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On a walk to get some morning coffee recently, I almost literally ran into this Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. It’s a 1971 and coincidentally, the year the owner (pictured) was born. She was just returning from the coffee shop and we had a short conversation about her fantastic car. She has owned it for 17 years and really takes care of it. The car looked like it was a year old instead of a having almost four decades of time on it’s side.
The 1971 model shared much of the same exterior sheetmetal as the 1970, but with a new hood, grille, and headlight assemblies, as well as new bumpers and taillights. Four new exterior body colors were offered, Viking Blue, Lime Green, Bittersweet, and Saturn Gold.
The famous “Rocket” V8 continued in several different sizes and power options, with both the large 455 and ‘small block’ 350 available with either 2 or 4 barrel carburetors. This was the last year for the 250 cubic-inch six cylinder engine, as it had not been a very popular offering in Olds intermediates. In 1971, all engines came from the factory with hardened valve seats, preparing for the upcoming mandate for unleaded gasoline that took effect with the introduction of catalytic converters on 1975 models. The 1971 Olds engines also featured lowered compression ratios and designed to run on regular leaded, low-lead or unleaded gasoline with a research octane rating of 91 or higher (equivalent to 87 octane by today’s octane measurements).
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© Fred Winograd copyright 2010