The Oldsmobile 98 is a 2-door coupe / 4-door sedan / 2-door convertible / 4-door convertible from Oldsmobile, built from 1940 to 1996, in a decade split by war, when civilian production stopped and restarted. Under the bonnet: 215 cuin Oldsmobile Straight-six engine. Harley Earl drew it.
The background
The Oldsmobile 98 (spelled Ninety-Eight from 1952 to 1991 and Ninety Eight from 1992 to 1996) is the full-size flagship model of Oldsmobile that was produced from 1940 until 1942 and then from 1946 to 1996. The name, referring to a Series 90 fitted with an eight-cylinder engine, first appeared in 1941 and was used again after American consumer automobile production resumed post-World War II. It was, as it would remain, the division's top-of-the-line model, with lesser Oldsmobiles having lower numbers such as the A-body 66 and 68 and the B-body 76 and 78. The Series 60 was retired in 1949, the same year the Oldsmobile 78 was replaced by the 88. The Oldsmobile 76 was retired after 1950.
This left the two remaining number-names to carry on into the 1990s as the bread and butter of the full-size Oldsmobile lineup. In 1995, the Oldsmobile Aurora went on sale, and replaced the Ninety Eight as Oldsmobile's flagship model. The Ninety Eight would be discontinued after 1996, with its styling living on as the Eighty Eight derived Regency. Occasionally additional nomenclature was used with the name, such as L/S and Holiday, and the Ninety-Eight Regency badge would become increasingly common in the later years of the model. The car shared its General Motors C-body platform with Buick and Cadillac. As it was the flagship Oldsmobile sedan, the Ninety-Eight had the most technologically advanced features available, such as the Hydramatic automatic transmission, the Autronic Eye, an automatic headlight dimmer, and Twilight Sentinel (a feature that automatically turned the headlights on and o
The engineering
Power comes from 215 cuin Oldsmobile Straight-six engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 3500 -. It shifts through a 3-speed synchromesh manual / 4-speed Hydramatic automatic. The wheelbase is 125.0 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Oldsmobile L-Series; its successor was the Oldsmobile Aurora; assembly was at Lansing, Michigan. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Lincoln Continental, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Volkswagen Kübelwagen — show what else the money bought that year. Its Oldsmobile stablemates include the Oldsmobile 442 and the Oldsmobile 88.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Oldsmobile 98 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.