January Longroof of the Month

Happy New year everyone! I'm proud to have been selected for January's LROtM! Without further adieu, let me get right into it: My first and favorite wagon is my 1992 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser which I bought in March of 2009. A little background here about why I ended up with this car; Even though I was only like 7 years old the first time I saw one of these wagons new in the early 90's I thought how out of place in time they seemed. It's sleek shape was very modern, but the sheer dimensions of the car made it seem old fashioned -which I liked, being a kid who loved old cars and old things it seemed like the perfect combo of old and new. I first got to see one up close when an elderly couple at church bought a brand new '91 or '92 Dark Maple Caprice wagon with a burgundy interior, and fully loaded. It just seemed so BIG and so cool! Fast forward a few years to the later '90s when a friend of my Dad's had a blue '92 OCC. I never saw many of these even when new, but now seeing that OCC often, I knew I liked it the best. The Roadmaster was classic elegance, the Caprice was modern, but I felt (and still feel) the OCC had a good combination of elegance and modern design. Now, fast forward to 2007 when my friend Dave decided he wanted one of these wagons. I suggested an OCC, but as we both learned they were only made 2 years and very few were produced compared to the others. So he ended up getting a Roadmaster wagon. After a few drives in that car I was hooked. I knew the OCC's older motors wouldn't be near as powerful as his LT1 Roadmaster, but I'm a slow driver anyway. So I decided after doing some research, once I had room in the driveway, I wanted a '92 OCC with a 350. About a week after selling two old Hondas in my driveway, Dave e-mailed me a craigslist posting for a dark maple red w/ red leather interior '92 OCC with a 350, every option but alloys. So I called and the guy said it runs and drives well, and only had 95k on it. I went up to this guys little shack car dealer in Newark and took it for a drive, it did great and looked decent, so I bought it...
When I took it home I took some pics and posted it on the SS forum. Someone said owning these wagons are "like potato chips, once you start you can't stop!" I thought that was silly, I didn't know why anyone would want multiple of the same vehicle, but in September 2010, I bought wagon #2 for $750; a blue '94 Caprice with only 52k miles on it! The catch? It was rusty and had NO options AT ALL. Manual windows and locks, no cruise control, and a one piece front bench!
Anyway I drove that car all winter (except when it was snowy) and into that spring and early summer. It made a great car for filling with crap from Home Depot and it made a great beach car too, people could get sand in it, and it wasn't a big deal to me. Then in June 2011 I bought my first Ford; a 1991 Country Squire. It was also my first car with woodgrain
Driving this car was quite different from the B-bodies, and not just because it was a Ford, but because it was a much older car in design. All metal everywhere and all that chrome and just a more boxy "old fashioned" car feel to it. After owning it for a while I've really got to liking that old fashionedness of it, and now I really would like to get a '90 or older B-body wagon and see what thats like. Good chance and old Pontiac Safari or Custom Cruiser might be my next wagon. But literally the weekend I was going to look at an '85 Safari in September, my friend showed me a RED '95 Caprice wagon with gray interior on CL. I had him look at it since it was no where near me. He said it seemed good and was almost fully loaded, no tow pack but it had literally everything else including auto-level for some reason. The car seemed to have some rust, so he talked them down to $1,600. So I bought B-body wagon #3.
It worked great for about 100 miles then it started shuddering on the highway, the belt tensioner started slipping making the belt screech AND the stupid cheap AC bypass pulley starting squealing. Also at the same time I started checking out the rust, and it was far more rusty then my friend had thought. Both rear quarters were pretty darn bad and the DS rear wheel well seemed to have rusted pretty good from a window leak. The worst part though? The smell. The inside of the car reeked of manure. The interior was filthy so I took it to a place and had it steam cleaned, but the carpet still would not come clean, it was a fairly uniform brown color. I finally tracked the smell down to the back seat area. I reached my hand in the rear seatback pouch and it came out with some brown goo all over my fingers. So then I pulled off the rear seat cushion, and what I saw almost made me barf. I guess one of the previous owners of this car owned a day care or something because there was all kinds of food and liquidy goo and toys under there (I also found a pair of nice slip-joint pliers!). There was also a lot of something else -mulch. Lots and lots of mulch. Well, that's where my manure smell was coming from! So I cleaned that up, ripped out the carpet and replaced it with a black one. Since the headliner was ripped and a little saggy I decided to replace that as well, and I figured since I did the carpet black, might as well do the headliner black. Once I had done those, I felt I needed something to "bridge the sea of gray" of the rest of the interior, so I put in a black steering wheel from a Lumina van.
I got the tensioner replaced and found just changing the trans fluid and filter solved the shuddering. After that I shined it up as best I could and took it to WF Mid-Atlantic, and got there and back without incident. I'm getting to like this red Caprice more and more despite it's initial disappointments, but it's still got a lot of body work that needs to be done. I think my friend and I were blinded by that awesome "Medium Garnet Red". It's funny how something as simple as a paint color can change how you feel about a vehicle. My driveway was getting crowded, so I ended up selling the blue Caprice in November. Much to my surprise, I got 800 for it. Not too bad for a car I put 11k miles on and swapped out it's new-ish tires for some old bald tires! Going forward, I still think I'd like to have a DGGM Caprice wagon, and something with a tow pack would be nice too, as I would like to do some towing. I sure do love driving these wagons, and I never thought the OCC would win me over as well as it did, -still my hands-down favorite car. Whoever said that line about these wagons being like potato chips was absolutely right. Now I can't imagine having less than two!

