Oldsmobile's First Compact Was a Technological Marvel: The 1961-63 F-85/Cutlass/Jetfire

today we take a detailed look at one of the first compacts introduced by the Detroit automakers and that is the 1961 to 63 O mobile f85 as I said this was one of the first compacts that was introduced by Detroit automakers there were others including at General Motors there was of course the cor which came out in 1960 but for 1961 other compact cars came out across various General Motors divisions including the Pontiac Tempest which had a number of strange features and we've already covered that vehicle but take a look at the review in the comment section to learn more about everything on that vehicle including its slant four cylinder it's rope drive shaft and transaxle as well with the transmission mounted in the rear to this o mobile f85 to the Buick special but the S I think is one little special vehicle in part because it has just Charming styling and there's so much to cover beyond the video that we did with mark on his n61 f85 because we're going to cover the 1961 to 63 the entire generation right now so let's get started one of the first questions to ask is why would oal be even introduce a small car in the marketplace in any event well recall that by the late 1950s o mobile was actually seeing its sales take a hit in particular it went from being in fourth place of sales rankings for 1958 to sixth place in 1959 and that just wasn't acceptable for O's management and beyond that this was a time period where Americans were really starting to discover small cars whether it was from foreign or domestic automakers on the domestic front by this point there was obviously the studa baker Lark and of course American Motors Rambler and those sold quite well and customers tended to like them of course the Lark didn't end up saving stud Baker but the Rambler was very popular in any case J Motors wanted its part of the action and eMobile did as well and they thought that it could help Propel sales particularly during this time frame when some of the lower-end vehicles from Chevrolet pmth as well as Ford were starting to offer more luxury goodies and kind of crowding out the mid-priced vehicles like o mobile Buick Mercury and Pontiac Etc so the 1961 f80 5 was bored once the decision to enter the market space was made then the next question was well how are these vehicles going to be produced and upon what platform as I mentioned Chevrolet had introduced the Corvair in 1960 and there were some within the corporation who really just wanted to badge engineer the Corvair across the other divisions well of course that wouldn't work in the eyes of the general managers of those other divisions and so they came up with a unique platform the so-called y plat platform that was different from the Corvair Z platform in a number of ways of course the first was that these vehicles would be front engine rear drive they wouldn't have an air cooled six-cylinder Outback and they also wouldn't have the rear independent suspension that the corvairs had these instead would be front engine rear drive vehicles riding at top 112in wheelbase a few more inches than the Corvair and measuring about 188 in in overall length there was a period of time where it was not yet decided that the vehicles would be front engine rear drive and in fact oile had prototypes running around that had transversely mounted engine and Transmissions up front driving the front wheels but was later decided that was just too radical of a change for the average American Consumer and so OS mobile and Buick as well as Pontiac although they had a different setup with the rear transaxle stuck with front engine rear drive the vehicles would also be based at top a uni body body platform in other words there was not a separate Body and Frame The Body and Frame were integral in this particular vehicle and that decision was one that didn't necessarily warm the cockal of all the engineers Hearts over at OS mobile division some preferred to have the Body and Frame separate for purposes of isolation as well as comfort but the decision was made primarily based on cost that these vehicles were going to employ a unibody platform another interesting decision was made was that similar to the 1959 full-size vehicles that shared the front door of the Buick across the entire General Motors lineup that these vehicles would also share the front doors as well as the windshields the Side Glass and the rear glass as well as the roof panel the divisions could style the fenders the hood the grill the rear quarters and the trunk but they had to use the doors across all models and these doors in these vehicles have prettyy interesting styling kind of uh out in out in surfacing to them that you can imagine was somewhat challenging for designers to employ and also make the cars look different because they had to blend in all the other pieces of sheet metal to that door but I think they did so quite successfully in that the SS and the Buick look very different and the Pontiac also looks very different too underhood and allnew aluminum block V8 would be employed underhood in the olds and the as well as optional in the Pontiac it displaced 215 cubic in and made 155 horsepower breathing through a 2 barrel carburetor with 8.75 to1 