So you're looking for a classic 1960's muscle car, but your driveway is 500 meters of mud bog and off-road trail? Then we just might have exactly the kind of vehicle you're looking for. It's a 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Mounted on the chassis of a 1972 International Harvester Pickup.
Our Find of the Week this week might be one of the most unusual vehicles we've ever featured. It's two cars in one. Or at least a car and a truck in one. It's designed and built for mud bog racing, and it does that with more style than anything else I've ever seen.
It was designed and built by the owner of a 4x4 repair and fabrication shop on Vancouver Island. The owner used to hold a Canada day long weekend customer appreciation mud bog. As far as customer appreciation events go, that sure beats a stale cup of coffee and a donut, or cheap balloons, or even a wacky waving inflatable tube man. When you're building a rig to show off your shop's skills, then it needs to look good, it needs to work well, and most importantly: it needs to make a lot of noise and throw a lot of mud.
It starts with the bones of an International Harvester 1000 series 3/4 ton pickup. Starting there gives it a strong frame to work with. It also gives beefy Dana 60 axles. Sitting between the frame rails is the factory International 345 cubic inch (5.7L) V8, mated to a Chrysler 727 three-speed automatic. Splitting the power front and rear is a time-tested NP205 transfer case. That case was used in trucks from GM, Ford, Dodge, and International, from 1969 all the way to 1991 in some GM trucks.
But even under the body, this truck isn't exactly stock. For starters, it's sitting on 44-inch mud bogger tires on 16.5-inch wheels. The V8 has been rebuilt and has had the rarer four-barrel intake and carb installed instead of the two-barrel that came from the factory.
When you're running 44-inch tires that are more paddle than tread, the name of the game is how fast you can spin them, throwing mud rearward and you forward. While the V8 was making more power than stock, it still wasn't making enough to spin the tires. So the owner added super short 5:29 gears in the front and rear differential. The new gears help the engine spin faster at lower speeds, getting the engine into the power band so it can spin the tires.
It still wasn't enough, so the owner added a nitrous oxide kit. If you're only familiar with nitrous from Paul Walker asking for two bottles ('the big ones') of 'NOS' in The Fast and the Furious, then I'll give you a primer. Nitrous oxide has more oxygen in it than regular air. More oxygen in the cylinder means you can burn more fuel. Burning more fuel means more power. More power = better.
Sitting on that frame is a 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass body. The body was restored before it was put on the sky-high International frame. From the factory, the wheelbases of the two vehicles only differed by a few mm (both are around 2,900 mm) so mating the two was more straightforward than you might think. The interior has room for four in the Cutlass' massive seats.
What might be the rarest piece of this puzzle, is that despite the conversions, everything works. The lights, the wipers, even the heater still works, according to the owner. He says that it actually drives better than it did before the conversion since it now has power brakes and power steering that they both lacked from new. It also helps when you rebuild a suspension that was 40 years old.
The owner also says that the Oldsmonsterbile is "really good on fuel." Keep in mind that that's a relative statement. It has a smaller gas tank from a Dodge Omni, and the owner says that it would run a full weekend of mud bogging on just "three or four gallons of gas." That's thanks to the factory four-barrel carb that has two small primary jets. It doesn't burn too much fuel, as long as you keep your foot off the loud pedal.
So there you have it. Our Find of the Week is this 1967/2 InternationOlds that is like very few other vehicles on the road. Unlike the International Series models that Oldsmobile stuck multiple flags on in the late 1980s and early '90s, this is one International Oldsmobile that we'd love to take for a rip. If you'd like to make it your own, then check out the ad here. But if you want something a little more conventional, the owner has a 1979 Ford Bronco that's a little less extreme for sale as well. Maybe you can combine it with his 1970 Mercury Cougar and make your own Broncing Cougar.