Great story Lionel and I agree with you completely about the mixing od old and new.I grew up in
the back of ford wagons.My first memories of driving were in ford wagons and even taking my
road test in a ford wagon.Until recently my parents have pretty much always had a ford wagon
in the driveway.Whrn the 91 B bodies were introduced I was hooked and have been every since.
Jim

that second picture makes your car look more purple than dark maple. Looks like Grimace with hubcaps....

Great write up.

Great write-up!
Thanks for sharing.

I really sympathize with the brown goo discovery...that's worse than anything I've ever found in any of my old cars!

Nice story.

How many cars do you have altogether? You have as many B-bodies as we have vehicles.

Who's the guy with the red UNH Wildcats sweatshirt? I haven't seen one of those since I moved out here. It also seems like a strange color.

Nick Danger wrote:

Nice story.

How many cars do you have altogether? You have as many B-bodies as we have vehicles.

Who's the guy with the red UNH Wildcats sweatshirt? I haven't seen one of those since I moved out here. It also seems like a strange color.

Thanks, Nick. That's Tom A.K.A. Silverfox103.

To second Nick Ds question, how big is your current fleet?

Sprocket wrote:

To second Nick Ds question, how big is your current fleet?

OK, OK. Besides the B-bodies listed in my sig, I also have:
1980 I.H. Scout II
1991 Ford Country Squire
1998 Buick Park Ave Ultra
2002 Chrysler Town & Country

Nice write-up and congrats on wagon of the month. I fully agree that I love the looks of the OCC but love the LT1 of the later cars. I need to build a Frankenstein.

As for your question about the boxy wagons, my buddy Laird had a '91 County Squire at the same time I had my '89 Custom Cruiser. We used his Squire for many yard runs to San Antonio and such and I drove it often. I'm not a Ford person so I'll try to push my GM bias aside and give you an honest comparison.

Lets do what I did not like about the Ford first. The doors on the Ford wagon seem to be much smaller and thinner than the GM doors. The door glass is smaller and the Ford was not as easy to get in and out of. The door panels seemed thin and not as padded as the GM. Also the cargo area in the back did not have the carpet on the sides like the GM. You sit up higher in the Ford...some like that feeling, some don't. I'd ride in the Squire and then get in my OCC and it just "felt" better to me. Laird also had issues with the power windows on the Ford that I never had in my boxy GM wagons. When his windows worked, they were faster than the ones on my OCC, but he always seemed to have an issue with one of the windows. He also had a/c issues and later transmission problems my GM's never had.

Now here's the good about the Ford. It drove, rode and steered very smoothly, much like a Lincoln of the same era. It's a really good highway car, with lots of power to pass and will eat the miles with the cruise on. The fuel-injected Ford 302 is a great engine, and Laird could leave the 307 in my OCC for dead in a drag race. I like the Ford "turbine" wheels his car had as well. I also thought the 3rd row of two seats that faced each other was kind of neat.

