At first, I was going to do another installment of Glorious Garbage about this car, but upon closer inspection I realized that, no, this thing really isn’t garbage at all. The car is the 1973 Hurst Oldsmobile, and, I have to say, considering the deep-Malaise Era-timeframe it comes from, it’s still a pretty potent and fast machine. Oldsmobile’s muscle cars were somewhat unique among muscle cars in that they tended to be a bit more mature and premium than your average Camaro or Mustang, a sort of musco-luxo/gentleperson’s hot rod sort of thing, and the Hurst Olds was a great example of this.
The 1973 edition – all this was first brought to my attention by The Bishop, by the way – also had a really interesting first, the sort of thing that is ubiquitous now, but it’s interesting to see what seems to be its origin. It also has a detail that I find absolutely baffling, so we’ll talk about that, too.
The 1973 Hurst/Olds was now on the new GM A-body, the “colonnade” body style, specifically the Oldsmobile Cutlass, and came in two color schemes for the first time in the Hurst/Olds history, the traditional black with gold stripes and now a “Cameo White” option, still with gold stripes. These cars had big chrome exhausts like a muscle car, but also had opera windows and a half-vinyl roof like ’70 luxury royalty demanded.
The front bucket seat even swiveled, in case you were too good to get in and out of a car like all those other filthy heathens out there:
Performance-wise, the ’73 Hurst Olds had one engine option, a 455 cubic inch/7.5-liter V8 making 270 horsepower – kind of meager for the displacement by today’s standards, but fantastic for 1973. Oh, unless you wanted air conditioning, then you lost 20 horses. That’s what you get for being too good to sweat!
The Hurst/Olds also came with an interesting shifter, the Hurst Dual Gate Shifter, which we once wrote about before because of that shifter’s weirdly misogynistic origins:
…of course, in the Hurst/Olds it was just called the Dual Gate shifter, none of that “his and hers” bullshit anymore. Because you could –sort of – shift through the gears on your own, a tachometer sure would be handy, and this is where the ’73 Hurst/Old’s notable first comes into play: it had what I believe to be the first electronic digital tachometer ever.
Actually, it’s likely the first electronic digital car dashboard instrument ever, and that’s even if we’re generous and call clocks an instrument, a chronometer, I guess, but electronic digital clocks didn’t really start to appear on dashboards until around 1978.
And by digital, I mean real digital, as in computer digital, not gears and cams and analogue doohickies moving drums with numbers on them behind a faceplate. This tachometer is all-digital inside, and even contains an actual integrated circuit, from MOS:
Is this also the first time an actual integrated circuit – that white “chip” you see on the right there – was used to run a component of a car’s dashboard? I think it could also be the first use of a seven-segment digital numeric display – in this case a Sperry SP-352 neon display, not an LED or a VFD display.
Now, the Hurst-supplied Digital Tachometer was bolted onto that dashboard and was optional, but it was available from the factory, so I think this counts for the ’73 Hurst/Olds having the first truly digital, computerized instrument. It even had a bit of memory, where it stores the highest RPM recorded, and you could push one of those buttons to see it, letting you know if your pal you loaned the car to redlined it even after you told him to take it easy, Larry.
This may seem like a little thing, but considering all cars now seem to have huge digital displays that show and control everything, I’d say this first digital display is pretty seminal. From those humble two red blocky digits came the sea of full-color, high resolution dashboard displays. This is where it started.
Okay, that’s the good part. Now let’s get to the baffling part.
So, there’s this part in the ’73 Hurst/Olds brochure, talking about the car’s distinctive hood vents:
See that? Nassau Hood Duct. What the hell is a Nassau Hood Duct? I’ve searched all over the internet, but it only seems to come up in the context of these Hurst/Olds ads:
That’s it. No one else talks about whatever the fuck a “Nassau” duct is. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the lovely capitol of the Bahamas, either. And it’s not even real on the car; it’s just a bunch of raised louvers glued onto the hood; if you look under the hood, as you can see in this screengrab from a YouTube video, you can see there’s no holes in that hood at all:
They’re fakes.
