This Wacky Bubble-Top Oldsmobile Was a Local Legend. Now It’s on Copart

Of all the custom cars built over the years, relatively few stick around long enough to become legends. I wouldn’t put this red-white-and-blue, double-bubble top Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme on the same level as a Gene Winfield special, but by golly, it’s something. And because I drove by it at least once a month for years, it has a special place in my brain and maybe even my heart. That’s why it hurts to see it in a state of disrepair at our local Copart lot.

I wouldn’t expect most people to know anything about this car. It’s more of a local legend where I live in the Ozarks than some nationally recognized show winner. But a recent post in the Radwood Facebook group made me do a double take as I saw that unmistakable livery and see-through roof fly across my screen.

See, this car sat at Public Park & Sell Auto Mall in Joplin, Missouri, for many moons. Every gearhead around here remembers seeing it. It even made its rounds on Twitter a while back when I gladly told my coworkers, “Hey! That’s not far from me!” You get excited over the little things when you’re from where I’m from.

Anywho, as you can see on Google Earth’s historical views of the address, it was parked proudly at the front corner of the lot in June 2017. For what it’s worth, it might have been there even earlier. I never talked with the owner but my guess is he bought it to draw attention to his store. And while it didn’t leave that spot for years, I’m pretty sure it was technically for sale the whole time.

You can see in the attached screenshots that sometime around June 2019, it was moved to a different spot, right along the front of the store instead of immediately beside Main Street. I seem to remember it hopping around from one place to another, though I never saw it anywhere but Public Park & Sell. It was a fixture, just like the yellow VW Beetle fountain at Volk’s Avanti Insurance Agency right up the road.

At some point, the Oldsmobile just went away. I can’t remember exactly when, but Google Earth seems to show that it was sometime before May 2023. I definitely noticed its absence but I assumed that someone had finally bought it—and who could blame them? It’s cool, man.

I hadn’t thought much about the car until I saw it Friday in that Facebook post. It actually told me a few things I didn’t know. For starters, I had no idea what was under the hood, but the ad says it’s a 3.8-liter V6. As it turns out, it was also the pull car for the original Shockwave jet truck that toured the country doing exhibition runs before crashing in 2022. How neat is that!

Now it’s ready to be put out to pasture, with Copart listing the primary damage as “top/roof.” That checks out as I can’t imagine those bubbles hold up well to the hail we get. It’s in Fayetteville, Arkansas, now with an estimated retail value of $6,982. I’m not sure who will pay that much, but I can tell you two things: It won’t be me, and I hope whoever buys it enjoys it very much.

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