Item Info

Media Type: Photographic Prints
Source: Automobile Reference Collection
Notes:

EXPERIMENTAL OLDSMOBILE F-85

Oldsmobile’s new experimental F-85 two-seater is styled along sports car lines. A glass-fiber tonneau cover, incorporating an airfoil-section roll bar, covers the rear seat and sweeps down into the cockpit to merge with a special center console. This carries a glove box, ash tray and a T-handle control for the hydramatic transmission.

Black leather bucket seats face a new instrument cluster designed around two large dials, the left one a 140-[mph speedometer, and the right one a single dial including the four standard engine instruments. Smaller dials flank these – on the left a 6000 RPM tachometer and on the right a pressure gauge for the car’s turbo-supercharged V-8 engine.

This experimental Oldsmobile features a full-width concave grille with a brush-chrome lower surface reflecting the air intake grille in the area above. Within the concavity are two headlamps and two long-range driving lamps, just above bumpers that sweep around to float in front of the grille. Along the sides are two intake scoops ahead of the rear wheels, and a low rally-type windscreen surrounds the cockpit.

The F-85 is finished in Firefrost silver, with a narrow black stripe down the center between the twin louvers on its hood.