The fake vents themselves look like they’re meant to be engine heat exhaust louvers, providing the air that enters the radiator a nice convenient exit through the hood, or at least, that’s what they would do if they were actually real.
So far, the only theory the Bishop and I have come up with is that maybe, just maybe someone at Oldsmobile called these NACA ducts, because NACA ducts (which stands for National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the pre-cursor to what became NASA) were a well-known sort of duct used on racing cars and aircraft.
The problem is NACA ducts look nothing like the”Nassau” ducts. Look:
They are nothing alike. At all! In fact, NACA ducts are for low-drag air intake; whatever the hell Nassau ducts are supposed to be, the one thing we can tell is that they’re for air exhaust, because they’re facing backwards. Nassau ducts, as seen in their lone example on the hood of the ’73 Hurst/Olds, really couldn’t be further from NACA ducts.
So, I’m baffled. Did someone at Oldsmobile just make it up for marketing purposes, like Rich Corinthian Leather? That was also in 1973. Was that just the year that carmakers decided to make up weird, exotic-sounding names?
Oldsmobile is gone, and I think anyone associated with Nassau ducts are likely gone, too. I’ll reach out to GM, but I’m not holding my breath, like I would be forced to do were my nostrils Nassau Ducts.
Still, having one impressive first and one strange mystery on the same car is something, so let’s hear it for the ’73 Hurst/Olds!
UPDATE: So, we have a good theory, seen in the comments (by Fire Ball, who seems to have been the first to note this connection!) and in this tweet:
Ah, see, if @JasonTorchinsky was as old as me, he would know where Nassau vents came from. Older hotrod/GM styling feature you'd see most prominently used on racers at the Nassau Speed Weeks. Think of stuff like Grand Sport Corvettes and Chaparrals. https://t.co/rvkvtRQ6bA
— Tony Borroz (@TonyBorroz) October 12, 2024
Nassau Speed Weeks! Chaparrals I do feel like had louvers like these, now that I think about it? Let’s look:
Holy crap, look at that. This 1965 Chaparral 2A is covered in those types of louvers! That has to be it! Thank you!
I had a pair of 73 Grand Ams in the early 80’s when they could be found on a lemon lot for $500 in decent shape. Both were white, and one was a manual of all things. Lots of early hate for the colonnade coupes, but they really aren’t bad looking – with the exception of the vinyl half top. Why did GM put those on everything? I really wanted to pull the vinyl off one of my Grand Ams, but I was worried about the finish underneath.
Funny, I just randomly saw a nice Can Am yesterday, had been forever since I’d seen one. Sharp looking car, no vinyl top.
I’ve always had a dream to find one of these with extensive rear-end damage and probably floor rust for good measure, and then transfer as much as possible to the body and frame of a 1973 El Camino, with perhaps a bit of bodywork necessary to smooth the transition from the Oldsmobile doors to the El Camino quarter panels.
I actually really dig the front end styling on the ’73 Hurst Olds… I just think the roof and rear end kinda ruins it. Conversely, I love the ute rear end of the El Camino and think the ’73 model has a butt-ugly nose. Yet, the two are both A-body cars, so in theory everything from the Hurst Olds should bolt up to the El Camino body, with the result being the beautiful Oldsmobile muscle ute we never got.
Only trouble is that the ’73 Hurst Olds is actually sought-after enough that decent ones are worth something, so it’s hard to find one in bad enough shape to justify cutting it up, but not so bad that it’s a hopeless wreck.
My first car was a 15 year old 1972 Cutlass, handed down to me from my maternal grandparents who lived in Nassau County (New York).
No ducts, though.
I’m very glad “Nassau Vents” are not someone from New Jersey mispronouncing NASA.
IIRC the swiveling buckets were available in all Colonnade two doors, although I only ever saw an Oldsmobile brochure.
That hideous building in Nassau you posted a link to is a capitol? As in “a legislative building where a legislature meets and makes laws for its respective political entity”? It looks more like a hotel or a casino to me. The capitol you have in Washington DC looks way classier.
