‘Where are they now?’ dept: 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442
Dear Classic American,
I wondered if you could help. I’m trying to track down my father-in-law’s 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442. I’ve got the registration and done the MoT check on the government website and I see it’s no longer MoT’d; apart from that, I’m at a loss. All I know is that it was a 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass 442, registration WPH 597M. According to the DVLA it was registered December 31, 1970, but I don’t know if that’s the exact age of the car as I don’t know when it was imported.
It was MoT’d until June 17, 2019 and it’s now expired, but again, I don’t know if that’s because the car is no more, or it’s exempt – you might know more than me. Oh, and my wife’s dad – which is the link – drove it around Cheam/Sutton in Surrey in the Nineties. He was very much the larger-than-life American figure by all accounts and my wife used to curl up with embarrassment as a child being driven to school in such a huge car. Her dad has sadly passed away and left no record of it, so it would mean the world to my wife if I could track it down. Thanks so much in advance Alexander Scott
London
Well Alexander, the fact it was MoT’d until last year is encouraging, as it would suggest it’s still in the UK, although it is technically exempt from the MoT test, so the owner may just be taking advantage of that exemption now. The registration date of
December 31, 1970 could be when it entered the country; by December 1970 the new model year, 1971, would have started. In a strange aberration of sense, the Department of Transport used to allocate age-related plates to vehicles based on when they were shipped into the country, rather than the actual age of the vehicle; this may explain why your father-in-law’s 4-4-2 has an M reg rather than the correct H reg for a 1970 model.
Anyone seen WPH 597M or know of its whereabouts now?