Week 19: '71 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser

Wood Panels! So real looking, woodpeckers keep landing on that car!

That was a joke we made about a used car with wood paneling on the lot during my four-month stint as a car salesman sometime at the beginning of the 90s. I don't remember the vehicle -- I think it was a van.

My four-year-old son saw the above Matchbox before I removed it from the package and asked me why there was wood on the side. I did not have an answer for him.

The car was a novelty to my kids, not only for the seemingly pointless woodgrain strip, but also for the skylight, and because they had not heard the term "station wagon."   Station wagon sounded exotic.

But honestly, what could be more exotic than an Oldsmobile (Daddy, what is an Oldsmobile?) Vista Cruiser, a vehicle so hip Bill Gates named an operating system after it?* (*Before I get sued, I should mention that I  have no proof whatsoever that Microsoft Vista was named after this vehicle, but it's a pretty good theory, isn't it? Nonetheless, just to be safe, I moved the footnote up from the bottom to here.)

Listen, kids, let me tell you, that vehicle sported a 350 cubic inch V8 engine, and if you wanted to really out fly the woodpeckers, you could get a 455 cubic inch V8 as an option. Now I might have only been eight years old when the real thing was out, but I remember that vehicle. Oh yes, I remember.

And I remember wondering why is there wood on the side of that car?

I find this car cool now, in that awkward, kitschy kind of way, and I wonder if minivans will attain that retro cool mystique for my kids when they become adults.

I'm fairly certain they won't.

So fear not, wood-paneled Matchbox, and take your place proudly among the muscle cars and luxury vehicles in the Daddy's Matchbox lineup.

You are cool in my world, and the world of my kids.

And because I've found a Matchbox car that has little plastic dogs in the back, I am cool in theirs.


(Trivia: The vehicle that gets crushed at the beginning of the Chevy Chase classic Vacation is a 1971 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.)


This hot ride was from the 2010 Matchbox Heritage Classics collection. Photo courtesy of Phil Pekarcik.