is computed by finding the product of headroom, legroom, and shoulder room for both front and rear, converting each to cubic feet, rounding to the nearest cubic foot and then summing them.

For example the 1977-1985 Oldsmobile 88 has 39.5x42.2x60.6 = 101,014.1 cubic inches of passenger room in front. Dividing this by 1728 cubic inches per cubic feet yields 58.46 cubic feet of front passenger room. It has 38.2x38.9x60.5 = 89,901.8 cubic inches of passenger room in rear. Dividing this by 1728 cubic inches per cubic feet yields 52.0 cubic feet of passenger room. Rounding to the nearest foot and adding them yields 110 cubic feet of passenger volume.

Now turn to any 1978-1985 EPA fuel economy guide and what you'll usually find is this for a 4 door Oldsmobile 88:

BODY TYPE/INTERIOR SPACE PASSENGER/TRUNK OR CARGO(CU.FT.) 4DR-110/21

EPA fuel economy guides obviously did not exist in 1971-1976 but repeating this calculation for a 1971-1976 Oldsmobile 88 yields 115 cubic feet of passenger volume. Thus the interior space of a four door 1977-1985 Oldsmobile 88 is 110 + 21 = 131 cubic feet whereas the interior space of a four door 1971-1976 Oldsmobile 88 is 115 + 21 = 136 cubic feet. The 1971-1976 Oldsmobile 88 is clearly roomier than the 1977-1985.

The main reason for the difference is shoulder room and the difference between 64.3 inches of shoulder room and 60.6 inches is dramatically obvious to anyone who has seen both cars. Furthermore the only interior dimensions that increased in 1977 were front seat headroom and trunk space.

This also underscores the fact you cannot shorten a car by nearly 10 inches, make it narrower by over 3 inches, loose 900 pounds and not lose interior room.

I know that the GM ads of the time pushed the idea that the 1977 full size cars were just as roomy despite the drastic downsizing. This usually involved mentioning (often trivial) increases in headroom or legroom from the previous year. (Interestingly, by odd coincidence, most full size GM models experienced correspondingly small decreases in headroom or legroom in the two years before the downsized models were unveiled.) However, nobody took it seriously then because anyone could see that there was a substantial decrease in room. And besides all of the interior dimensions were published in the sales brochures and data books for anyone to see.

Let's not keep promoting 33 year old sales propaganda. It is a vain hope of mine that wikipedia will someday be a source of factual historical automotive information.

Sadowski (talk) 20:36, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

inclusion as "muscle car"
Anything that has a first will have debate between what is the first of something as opposed to a precursor of something. In the case of categories on Wikipedia, inclusion makes more sense than exclusion. Though, in my opinion, it should also be included even if it were considered "only" a precursor.

Forbes mentions it first in this article: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/autos/0906/gallery.muscle_cars_we_miss.fortune/3.html

The foundation of the muscle car is found here. A large engine was added to an affordable car to be made drag / race ready. The Olds 88 is historically significant and is found in many books as the first muscle car for these reasons.

There's even a song about it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Banzairun (talk • contribs) 20:19, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

1986-1991
First paragraph says:

"For 1986, the Delta 88 switched platforms from the GM B platform to the smaller front-wheel drive H platform, with a wheelbase of only 110.8 inches (2,814 mm). The headlights changed from square sealed beam quads to integrated regular/high beam composite lamps in 1987."

Those so called square sealed beams were actually rectangular. Just because every redneck and gearhead on the planet calls them square, doesn't make them square. They are rectangular. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.65.34.235 (talk) 18:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I noticed it's 10 years later and no one has corrected us in the article yet . I tried to edit one time years ago and it was too hard so I write the corrections in talk and hope someone else will fix it . 136.32.246.95 (talk) 16:22, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Picture of a 98 Regency in 88 article.
There is a picture of a brown 1977 98 Regency that is listed as a an 88. This is wrong. The car shown is clearly a 98.

Dearth of sources
Much of this article appears to be unsourced original research, personal conjecture, hyperbole and puffery. 842U (talk) 00:46, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Assembly plants
An IP has made it their life mission to unreasonably expand lists of assembly plants in infoboxes. To minimize these Seas of Blue, I have made those lists collapsible, so that anyone who wants to see this content may do so. Any suggestions or opinions? Thanks,  Mr.choppers &#124;   ✎  20:46, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I wonder if a discussion at Template talk:Infobox automobile would be in order, to clarify what should and should not be included and how it should be displayed. I'm not entirely opposed to the collapsible lists, but then the question is how many factories constitutes enough to collapse the list. --Sable232 (talk) 23:13, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Good idea, I started a convo at Template talk:Infobox automobile. Best,  Mr.choppers &#124;   ✎  13:00, 31 March 2023 (UTC)