Tested: 1978 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 Hunts for Pink Slips

From the February 1978 issue of Car and Driver.Remember the streetfighters? They were the kind of cars that you’d spend Saturday night in, chasing around Asbury Park or cruising the Gut in Eugene. All night the rippling bellow of big V-8s would echo in the streets. And then the next day, you’d take that same car out to the drags and enter it in the brackets. Pry the hubcaps off and put numbers on the windows with white Kiwi shoe polish (the only brand that wouldn’t smear when you rolled the windows down). And then you’d just spend the afternoon profiling with your friends, watching the Pro Stockers run and sitting on the fender of your car. Every once in a while you’d run the car through the quarter. On the whole, it was a pretty nice way to grow older. It took a special kind of car to provide the right kind of kicks off the track as well as on the dragstrip. People tend to recall the street Hemi as that sort of car, but the ante to get into the game wasn’t so high. The only requirement was that a car should make you feel good.
Well, you may have thought your street-fighting dreams had wilted in the face of hissing exhausts and two-barrel carbure­tors, but I’ve got a car for you. Because the aroma of tire smoke and burning brake lin­ings does, in fact, linger around the Olds­mobile 4-4-2. This Olds has the strongest legs of any new General Motors intermedi­ate that we have tested. There are probably a few things about the new 4-4-2 that don’t jibe with your streetfighter expectations. It doesn’t weigh more than two tons. And it doesn’t have wimpy little tires, a family sedan’s bench seat or the comprehensive instrumentation of a freight elevator. Instead the 4-4-2 will make you grin because it runs from 0 to 60 mph in 8.9 seconds despite a 2.56 rear axle ratio that belongs in a 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass Turnpike Cruiser. This car also does a quarter-mile in 17.4 seconds at 83.3 mph. That’s not fast enough to make your blood boil, but the eighteen-second barrier is substantial enough to keep an awful lot of cars on the outside looking in.
The 4-4-2 also earns high marks because it lives up to the marque’s reputation for agility while hurtling through the bends and twists of Racer Road. Though the original 4-4-2 functioned as Oldsmobile’s salvo in the muscle car war (a four-barrel carburetor, four-speed transmission and dual exhaust lent the car its name), it also attempted to provide an alternative to un­balanced Detroit powerhouses that were incapable of turning a corner more abrupt than an Ohio Turnpike on-ramp or of stop­ping any shorter than a Trailways bus. And so, unlike recent incarnations of the 4-4-2, the 1978 edition has a reasonable power-to-weight ratio, big tires, good brakes, and it gets around corners better than any previous namesake. In one respect, this 4-4-2 unquestionably measures up to the past—it will have your neighbors craning their necks to get a look at it. Of course the car looks stunning enough with its styled steel wheels, obliga­tory macho black paint and gold 4-4-2 trim. It’s clean and purposeful, and it doesn’t require a creepy-crawly thing on the hood to make its point. But as you walk around to the rear of the car, it’s clear that something new has been added to the stew. It is called a fastback. Some people like it and some people don’t, but there’s never any haggling about the dis­tinctive look it gives all Oldsmobile Cutlass Salons and Buick Centurys this year. In a search for a radical departure from the tra­ditional box-top styling of most sedans, GM seized upon the European five-door fastback look. It’s supposed to look best on the four-door intermediate. At the moment the fastback is a styling gimmick, but the future holds a hatchback and a fold-down rear seat. So the only present difference be­tween a fastback, formal notchback and traditional sedan is the shape of the trunk space.
Elsewhere around the 4-4-2, more than styling is apparent. For example, the car’s nose droops slightly and the 4-4-2’s exclu­sive, blacked-out grille is tucked away, helping this car present a slippery aspect as it speeds toward double the double nickel. Like a stripped-down police cruiser, the 4-4-2 looks more like a piece of hardware than a status symbol. Yet the downsizing trend that has trimmed 600 pounds of fat, yards of over­hang and inches of sheetmetal from this year’s Oldsmobile Cutlass hasn’t (as we keep reminding you) limited interior space. Measuring the dimensions of front and rear accommodations confirms what the eye suggests: There’s more space for five people than last year’s Cutlass and it makes a 1967 4-4-2 interior look like that of a Subaru 360 in comparison. But aside from the sensation of space, the intriguing aspect of the interior is the new seating position. Instead of perching atop a luxurious dining room chair, with your head in the clouds and your toes wriggling in a recessed footwell, you sit on the floor when you’re in the 4-4-2. It may be in the spirit of luxury cars to sit tall in the saddle, but performance has always been associated with reclining as low as possible. It’s a mys­tery why sitting with your legs stretched out in front of you should trigger fantasies of speed, but as MGB drivers can attest, those fantasies do exist. Unfortunately, the car’s seats aren’t up to the task of the modified driving position. The padding isn’t deep enough or resilient enough to cope with more than a few hours of driving at a time. And the token side bolsters aren’t large enough to keep you from sloshing around the cockpit even dur­ing low-speed tricks. The seats would prob­ably satisfy most people but for the lack of a reclining adjustment. To aid rear-seat room, the front seats are inclined forward far more than their appearance suggests. But with your legs stretched out, it’s diffi­cult to compensate for the hunchback seat­ing position. These seats had me feeling like an arthritic contortionist after 150 miles. While Detroit still fails to equip its cars with reclining seats as a matter of course (perhaps because the median buyer