COPO Olds

[w302nv]

Norm,
Not to be a pain in the arse here and I mean no disrespect (and I am pretty sure that I am beating a dead horse), but there are a number of things on it that scream clone. After looking at literally 100's of W-30 clones, this has a few hallmarks if you will, of a run of the mill clone...the most glaring, are the crappy repo red inner fenders and repo hood, the PCV is not W30 equipment, and the air cleaner base does not appear to be an original OAI unit.

Andy mentioned the 2 possible 70 cars, and I can buy that, because one of the cars was probably featured in the article I quoted. The car was a Cutlass wagon with the W25 OAI (Olds calls ram air Outside Air Induction) hood, NO 4-4-2 or W-30 badging.

A few other things, if this is represented as a 71, I strongly doubt that Olds would have stuck 4-4-2 badging on it. In 1971 the 4-4-2 had its own VIN designation...Thats like badging a Cutlass as a 4-4-2. If it was represented as a 72, it should not have the red inner fender wells. I could go on and on, but I think I have made my point...I've said my peace, and I promise to shut up...

[442w30]

Great deductive reasoning!

[StealthBird]

So if this was born as a Cutlass wagon with an OAI hood, would this be like the 1971 Pontiac T41 optioned (GTO hood and Endura nose) Lemans wagons?

Still a cool looking W-30 wagon, but the history is questionable.

The acronym for 442 still fits though.

4-real?
4-door
2-hard to believe

[442w30]

I see the Lemans wagon as an ornamentation package, while the Cutlass wagon would be more performance-oriented because of the ram air system. I see them as two different things.

[w302nv]

All right I'll just comment one last time ...I agree with 442w30...my 71 Lemans Sport had the T41 option...the hood on it was RA, but there was no pan, just a regular old air cleaner..all cosmetic...Olds didn't offer just the W25 hood...as far as I know, it always was functional OAI with the OAI air cleaner....and I cant even say for sure if it was even offered on anything but the "A" bodies....this is like the W35 option on convertibles..it wasn't available, but there are a number of people who swear it was, and their car came that way...not sure if you were joking, but 64 was the only year a 4 door 4-4-2 was available otherwise its..

4-4bbl Carb
4-4spd trans (or 400/455 ci depending on year)
2-Dual Exhaust

so yes, it **could** just be a Cutlass wagon with OAI...

no more....really...I promise

[Xplantdad]

Good stuff Josh!

[retengw31]

Just saw this thread or would have thrown in my 2 cents earlier. COPO as stated earlier was a Chevrolet thing and had to do with how the cars were ordered from the factory. Olds, Buick, Pontiac, and Cadillac all had their own sales and marketing teams as well as their own engineering release systems for Production. Central Office at that time was only for Chevrolet as far as the car divisons go. So the COPO would naturally only apply to Chevrolet.

The 4 divisions all ran like separate businesses and the only commonality was at the BOP plants where more than one brand was assembled. That later became GMAD when the gov't was looking to bust up GM. At that time half of the new cars sold was a GM, half of those were Chevrolets. Chevrolet Engineering was in the GM Tech Center, whereas the other divisions were not located there and ran independently of that.


Olds had two ways to get a car built on the assembly lines. Either a production release or an engineering release. Engineering releases were never for salable cars. They were for preproduction units or experimental purposes only. A good example would be the 2 swiss cheese frame W31's that were built there in 1970. At least partially built. They wee pulled off the line at Body drop and pushed out the back door into an enclosed trailer and never heard of again.

Engineering garage did a lot of the modifications to production cars after they were built. If these cars were built to the production release process initially, they could be converted back to production level and resold. Not all got totally converted back if you had the right connections. It would have to be something really invisible, though and the modifications that were put on the car while technically an engineering test car would and could never be on a window sticker.

No W30 wagons built on line. Indy pace cars (actual ones at Indy) had all kinds of tweaks done at Exprerimental garage. And if Dale Smith had anything to do with it, all bets are off. They did everything imaginable out there through his "back door" connection.