compression ratio there was an optional four barrel carburetor that could go on top of this engine and that gave it a bit more compression it instead of being 8.75 to1 compression was then 10.25 to1 and that yielded 185 horsepower this was an interesting in little V8 in a number of areas the first is that as I said it was an aluminum block and the block allegedly weighed just 50 lbs and fully dressed it weighed a little under 350 lbs so very light under hood overall the second interesting piece of information about this engine was that while oldmobile in Buick had the same 215 cubic inch V8 or seemingly same va8 is standard equipment in their compacts Ozil of course had to do a little bit something different to this 215 cubic inch V8 because after all it was eMobile back in a Motor Trend test report Motor Trend reported that some of the variations included the combustion chamber configuration which motor Tren said is patterned after the standard eMobile V8 with wedge Chambers and other changes were made versus the Buick V8 in terms of the design of the Pistons rocker arms valves as well as the Squish and quench area in the combustion chamber other differences included the valve springs which were cone shape and S employed that because they felt they had a higher frequency response and also a built-in dampening effect SS also had a strange feature on their so-called rocket V8 yes this was not the rocket V8 underhood in these vehicles it was the rocket V8 because I guess it was small and that is that on the standard two barrel version the air cleaner encompassed the entire carburetor all the way down to its base I have never seen this on a domestic vehicle before or since and I think the idea was that you would get cold air circulating around the carburetor or colder air circulating around the carburetor so that it would help with things like vapor lock Etc and that was only true on the two barrel rocket V8 the four barrel had a more conventional air cleaner well for whatever reason Buick didn't employ that air cleaner design on its two barrel 215 cubic in V8 and no other General Motors V8 employed it so I guess it didn't work out all that well in fact perhaps it even trapped heat under the carburetor because the bottom part of the air cleaner was basically getting radiant heat from the intake and then creating perhaps even more heat in that area where the carburetor was trying to operate but in any case if you want to impress your friends this is I think the only engine that I know of carburated engine it has this air cleaner that encompasses the entire carburetor certainly from General Motors another interesting tidbit is that the wing nut location with respect to that air cleaner is actually off center it's not in the center of the air cleaner why they did that I don't know I guess that was just something for packaging reasons in any case the 215 V8 was actually a pretty good little V8 overall it didn't have the issues that other aluminum block engines had the General Motors would subsequently introduce like the Vega 4cylinder engine in 1971 presumably because that didn't have cast iron sleeves like this V8 and the ht4100 engine that Cadillac introduced in 1982 also just had a slew of issues for many many different reasons but this little 215 was actually pretty good V8 in fact it was later sold to Rover and became the basis for a very famous V8 overseas and powered Rover vehicle Les all the way into the early 2000s so it had a lot of good attributes to it this by the way was also the V8 that spawned the cast iron version of the Buick V6 that later became and evolved into the 3800 so there was a lot to like about this little V8 unfortunately the same could not be said of the automatic transmission that was used in the mmobile version of this vehicle and that was the infamous and Infamous is the right term Roto hydromatic transmission now the Roto hydromatic was developed by o mobile as a lighter weight more compact design and you can see here in this undercarriage shot of the 1961 f85 just how compact the transmission was which was great for overall packaging because it made the transmission hump in the floor plan much reduced and smaller so you had more interior space but with that reduction in the size of the transmission came a reduction in its longevity and these Roto hydromatics particularly the ones that were employed in the small f85 versus the ones employed in the fulls size oom mobiles yes fullsize oom mobiles also employed this transmission though a different version of it and the short wheelbase fullsize Pontiacs like the Catalina also employed it for a number of years not the long wheel-based Pontiacs like the bonnaville but in any case the transmission just was not great oille called it a four-speed cuz they counted the torque torque multiplication that apparently was variable in first gear as two different gears but really it was a three-speed and these Transmissions are just horribly clunky and if you drive a vehicle with it you'll notice that the one two shift is very very clunky the 23 is okay but what's effectively happening on the first and second shift is not only is the gear ratio changing but also the transmission is effectively engaging full mechanical lockup and then when you go into third it's more