BY 1972, the prolific muscle car wars of the late ’60s were coming to a close. Gas prices and insurance rates, along with the EPA’s blossoming emissions standards, were a cataclysmic one, two, three punch, putting a boa constrictor grip on the performance car market that had flourished just a few years before. Popular models were being cut, or even worse, turned into detuned daily drivers, declawed, and stripped of their once infamous powertrains.
However, it wasn’t quite over yet in 1972. There was still a glimmer of light shining out of each of the Big Three and into their respective dealerships for that model year. With a little browsing, you could get a taste of the excitement that had been running rampant just a couple of years prior. Yes, there were still a few performance rides out there; you just had to dig a little deeper to get to the good stuff that was being buried in the manufacturers’ literature.
For ’72, Oldsmobile dropped the 442 as a standalone model, making it an option on some of that year’s Cutlass variants.
