The Oldsmobile F-88 was a dream car created by

Oldsmobile Oldsmobile or formally the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors was a brand of American automobiles, produced for most of its existence by General Motors. Originally established as "Olds Motor Vehicle Company" by Ransom E. Olds in 1897, it pro ...

in 1954, with initial sketches made by Bill Lange. It used the chassis of the

Chevrolet Corvette The Chevrolet Corvette is a two-door, two-passenger luxury sports car manufactured and marketed by Chevrolet since 1953. With eight design generations, noted sequentially from C1 to C8, the Corvette is noted for its performance and distinctiv ...

and shared its

wheelbase In both road and rail vehicles, the wheelbase is the horizontal distance between the centers of the front and rear wheels. For road vehicles with more than two axles (e.g. some trucks), the wheelbase is the distance between the steering (front ...

. Like the Corvette, and the

Pontiac Bonneville Special The Pontiac Bonneville Special is a Pontiac concept car unveiled at the General Motors Motorama in 1954, the first 2-seat sports car prototype the division had ever produced. Conceived by renowned designer Harley J. Earl and hand built by Homer C ...

, the F-88's body was

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...

. The car used a 324 cubic inch (5.3 litre) Super 88 V8 engine with a four-barrel carburetor with a small, flat air cleaner. The Corvette-derived rear axle had a ratio of 3.55:1. The console was modified from the 1953 Oldsmobile console with a

tachometer A tachometer (revolution-counter, tach, rev-counter, RPM gauge) is an instrument measuring the rotation speed of a shaft or disk, as in a motor or other machine. The device usually displays the revolutions per minute (RPM) on a calibrated analo ...

added and customizing the fascia of the gauges. The instrument panel of the F-88 was later used on a Cutlass. The F-88 was sold to John and Maureen Hendricks for over three million dolla

Today it is on display in its own showroom at the Gateway Colorado Automobile Museum. Rumors suggest a second F-88 met a grim end at a fire between display shows.

References

External links

Oldsmobile F-88
{{Oldsmobile Oldsmobile concept vehicles, F-88