of a conventional shift but the full mechanical Lockup in part goes away and I believe it's only 60% locked up and 40% slippage in the third gear ratio on these Transmissions so you drive one and the best impression I can have of the engine and what it does when you drive and when you're accelerating normally is [Music] this that's the one two three shift right there and hopefully you love that impression in any case like I said it just was not durable at all it did have the accelerator action That was supposed to help it get off the line that was a 22 vein rotor that speeds your response and moved you into economical direct drive within seconds which was second gear but well it failed so there went the economy that you saved in terms of fuel mileage because you had to repair the transmission in any event as I mentioned that transmission did give the f85 and its siblings a bit more interior room but there were other elements that made this four-door sedan look pretty Airy on the inside that was the toothpick a pillars and B pillars it was a sedan after all didn't have frameless door glass and the old stylist I think made the most handsome use of the shared components that they had to deal with recall as I said that these vehicles shared doors glass roof panels Etc so the designers really had the front and rear clips of the vehicle iic Les to work with on styling and the s's had this kind of nice flare up in the fenders and the quarter panels kind of like a stingray style look to it in the front and rear and the 1961 f85 I think is just a great looking front end with this vertical bar grill and you know just a beautiful mid-century modern block lettering in the middle of it the styling would evolve as time would go on for 1962 I think it was a bit less handsome still had that Stingray style look up front but the grill was different now and as opposed to having that vertical bar grill that terminated and the oile block lettering beneath it you had oosile block lettering on the hood and a complete vertical bar grill complete with the Tesla symbol which was introduced in 1961 on the f85 I'm not quite sure what oob was thinking I guess it's a little rocket uh if you will that looks very similar to the modern-day Tesla logo and in between the 1961 and 62 model years there were two door f85 that were added and there was a deluxe model of the f85 in fordor sedan but the deluxe model of the twoo was given a name that many of us would recognize and that would go on to become very popular in old's history and that is cutless the cutless got a number of extra features it came with the 185 horsepower 4 Barrel rockat V8 had 3.36 to one rear end ratio it also had a number of interior appointments that gave it some Deluxe feeling so the cutless was introduced on this lineup partway through the 1961 model year and as I said it went on to increasing popularity in 1962 oile also introduced a special version of this vehicle called the Jetfire it was actually the first turbocharged vehicle in America produced by us automakers it beat out the Corvair Monza Spider by roughly one or two months but the Jetfire took the 215 cubic inch V8 under hood and remember they made 155 or 185 horsepower depending upon if they had two or four barrel carburation and lower high compression but the jet fires engine made 215 horsepower and 300 lound feet of torque and it did so with that turbocharging and you also had to make sure that you included turbo rocket fuel in your jet fire in order to ensure that the engine didn't have a lot of detonation when the turbocharger spooled up this shaved about 2 seconds off of the 0 to 60 time and the vehicles with the Jetfire engine were able to hit 60 mph in a little under 9 seconds as opposed to around 11 1 12 seconds so not too bad and in this last year in this body style 1963 the f85 was refreshed yet again with all new sheet metal aside from the roof panel the glass up front the back lights the door glass Etc and got a much more conventional slab-sided look not exactly my favorites for 1963 but as I said more conventional and kind of preparing the car for becoming a more conventional midsizer as it would become in 1964 1963 would also be the last year for this aluminum V8 before Jed Motors would sh it and eventually sell it to Rover in 1964 the f85 lineup would transition to being body on frame from unibody and the base engine would become the Buick special V6 and you could select various o mobile V8s in that particular vehicle as well so 61 to 63 is a very special year for these f85 and the cutless as I mentioned is in its introduction the sales were okay for these vehicles in 1961 o mobile sold about 76,000 F 85s and cutlasses across the lineup 1962 they sold 95,000 in 1963 they sold about 120,000 so sales were increasing each year as customers increasingly accepted these small o mobiles as really good vehicles by en llarge aside from their Transmissions hope you enjoyed the spotlight on the 61 to 63 f85 and cutless and if you did be sure to like comment subscribe and check out the video thumbnails at bottom left and right for some suggestions for you

Channel: Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History

Views: 63,938

Keywords:

Id: z0dc6sE50Lo

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2024