Oh, come on now. I'll forgive your naivity since you are so young.
No small block 442 ever blew the doors off of any small block '67-'69 Camaro. If your talking big blocks and the 455 W-30 for the 442, then lets talk ss369 or 427cid options for the Camaro (if you gotta quote Litres, then you ain't talking muscle.....).. iirc there were only 50 or so 350hp W-30 442's made by the factory. The 100 or so done by dealer's were hack jobs. The 68 455 W-30 Hurst/Olds 442 clocks a quarter mile in 13.37secs @ 104 mph. The 69 427 LZI Camaro screams through at 13.16 secs and 110 mph. Sorry
I repeat. The
Cutlass never is, never was a muscle car. It weighed a ton, handled like a bathtub and wouldn't stop for nothing. The 442 came along in response to the Pontiac GTO. While the 442 tried its best to be a muscle car, it was just a glorified gas guzzling tank. With the exception of the rare W-30, it wasn't until the '70's "Dr. Olds" 455ci version that the 442 was even viable. But the cars were still too heavy. By then it was too little too late. The Clean Air Act's 1970 revision pretty well sealed the fate of muscle.
(The first car I drove as a kid was a BMW 320i we bought at the factory in Munich and brought back with us when we returned from our stay in Europe.
)The first American car I drove (when I was 15) was the 442 my Dad talked my Mom into using as her car. With the money I saved from an after school and weeked job, I bought a used '69 350 Camaro w/Muncie 3 speed sleeper for $900 my junior year in high school. (That setup held the stock record for the 1/4 mile for its class for quite some time...not my car though, mind you). I spent many a night under the hood or prepping for the new paint job of the year. Coincidently, I sold the car only about 4 years ago. Me and that car had been coast to coast, southern border to northern border. A lot of good memories gone (in exchange for a lot of good cash
)
There were only a few cars I feared on Friday nights. I stayed clear of '69 302 Z/28's (with the smog pumps removed), the 426 hemi 'Cuda's and (believe it or not) '69 AMC Javelin's. The Javelin's were rare, but you were better off passing on a race with one of them. Chrysler had some good ones, but most were too finicky or the owner's unable to tune them. The Muncie 3 speed and 3:73 rear end required a 4 speed jockey to be perfect. I stayed in first while they shifted from first to second. If they were any competion, they might get a nose on me when they hit second. About the time they shifted into 3rd, I hit second (iirc that was generally around 40-45mph). The race was all mine from then on. While they languished in 3rd the 3speed was just hitting the peak of its torque curve at 3200 rpm.......see ya later......
Every car maker had their muscle. Sadly Oldsmobile had a hard time stepping up to the plate with the 442. The family's Cutlass was a nice and luxurious ride. Compensation for eating dust I suppose.
I'm not knocking your car. The Cutlass (preferably with bucket seats and a console shifter though) was a nice ride and impressed the ladies). I hope you do the engine and body work yourself. It makes the whole experience so much more rewarding.
Floyd
(Oh, yeah. If you need a Quadrajet mechanic, I'm your man. They pass more cfm's and are more tuneable to a particular engine's power/torque curve than most give them credit for. I may have to dust off a few manuals, but lord knows I re-tuned many a one).