{"id":33074,"date":"2025-01-24T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carandclassic.com\/magazine\/?p=33074"},"modified":"2025-01-22T11:19:39","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T11:19:39","slug":"oldsmobile-delta-88-the-cars-the-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carandclassic.com\/magazine\/oldsmobile-delta-88-the-cars-the-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Oldsmobile Delta 88 – The Car\u2019s the Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

General Motors were really getting into the absurd by the 1970s, and it\u2019s 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<\/a>\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Oldsmobile,<\/a><\/p>\n

Sadly, as a result, these ’70s gas-guzzling monoliths have become a little forgotten\u2026or at least, they would have, if it wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale while attending Michigan University.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s directed since. In fact, it\u2019s become such a fixture in the Evil Dead universe that the ruddy thing has its own in-universe biography. No, really!<\/a> Something about demolition derbys, the main character\u2019s 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\u2019t, as our beloved Editor can\u2019t afford to keep pulling out his hair whenever we submit an article, but we certainly could if given the wherewithal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The fact is that the Oldsmobile\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"Oldsmobile,<\/a><\/p>\n

Ironically, the car was reportedly such a “hunk of junk” – to quote the film\u2019s star – that the costs involved with keeping the thing running were more than any hire was likely to have been, especially like-for-like\u2026if anybody in the Tennessee area was particularly hiring out Oldsmobile Deltas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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 \u2018Waldo\u2019 – a little key director Easter egg that sits in every production. It\u2019s since gained the moniker \u2018The Classic\u2019 and has appeared in 18 Sam Raimi flicks since.<\/p>\n

\"Oldsmobile,<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s also appeared in video games, board games, comic books and gets possessed<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n