considers the additional expense frivolous), the option is at least available. When you order, specify the manual reclining seat at $59 for your front-seat companion and the $151 six-way power adjustable seat for yourself.But the measure of any good streetfight­ing car has never been how good it really is, but how good it makes you feel. The 4-4-2 makes you feel plenty good. The steer­ing wheel has a leather-wrapped rim. And the dashboard and gauges are at once un­derstated and attractive, flickering with the readouts for mph, rpm, oil pressure, volts and fuel level. And while all GM interme­diates offer a performance gauge package, only Oldsmobile has had the courage to avoid an African crossfire pseudo-wood styling exercise on the dashboard. The 4-4-2 ‘s dash just tells the plain truth. The warning lights, arranged in two BMW-like rows to the right of the gauges, emphasizes that approach. The 4-4-2’s turf has always been back­roads, and this car lives up to its heritage. There’s rarely any danger of inadvertently collecting a few road-side mailboxes; plunge deep into the corners, yank the wheel over and don’t panic if the variable-ratio steering suddenly seems to grow disinterested in re­turning to center. The car will snap into the turns, uncork on the exit and sprint down the next straightaway. Thanks to reasonable tire pressure these days—28 to 30 psi in the 4-4-2—the car’s front tires won’t whine with understeer. And whether you’re brak­ing for a radar trap or the hairpin in front of the local roadside tavern, the 4-4-2 won’t fool you and lock its rear wheels before the fronts, lengthening your stop into either ticket territory or into the row of pickup trucks parked outside of Sadie’s. The 258-foot stops from 70 mph recorded by last year’s 4-4-2 can be attributed to such a brake imbalance, but this car’s 192-foot stops from the same speed—the shortest stop of any of the GM intermediates we have tested—indicate that Oldsmobile has done its homework.Cresting the humps and rises of Racer Road, the 4-4-2 maintains its firm stance on the blacktop and the patter of the big 205/70 tires can be felt in the seat of your pants. The car’s strength in the corners and this insistent tingle from the suspen­sion (even on the Interstate), are the mani­festations of the recalibrated shocks, 21-percent stiffer springs and larger front and rear anti-sway bars of the 4-4-2 handling package. It’s apparent that the ride defi­ciencies are actually designed into the car—possibly to convince the driver of the 4-4-2’s performance aspirations. Again, it’s not necessarily how well the 4-4-2’s modifi­cations perform, but how good they make you feel. And it’s always clear that some sort of stormer is locked inside the gold 4-4-2 trim.But the real strength of this car can be found underneath the hood, because a Chevrolet 305-cubic inch engine designat­ed the LG4 lives there. And when you want a small-block V-8 that can get the job done, it’s best to dial Chevrolet. But unlike most of the intermediates from the other GM divisions, the 4-4-2’s motor has a 800-cfm (rated at 1.5 inches Hg pressure drop) four-barrel carburetor bolted to it instead of the proletarian 615-cfm (also rated at 1.5 inches Hg) two-barrel. The reason can be found in the huge demand for the Chev­rolet-made Rochester Quadrajet by all GM divisions. In fact, demand has outstripped production. The four-barrel is available on the 350-cubic inch V-8s from GM, but the 305-cubic inch motor with the Quadrajet­—which produces the same horsepower as its bigger relative—is available only on Olds­mobile Cutlass, Buick Century and Buick Regal models.It’s the Quadrajet that makes such a big difference on the dragstrip. For example, the 4-4-2 with its Chevrolet engine and four-barrel carb pulled its 2.56 long-ratio rear end through the quarter-mile faster, and with a higher trap speed, than either the 1978 Chevrolet Monte Carlo or Ponti­ac Grand Am. The Monte Carlo had a 2.73 rear end and the Grand Am had both a 2.73 axle and a four-barrel carb bolted to its Pontiac 302-cubic inch engine. And yet the gasoline mileage is virtually identical among these cars because the Quadrajet cruises on tiny primary jets just like the two-barrel carbs. But when you stomp real hard on the 4-4-2’s go-pedal, the car deliv­ers what GM public relations people refer to as “drivability.” I call it real accelera­tion.The importance of all this lies in the fun per dollar that the 4-4-2 represents. At $7000 fully laden with options, it hits the median cost of 1978 Detroit automobiles dead center. And though it’s difficult to think of that as actually cheap, there’s no doubt that you get a lot of fun for your money—a stereo for Saturday night and the V-8 and four-barrel for Sunday afternoon. Perhaps its best to compare this car with last year’s 4-4-2 and Pontiac Can-Am. Though both of these big boomers had 400-cubic inch engines and four-barrel car­buretors, they could barely squeak through the quarter-mile faster than this 4-4-2. The 1977 4-4-2 registered 17.3 seconds at 79.3 mph with a 3.23 rear end. The Can-Am with its rousing 200-hp engine turned a 17.2-second quarter-mile at 79.7 mph, again with a 3.23 rear axle. Somehow the 1978 4-4-2 seems far better equipped to combine reasonable transportation with the capacity to run wild on the highway. It may be a 4-3-1 compared to the original 4-4-2 concept, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t make you feel good.On the whole, the 4-4-2, like the other GM intermediates, doesn’t represent any­body’s idea of a technological great leap forward. Though it’s trim and light, it sim­ply carries the traditional body-frame con­struction of the Detroit intermediate auto­mobile to its logical, quiet and luxurious conclusion. And yet the feeling of balance exhibited by the 4-4-2 distinguishes it as an automobile that aspires to the responses that drivers care about. It’s one of the best combinations of cosmetic flash and real performance that people who like street­fighting Detroit iron have seen in a long time.SpecificationsSpecifications
1978 Oldsmobile 4-4-2
Vehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 2-door coupe
PRICE

