Penny is FOR SALE
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| Penny in front of the Sunol Station of the Niles Canyon Railway. |
Lynn and Jeanne are seeking a good home for Penny, our 1938 Oldsmobile L-38 Business Coupe. The car has given us great service (see this page for a list of our adventures with the car), but we find that our use has declined markedly over the last year. In our opinion, old cars do best when they are regularly used instead of sitting in a garage. Consequently we're actively looking for a new owner.
If you would like to talk about the car, or schedule an appointment to see her, please contact Paul McCann (925-699-5398, paul@trivalleyclassics.com).
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| Some exterior views of Penny. (Click on a thumbnail and use the embedded controls to scroll through all the photos on this page.) |
We have documented the ownership of the car since it was new, and continue to communicate with one of the former owners. See this document for a thumbnail sketch, statistics and specifications of the car. Note that this is one of only 1098 L-38 Business Coupes originally produced. We don't know how many others, if any, survive.
As of early April, 2010, the car has 34,199 miles on the odometer. We don't know if this is an accurate measure of the total miles on the car. When we acquired the car in October, 2006, there were 27,883 miles on the odometer. (We've put 6,310 miles on the car in four years that we've owned it).
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| Some shots of Penny's interior. |
Major work that we've done on the car includes: new running boards; period correct add-on FRAM oil filter; new Firestone wide white-wall tires; complete rewiring of the car; complete replacement of brakes, wheel cylinders, master cylinder, brake lines; bright headlights run off switch relays; amber driving lights run off a switch relay; turn signals with removable/socketed corneer lights; powder coated wheels; bright rings; new replica battery; year-of-manufacture CA plates; seat/shoulder belts; wolf whistle.
We have many spare parts for the car including an extra rear axle with a 3.55:1 differential, carburetor, distributor, fuel pump, water pump, water heater, hubcaps. We have a couple storage boxes full of literature on the car including original sales brochures, owners manual, service manual, salesman manuals. (The differential in the car has the stock 4.38:1 gears for a standard manual transmission. The 3.55:1 differential is from the automatic-transmission version of the car. While the car with the 4.38 gears will happily cruise on the interstate highway at 65 MPH, installing the 3.55 gears would make for still better highway travel.)
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| The engine compartment. |
The car looks and runs great. There are some small blisters under the paint around the drivers door which is the most significant cosmetic issue with the car. The car does drip some oil from the rear main engine seal (which we replaced, once). The clutch (which was soaked with oil before we replace the rear main engine seal) will slip if pushed hard. We should have taken the clutch out and cleaned or replaced it, but the slippage hasn't been bad enough for us to go through that effort, yet.
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| Here are Penny's biggest cosmetic issues -- two places where the paint has blistered. |
The car has been the winner of many awards -- see Penny's awards page for a fairly complete list. One of the awards we're most proud of is the "Best NorCal Olds" award that we received in 2007 at the OCA (Oldsmobile Club of America) Pacific SW Zone Show. The car has been "Best of Class" at two OCA Zone Shows. The car is well known by many members of the NorCal Chapter of the OCA.
Over the years we have driven the car on many local tours and on two AACA National Tours (2007 Santa Rosa, CA; 2009 Sonoma, CA). We've driven the car to, from and on the two AACA National Tours (for a distance of about 500 miles per tour). After the 2009 AACA Tour, we drove the car to Yosemite National Park before returning home. For the 2008 OCA Zone Show in Morro Bay, California, we drove the car to and from the show (about 500 miles round trip). The car has always been reliable on tours for us.
One of the more interesting adventures we had with the car involves it's appearance in a local production of A Christmas Story. For a scene in the play, the car and actors were recorded on video tape that was played back during the live performances. (If you recall the story, there's a scene wherein the family is driving in their Oldsmobile when they get a flat tire. The "Old Man" prides himself on how fast he can change a tire, pretending that he's at an auto race. "Ralphie" tries to help but winds up loosing the lug nuts, saying the "F" word and getting his mouth washed out with soap.)
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Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Lynn Kissel
Last updated: Aug. 3, 2011