Feature by Craig Stare
I DON’T usually do this but being a
slightly unusual car I decided to look
up a few quick facts about the 1968
Oldsmobile 88 Holiday coupe and was
very interested in my findings. The car
was produced by General Motors as a
full-size executive car. The factory 4
barrel 455ci engine was rated at 310
horsepower with 490 foot-pounds of
torque and an advertised top speed of
nearly 125 mph. This did come with a
cost; the car returned just 11.8 miles per
gallon on the open road “dive bombing”
to around nine around town. This
was obviously before the gas crisis.
A friend of Stan’s, Kayton (Real Rides)
went to America to visit SEMA and have
a holiday about ten years ago. He saw
a black ‘68 Olds sitting on the side of
the road for sale and thought it would
be a great “rental” car: I guess until he
worked out its lack of economy! As he
was sending a container back, there
was just enough room to fit the Olds in
as a space filler. Once back he offered
a mutual friend of Stan and Kaytons
(Egan) the opportunity to buy the car
for the price of the container freight.
Egan had run a business called
Dr Trans for nearly 27 years on the
Auckland’s North Shore. Long story
short Egan moved Dr Trans to Rangiora
with Stan now running it. The first
thing the pair did was fix up the black
‘68 Olds. Stan liked the car very much
and had had nothing to do with these
cars previously and decided that he
too would get one. This was 2013 and
was not going to be an easy task
The search took over three months,
and Stan finally found the right caron Craig’s list while surfing the net at
3.15 am one morning. He acted fast
but had his fair share of problems. The
car was a one owner (she was 98 years
old) 40,000-mile “cream puff”. Her
son was the mayor of Wisconsin and
the original paint car, which was still
wearing its factory-installed Uniroyal
cross-plies, had never been up for sale
before. It was a baseline car with a
bench seat and radio delete. It also had
to be shipped right across America.18 > NZ HOT ROD AUGUST 2019