The picture in the link is not the capitol building of the Bahamas. The reason it looks like a hotel or casino is because that’s exacly what it is. Both, actually. That’s the famous Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas. And it does include a casino, one of the largest in the Caribbean.
The Bahamian Parliament Building looks more like a colonial mansion.
Beautiful parliament building! But I was pointing out (in too subtle a way, I’m afraid) the spelling mistake in the article – I don’t think Jason was referring to the capitol of the Bahamas, which as far as I know does not exist, but the capital of the Bahamas 🙂
I must state the swivel bucket seats would be an awesome option for cars for older drivers. Anyone with elderly parents knows what I’m talking about. Why talk crap about them?
I have yet to ride in a vehicle with swiveling seats like that, but I’ve always wondered why they went away. Perhaps someone who has used them could let us know if they were as useful as they seem.
it sounds like safety regulations to me.
Small correction — that is the MOS Technology logo, not Mostek (which generally just printed its name rather than a logo onto its chips). Apparently it was a custom IC as someone discovered when they (successfully!) repaired a broken Hurst/Olds tachometer.
Looking at the IC, I would think it’s likely some sort of OTP RAM with custom firmware on it. Looking at the rest of the board, looks like a couple tantalum caps, a bunch of carbon film resistors and TO92 transistors and at least one Dale part I can’t identify from the picture. Old electronics can be fun, even just to look at.
Spring, 1971 Oldsmobile national dealers meeting in Nassau Bahamas.
2 half drunk execs are sitting at the bar scribbling on napkins and viola !
Nassau Vents are born
This malapropism makes me want to commit violins.
Perhaps you should cello out.
You’ve got nothing to bass that on!
The 1973 “vents” looked like a row of candy bars.
“They’re all Twix!”
-George Costanza
Speed holes!
The true malaise-era power figures didn’t really start to set in until ’74-75, right?
Correct, but I think ’73 was the switchover from gross to net ratings, so everything was “down” on power.
My ’72 2drHT Marquis with a 4V 429 was way down on power compared to the 1970 4dr Marquis with the 2V429, that still needed 96+ Octane not to ping even with the timing moved back
There was real loss of power for 1971, it wasn’t just the ratings.
As Senator Vreenak said, “It’s a faaaaake!”
This article got me thinking about another Olds Cutlass quirk: The hinged grilles in the 1981-1988 Cutlasses. The plastic grilles had a hinge/spring at the top so they would show no damage per the 5-mph (and later 2,5 mph) frontal crash impact laws that came about in the ’70s.
Per Hemmings:
“Yet the 5 MPH bumper laws remained.
What to do? Well, GM had had experience with plastic noses since Pontiac’s Endura days, and had built tons of Corvettes, Camaros and Firebirds with them ever since. They were good, but not quite good enough on their own. Oldsmobile’s solution, elegant in its simplicity, was to hinge the grille.
Hidden in the top of each section of the grille was a spring-loaded hinge, designed to allow the grille to be pushed back in case of an impact. It prevented the fragile plastic molded grille(s) from snapping, and gave Oldsmobile a clever, attractive and ultimately invisible solution to the law. Nothing was made of this feature in advertising, and precious little in the press. The grille shapes themselves changed from trim level to trim level, year to year: egg-crate slots for more sporting models, tight vertical ribbing for a classier look. All shared the top-hinging arrangement. And for much of the first half of the 1980s, the Olds Cutlass Supreme remained a great success, with sales of between 150,000 and 285,000 G-body Cutlasses per year alone.
Starting in 1982, the nation’s bumper laws changed yet again, with a 2.5 MPH limit; the bumper itself could show visible damage as long as the car’s bodywork did not. Oldsmobile’s clever hinged-grille solution lasted longer than the law itself: The G-body was due to be phased out after the 1987 model year, thanks to long-term plans drawn up in 1982 or so, but a limited run of roughly 12,000 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Classics were among the last G-bodies built.”
