Harley Earl was a big man, well over six-foot-six. He was not only physically imposing but a towering figure in American automobile design. He was an early adopter of using clay to produce three-dimensional models because, as a boy, he made model cars with the clay of a nearby riverbed.
From the moment he created the Art and Colour Section at GM in the late 1920s, he began exploring color and new shapes, always having show cars built to whet the public's appetite for what was to come. In a king-like fashion, he would also appropriate what he liked to take home, sometimes putting the cars under his own name and giving them to friends. We wonder what his wife thought when he gave a Cadillac dream car to an actress named Marie "The Body" MacDonald.
One car's fate remains mysterious: the 1959 Oldsmobile F88 Mk III dream car. It was last seen in the hands of Harley Earl.
There had been four earlier identical versions of the first incarnation, a tease that Olds might get what Chevrolet already had -- a two-seat sports car. All had concealed folding tops, and the first one was powered by a 324-cu.in. 'Rocket' V-8 rated at 250 hp. He gave that one to wheeler-dealer and car-company owner E.L. Cord (CEO of Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg) and took another home as a retirement perk. The only known surviving F88 was sold at auction in 2005 for $3.3 million.
The first Oldsmobile F88 dream car was built for the 1954 Motorama show circuit and followed in 1957 by the Mark II version. Also on the same stage was a Cutlass fastback coupe with the same instrument panel.
There was an unwritten rule back in those days that, after its show career was over (and with the Olds two-seaters, you knew they were over because a production equivalent never followed), the cars were taken to the nearest junkyard. But ironically, the nearest junkyard – Warhoops – didn't want the fiberglass-bodied vehicles because there wasn't enough metal in them to junk.
The Mk II was more interesting than the doughy shape of the first one because it had quad headlamps (offered on many 1958 GM cars) and baby tailfins. The Mark II was restyled into the Mark III, introduced in 1959, which had a few updates, such as a neat rectangular grille cavity with mesh (though another version had a blacked-out grille with individual chrome Oldsmobile letters). It even had a disappearing hardtop and, in one version, twin headrest nacelles similar to those featured on the Pontiac Solstice many decades later. The engine was again a 'Rocket' V-8. Inside, the F88 dream car used existing Oldsmobile gauges but with new housings, basically blinding the driver with chrome.
Before he retired in '58, Earl had championed the car, figuring it could reach more people than the Corvette. But his stodgy cohorts on the 14th floor of the GM building were skeptical. After all, the Corvette hadn't turned a profit yet. Why pour good money after bad? Had Oldsmobile brought the F88 to market in 1954, it would have had a few advantages over the Corvette. The Olds would have been powered by a V-8, mated to a four-speed automatic transmission with overdrive. V-8 is an option, as well as a three-speed manual transmission. In 1953-'54, the Corvette was powered exclusively by the Fireball inline six-cylinder, mated to two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission. That changed in 1955 when the Corvette received a 265-cu.in.
We know the Mk III went to Palm Beach, Florida, where Earl lived in retirement. We know it was sent back more than once to Michigan to fix the prototype transmission and to have its complicated fuel injection system swapped out for a carburetor. According to automotive historian and author Michael Lamm, Earl drove the car until he died in 1969 when it was donated to NASCAR for inclusion in a planned museum. Construction of said museum wasn't begun promptly, and Earl's successor, Bill Mitchell, eventually asked NASCAR to return the prototype to Michigan, where it was supposedly destroyed.
Though scant, there is perhaps a glimmer of hope that the Mk III survives and, perhaps at this very moment, is gathering a fine coat of patina in some long-forgotten GM warehouse, wrapped within a time-worn car cover.
Sources: Wallace Wyss, Hemmings, OldConceptCars.com
