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I will add one thing though. Probably the most remembered
advertisement from "back in the day" for me was one is which
a bikini clad woman was laying on a 442 hood ( on her belly )
nestled between the two scoops. You do the mental picture
from there......

Sure like to see that ad again!
Steve
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I rememeber the ad, it was for Liquid Glass! Always liked the girl..er I mean car!

Like some of the Buicks rolling around, a lot of 442's were loaded up with options, but the W-cars were strickly BIZNESS! You can only cut so much fat before you hit bone, but they took out as they could and still have the car perform. The carpet was without sound deadner, the 70-72 W-30 cars had aluminium intakes to reduce weight (I have talked with other people in the know, no performance gain over the stock cast intake, just lighter)In '70, a W-30 4-speed had a 328/328 cam and you could not get power brakes with that car. The w-cars had special heads and blueprinted motors. In the instance of the w-31 cars in '68, each of the motors were dyno'd before being sent out to the cars.
The cars were not cheap. My car with a/c came to the sum total of over $5K in '69. What was the cost of a BB Vette in '69? Anyway, Colin is right, the Olds market has always been a little slow/soft, but it seems there are some very rare cars coming out of the woodwork and bringing some big money. The '71 is nice, but $200K?