77toronado

I came across a 98 in a junkyard that had a '74 - '76 dash with a speedminder cluster. I nabbed the dash stuff along with the remaining pieces of the door mounted mirror thermometer system to add to my '77 Toronado (Toronado kept that '74 style dash through '78)

I was surprised that the 1977 Olds Service Manual didn't mention speedminder at all.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know when that option went away for the full size Oldsmobiles? Due to impending black sky downpour, I didn't dig through all of the pine straw for a peek at the vin or the numbers off of the tail lights.

Thanks

jaunty75

The Speed Minder is mentioned as an option on full-size Oldsmobiles in the '75 full-line Olds brochure, but there's no mention of it in the '76 brochure. My guess is that it just quietly went away because more and more people were getting cruise control and thus didn't see the need for the Speedminder.

I remember when I was a teenager we had both '71 and then '73 Custom Cruisers that had both cruise and speedminder because my Dad had to have every option. But the speedminder was pretty much never used while the cruise control was used all the time. I remember that the '71 was the first car we ever had that had cruise control, and we kids used to like watching the gas pedal go up and down all by itself whenever my father set it.

I also remember we had a '67 Vista Cruiser that didn't have cruise but did have speedminder, and my Dad used it all the time as he recognized that he was somewhat of a leadfoot at times. He got pulled over once for doing 80 in a 65 zone when we were on a trip to Florida, and he told the officer that he lost track of his speed because he was distracted by the beautiful scenery in this beautiful state. The officer didn't buy it.

If I'm correct about the last year for it, that would mean that the dash cluster you found could not be from a '76 car.

77toronado

Thanks, Jaunty. I haven't checked for font differences yet, but was originally going to use the 98's dash since my car doesn't have a trip odometer. At least now I know what year(s) to look for info.

I had speed minder on my '63 Grand Prix, so I knew what that extra needle meant. I just didn't know at the time that it had been discontinued prior to my '77 Toronado.

Decisions, decisions.

Thanks for the clarification.

jaunty75

I always wonder why people avoid such inexpensive but potentially useful options on these cars. The base price of a '77 Toronado XS was $10,383. You've just decided to spend that much money on a car in 1977, which was a huge amount of money for a car back then (equivalent to about $45,000 today), but you couldn't fork out another $37 (0.36%) for the combined trip odometer/fuel economy meter option? I can see that the economy meter was a bit of a gimmick, but I've always found trip odometers to be useful.

Neither of my cars has the trip odometer/economy meter. Cheapskates!

Devoking

My 76 98 Regency has the speed minder on it.

jaunty75

Not surprising. They didn't list every last option in the sales brochures. You'd have to look in a dealer album or specs book.

For '77, the speed minder was not offered in the 98. I do have the dealer album for that year. It's interesting in that, for the 98 (and Delta 88 and Custom Cruiser), the trip odometer and fuel economy meter were offered as separate options, $11 for the trip odometer and $27 for the fuel economy meter. That's $38 for both.

In the case of the '77 Toronado, the two options were offered together for a price of $37. If you wanted one, you got both. But you saved a dollar!