General Motors embraced futuristic design language for 1961, with Oldsmobile introducing a completely new 88 that was shorter, lower, and narrower than its predecessor while maintaining the same 123-inch wheelbase.
Styling drew inspiration from the burgeoning “Space Race,” with GM’s “Rocket” division creating a car that appeared ballistically fast even while stationary. The distinctive “bubble top” designation came from its curved front and rear glass, creating an enormous greenhouse that made the substantial automobile appear lighter and more elegant than conventional designs.
Oldsmobile enhanced the space-age appearance by adding “skegs” to the lower rear quarter panels, reflecting the nation's fascination with rockets and potential space travel. The design represented a one-year-only configuration for the coupe body style, making these vehicles particularly distinctive among early 1960s automobiles.
Under the hood, the previous 371-cubic-inch V8 was replaced by the 98 model’s 394-cubic-inch unit, with the Dynamic 88 receiving a two-barrel, 250-horsepower version that used regular gasoline. A new three-speed “Roto” Hydra-matic transmission that was smaller and lighter than the previous four-speed unit was introduced as an option. Popular equipment included power steering, power brakes, and AM radio systems.
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They could pump out attractive cars from the past but with new cheap materials and modern motors or even electric motors and everyone would want them. My mother had an Oldsmobile very like this, but a lighter blue. For your information, if you lose a part from your balsa-wood toy rubber-band powered airplane, it will be in that giant crack where the seat folds forward. There has never been a more beautiful speedometer. It was a long horizontal cylinder behind a slot under the numbers, with a gradient-colored spiral on it, so it looked like a line moving rightward and turning from green through yellow to red, by the time you got it up to 80 mph, I think; my memory is hazy on the exact number. The motor hissed and rumbled, idling, and the whole car trembled, eager to leap forward....I was just craning my neck the other day, left and right and forward and back, jerking my head this way and that as I pulled out onto the road and turned left, because you have to do that in my car, and most cars now, to keep from being rammed by someone you don't see coming because the front window pillars are as thick as a two-by-six and tilt backward at a stupid angle so you can't see someone coming who's /right there/. Look at this lovely car, though. You can see all around. Also the radio had physical volume and tuning knobs with mechanical, settable tuning buttons that I loved. Later, when I learned how that works, I just loved it more. And it ran on vacuum tubes, so it took a little while to warm up and begin to work after you turned it on. Most things should be like that. When I was five I had just got into the back seat and my mother absentmindedly shut the door on my hand, but I was undamaged. There was just enough space where the inside of the door met the inside of the doorjamb, and there was a roll of plastic fabric over something soft there. Now, more than sixty years later, that's not the hand that hurts when it's cold.
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