I remember, back in the late ’80s discovering this feature on a early ’80s Cutlass by accident. The car belonged to a friend (I think it was her mom’s car, actually) and I’m not sure why I pushed in on the bottom of the grille, but I was surprised when it hinged inwards and then sprung back.
Cadillacs had these too in the 70s.
As did a lot of the Chrysler K-cars.
And several Lincolns. I had to disable this feature on the Mark VI grille I used on my Lemons racecar.
Not just Lincolns, but a lot of large 1970s Fords in general had it too.
Agreed. Grandparents had a 4 Door Cougar XR7 with the collapsing grille.
I had forgotten all about these until something came up recently at Curbside Classics, which gets pushed to my suggested links list on my Android Chrome home page, after which I remember discovering this on my dad’s first brand new car, a 1974 Cutlass Cruiser.
Ah, more Oldsmobile content.
Not gonna lie, the ’73 H/O isn’t a bad looking car, even if the hood vents are fake.
And I’m sorry I missed that Hurst shifter post from last year, because I didn’t know until now how much I wanted to know that the burgeoning sexual revolution made it possible to get a chastity cage for your Turbo Hydramatic. If you think the man of the house was holding that key, you haven’t paid attention to the distribution of D/s kinks.
Slightly more refined than the Suffolk and Jersey hood ducts, but tackier than the Westchester and Connecticut ducts.
Swivel seats weren’t just an Olds thing.
They were available on Monte Carlo, Laguna and GP.
But that’s not all!
Mopars in the 50s into the late 60’s had swivel front seats – up to the Mobile Director option in Crown Imperial.
Then, we get to the passenger vans and van conversions.
And we still find them today in Class A RVs.
Friend of mine had one in her ’65 Thunderbird.
That caught my eye as well. You’d think we’d have more of those given the many folks in this country who are either aging or completely exercise averse.
My guess, someone was thinking of NACA ducts but couldn’t remember the name and just went with the closest thing they could think of, this was pre-google after all.
Or maybe they wanted to call then NASCAR vents but were threatened with a law suit.
Oh good one!
I was thinking the parts were molded by a supplier on Long Island.
That is a lovely circuit board. I suspect some of the IC might have been shared with the calculators of the day, like the ones from Texas Instruments.
Also that display is available! https://www.ebay.com/p/623004768
It’s called a Beckman in the listing but has the same model number.
Um, white was the traditional for the Hurst/Olds cars in the originals and all the early ones…
Not all of them. The ’68s were pewter with black stripes.
So it was! I thought the first year was the classic white and gold and I was wrong.
The 68 pewter one was great looking. Delightfully understated compared to the later ones.
Most malaise-era stuff I can look at and laugh, but I strangely find myself wanting one of these.
As for the Nassau ducts, no clue. Maybe they had Pep Boys help with the design?
They did have more creative styling – now cars resemble each other much more. At that time they were trying to be cool and hip and with it.
You mean JC Whitney. I’m old enough that my Dad still called them Warshawsky’s
early ’70s Pep Boys didn’t have as much tacky custom items at that point as that Catalog did.
I picture a marketing copywriter being introduced to the Hurst Olds prototype by a tech type. When the writer points to the hood duct and asks if its real, the techie replies: Nah, it’s not. But due to a southern fried speech pattern, this came out “nahsnot” with the ending “T” pronounced as a glottal stop and not crisply by the tip of the tongue on the upper palate. And what the writer thought they heard was Nassau. Hey, that’s a neat name, they thought and wrote it down.
I’m sure it’s related to the Nassau Trophy Bahamas Speed week races back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahamas_Speed_Week
The pictured Chaparral has similar real vents on the fenders.
Ooh, I like your explanation better than mine.
I mean, yeah, it’s more likely. But your explanation rules
This is why I love this community. I knew we’d have some funny, outlandish explanations for this, but I also suspected someone would come forward with some very credible line of thought. Hard to believe your explanation isn’t correct.
I sense a new tier coming on…
Leisure suit.
The Nassau membership: for when you want to pay money so you can tell people you’re a member, but you don’t want any actual membership perks that go with it.