I will say I think the GM's, especially the OCC and Electra wagons, just look classy. My 2-cents!

Enjoy your projects!

-Mike

Lionel,I had a 72 IH TravelAll with the 345 and a built torqueflite.Was the best offroader I ever
had.Had lockers front and rear which made it unstoppable in snow and mud until it got too
deep.Awesome truck and its still being used as a hunters truck.
Jim

Lynol wrote:

Sprocket wrote:

To second Nick Ds question, how big is your current fleet?

OK, OK. Besides the B-bodies listed in my sig, I also have:
1980 I.H. Scout II
1991 Ford Country Squire
1998 Buick Park Ave Ultra
2002 Chrysler Town & Country

Hey Lynol

That's quite a collection, what about the 76 Buick Convertible?

I think your OCC is my favorite also. I have always liked the Vista Cruiser Wagons. Maybe it's because they were only made for a couple of years or maybe because Oldsmobile has gone the way of Plymouth, AMC, Desoto, Studebaker and Packard etc. etc.

Probably my 2nd favorite would be the Country Squire, probably just because it is different. I had a 1963 Country Squire, it was a great car. It had a 390, 330HP, 3 Spd on the column with manual overdrive. I wish I had that today, but I traded it in for a 1967 GTO (Yikes, that was 44 years ago).

Sprocket wrote:

To second Nick Ds question, how big is your current fleet?

I think I detect a little envy, Sprocket was king of the fleets for quite a few years; but I think the baton has been passed to you and Dave.

Enjoyed your story.

thanks

Tom

81X11 wrote:

...The doors on the Ford wagon seem to be much smaller and thinner than the GM doors. The door glass is smaller and the Ford was not as easy to get in and out of. The door panels seemed thin and not as padded as the GM. Also the cargo area in the back did not have the carpet on the sides like the GM. You sit up higher in the Ford...some like that feeling, some don't.

I agree the doors do seem lighter, although I like actually like that about it; Hardly takes any effort to open it. I do find, as you did, that it's not so easy to get in and out of. Getting in and out seems awkward to me, my legs rub against the wheel when I get in and out unless I set the wheel tilt way too high. Also the inside door handle seems way too low to reach comfortably; I think because the seat is so high. I don't like how high up the seat feels in that car. I do like the cars quietness and smoothness though. I definitely want to try a GM boxy wagon though. May have to swap in a different motor... Just because I'm fine with the relatively powerless motors in my OCC and Ford, does not mean I'm ready to handle the slowness of a 307... have to draw the line somewhere.

Hey Tom, thanks. I got that Buick LeSabre convertible in my signature. After all, it IS a B-body you know! I can't exactly explain why the OCC is my favorite, it's just a very nice car to drive, the interior is pleasing, I like the way it looks, and it just feels "right" to me. I always get comments from people who had one like it, or just haven't seen one in years. May also have something to do with the brand not being around anymore; being a nostalgic car brand or something. And yeah, the Country Squire is an oddball on the road these days. I see them more than I see '91 or '92 OCCs though.

Thanks for sharing! I still like your Cruiser best, but then I'm slightly biased.

Congrats and great story!! It was great to meet you in person (and see your wagon) in VA! I didn't know the whole story on the interior issues!!! You did a great job with it!

Great story on the fleet. I agree with Mike, I like the look of the 92 OCCs, but really like the LT1 much better than the TBI engines, especially after the crap my 91 put me through

95BRMW wrote:

Great story on the fleet. I agree with Mike, I like the look of the 92 OCCs, but really like the LT1 much better than the TBI engines, especially after the crap my 91 put me through

Yeah your Cursed Cruiser was pretty bad, though I don't think that the TBI 305 is supposed to be that bad. That 305 Parisienne I drove may have been a little lighter than a wagon, but it could have ran circles around your OCC. I surprised myself though, I thought after having an LT1 wagon, I'd never be able to tolerate the 350 TBI wagon again, but I realized I just don't have the need for speed. I can see how you do though. When I'm in CT, it's about the only time I find myself having to floor the LT1 wagon and getting angry with some preppy Euro jerk who thinks he owns the road. I would like my TBI 350 to be a little faster though... hey, even in the OCC I can STILL beat out most ricers!