South Mountain Raceway – When you hang around nostalgia events, you often run across people fiercely loyal to their preferred brand of automobile. A lot of early drag racing attendance centered around the Ford vs. Chevy vs. Mopar dynamic. Then there are others who are driving in a different lane. One of those people is Terry Bobb, who is firmly and unashamedly an Oldsmobile guy. Being a bit of an Oldsmobile guy myself, I asked Terry Bobb when he got interested in Oldsmobiles and his answer was a simple one. “Since the beginning of time, since I was hatched.”

Terry credits his grandfather as a big influence in his love of cars remarking, “He worked on them and I was his helper. My grandfather was actually into Pontiacs and things like that. My first ride in an Oldsmobile, my aunt had a ‘68 W-31. 4-speed car. I rode in that. The garage where my dad took his car to gave him a loaner car once. The loaner car was a ‘55 88. Talk about a car that was fun! Even though I was a little kid, I still remember that car. I’ve had a lot of Oldsmobiles in my day, a lot of Cutlasses, all different years. I had an Olds Omega with a big block in it for awhile. It surprised a lot of people.”

Terry’s current race car is a 1965 Olds 442. Under the hood resides a 455 engine which Bobb states is actually a 461 now. Behind that engine is a Turbo 350, full-race transmission coupled to a 12-bolt Chevelle rear with 3.90 gears in it. According to Terry, “It’s an alright combination. I’ve owned this car since 2014. I got permission to put the Shaull Olds name on the side, I used to work there. It’s a tribute to the car Shaull Olds once sponsored in ‘65. I built a lot of it. Everything. The roll bar was the only thing in it when I got it. It was a roller when I got it. At one time it had a big block Chevy in it with a 4-speed. This car is solid for what it is. The hoods are usually rotted out, but not this one. They got on my case when I did that (pointing to a hole he cut in the hood), but I said ‘you know what? I have to have something that will clear my carburetor.’ But I saved that part. I do have it. I can weld it back in if I ever want to put it back. It still runs drum brakes. It usually runs 12 flat in the quarter mile at 106 mph.”

While his love of Oldsmobiles is a bit off of the automotive norm, Terry Bobb doesn’t limit his auto obsession there. He’s putting together an Orphan Car Show Oct. 12^th at South Mountain in honor of all those cars out there a lot of folks overlook, or as he calls it, “Oddball stuff.” Sounds like it would be a good time to check out his Oldsmobile along with a lot of other cars that you don’t normally see.