Base/As Tested: $4408/$7064
Options: 305 cubic inch engine, $200; automatic transmission, $307; power steering, $152; P205/70R14 tires, $162; wheels, $82; AM/FM stereo radio, $236; air conditioning, $544; Rallye instrument panel, $64; 4-4-2 appearance and handling package, $260.
ENGINE
pushrod V-8, iron block andaluminum heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 305 in3, 4990 cm3
Power: 160 hp @ 4000 rpm
Torque: 235 lb-ft @ 2400 rpm 
TRANSMISSION
3-speed automatic
CHASSIS

Suspension, F/R: control arms/live axle
Brakes, F/R: 10.4-in vented disc/9.5-in drum
Tires: Goodyear Polysteel Radial
205/70R-14
DIMENSIONS

Wheelbase: 108.1 in
Length: 197.7 in
Width: 71.9 in
Height: 53.3 in
Curb Weight: 3440 lb
C/D TEST RESULTS

60 mph: 8.9 sec
1/4-Mile: 17.4 sec @ 83 mph
100 mph: 32.8 sec
Top Speed (C/D est): 106 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 192 ft
Roadholding: 0.85 g
C/D FUEL ECONOMY
City/Highway: 18/19 mpg
C/D TESTING EXPLAINED
Source: caranddriver.com