Oldsmobile Delta 88 – The Car’s the Star

General Motors were really getting into the absurd by the 1970s, and it’s little wonder that the resulting cars were beginning to do a little bit of shark jumping. Their output was just getting larger, and, ironically, soon saw a swathe of cost-cutting to try and compensate. That meant that the Oldsmobile’s fanciful cabins were soon infected by that oh-so-’70s phenomenon of hard plastics and budget vinyls, making the 1971 models onwards, including the Delta 88, a rather tacky, gaudy affair that sat oddly above its station in some respects, and utterly below them in others.

Sadly, as a result, these ’70s gas-guzzling monoliths have become a little forgotten…or at least, they would have, if it wasn’t for Sam Raimi. The Hollywood legend, responsible for the classic Evil Dead series, the comic-book mania-inducing Spiderman flicks with Toby McGuire and late-stage campy horror masterpiece, Drag Me To Hell, was gifted his mother’s Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale while attending Michigan University.

As we’re sure a lot of you reading this can relate, he became attached to it rather quickly. Some might say a little overly attached, as the car has gone on to appear in every single film he’s directed since. In fact, it’s become such a fixture in the Evil Dead universe that the ruddy thing has its own in-universe biography. No, really! Something about demolition derbys, the main character’s deadbeat father and sleeping with a PE teacher. We wish we could say we were lying, but we got so much Evil Dead lore in the Ash vs Evil Dead TV series that we could write a 400-page resource on the subject. We won’t, as our beloved Editor can’t afford to keep pulling out his hair whenever we submit an article, but we certainly could if given the wherewithal.

The fact is that the Oldsmobile’s first appearance was born out of necessity. When it rolled up to a secluded cabin, driven by hefty-chinned cheese machine Bruce Campbell, it did so more or less out of necessity. The first Evil Dead, for all of its enormous cultural impact, was made on an utterly tiny budget of less than $400,000 dollars. The result was that when a car was used in filming, it simply made sense for the director to use his now seven-year-old lump of American plastic. Bruce Campbell hated it, but Raimi loved it – that grubby Honey Beige colour scheme was decidedly less chic for the ’80s, but carried with it a wonderfully outdated aesthetic that rather suited his vision for Ash Williams – a brash, rather rowdy jock with a contradictory love for classical piano.

Ironically, the car was reportedly such a “hunk of junk” – to quote the film’s star – that the costs involved with keeping the thing running were more than any hire was likely to have been, especially like-for-like…if anybody in the Tennessee area was particularly hiring out Oldsmobile Deltas.

When The Evil Dead became a remarkable springboard, earning a whopping $29.4 million at the box office, Raimi seemed to decide the car was a perfect ‘Waldo’ – a little key director Easter egg that sits in every production. It’s since gained the moniker ‘The Classic’ and has appeared in 18 Sam Raimi flicks since.

Hell, in Army of Darkness – the third iteration of the rather convoluted original Trilogy – it even becomes a medieval machine of war, decked out with armour and weaponry as a suitably gaudy vessel for the increasingly hammy, chainsaw-armed catch-phrase spouter that the main character had become. I suppose being laughed at by a taxidermied deer, shooting your own sentient disembodied hand and being quite literally eaten by a portal through space and time will do that to you. It’s also appeared in video games, board games, comic books and gets possessed in the Ash Vs Evil Dead TV series (one of the funniest episodes, naturally). Quite a career then for a car with door cards made out of the same grade plastics as a Reliant Robin.

Decades later, Sam Raimi has been fairly candid about the condition of his beloved Delta 88: “The basic body and frame is still original. Well, okay, the motor is not original. Most of the working engine parts are probably not original. Some of the upholstery is not original, but it’s got the original dash and steering wheel. The body has a lot of Bondo, I admit.”

It continues to take all manner of forms too. It floated in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, was driven by Uncle Ben in Spiderman, and reportedly even appeared in his (criminally underrated, by the way) Western, The Quick and The Dead, in which it was stripped back to the chassis to take the role of a horse-drawn wagon, no doubt during one of its countless rebuilds.

While the car is much-prized by Waldo-spotters and cinema buffs alike, it’s gained a bit of a love-hate relationship with Bruce Campbell, who not only contends that Raimi’s so attached to it because of his…activities in the back seat, but that if he ever gets chance, he’s going to take his legendary chainsaw to it.

Personally, we hope that never comes to pass. A ‘sentimental hunk of old junk’ it may be, but it’s a great ambassador for that schoolkid loyalty Sam Raimi has become so known for.

The legendary comic-book-splatterfest director has always had a knack for holding on to old friends and bringing them into his projects, and perhaps that rusted-up, filler-packed, multiple-re-engined piece of Americana is a great example of his biggest trademark – being a genuinely nice guy behind some of the most iconic cinematography in Hollywood History.

Can we recommend the Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale? Maybe. It’s definitely not the best of GM’s stock, but a bit of outsized American V8 power is always bound to turn heads. It can be a bit of a shame when a car becomes synonymous with a specific film. It becomes completely overshadowed by its cinematic rep, and loses itself as a vehicle in its own right – but how can you not love what the Delta has become?

It’s gone from a big old lump of surprisingly cheap American excess into an icon of…well, a big old lump of surprisingly cheap cinematic excess. Perhaps it’s not really all that big of a transition for Oldsmobile’s less-than-beloved baby, and if you fancy one for yourself, well, you know what to do…