The Olds Motor Company produced its first cars in 1897, and over the course of the next century the company grew and prospered, celebrating its 100th birthday in September of 1997. A short three years later, however, parent company General Motors announced that the Oldsmobile brand, the oldest marque sold in America at the ripe old age of 103, would be killed. Analysts and industry observers have blamed weak product for the division's demise, but whatever the reason, the beloved “rocket” will be sorely missed by many.

Among these fans of the venerable Oldsmobile is Batavia, New York’s Dave Laurer. General Motors may have given up on the famous old brand, but Laurer is determined to keep the Olds name alive in the drag racing world for as long as possible.

The 36 year-old engineer’s love affair with the company best known for big, powerful highway cruisers began back in 1985, when he purchased Oldsmobile’s contribution to the muscle car craze, a 1974 4-4-2.

In 1964 Oldsmobile began to offer full-size muscle in its mid-size Cutlass model with the introduction of the 4-4-2. The package included the top engine available from Oldsmobile, a 330 cid V8 with the police package. It was originally named 4-4-2 to signify the engine's 4 barrel carburetor, 4 speed manual transmission and dual exhausts. Although the specifications would change through the years, the name stuck.

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Of course, Dave’s Olds was one produced at the very end of the factory-built performance era, as government, insurance and the oil companies by then had successfully collaborated to drive the kings of horsepower off the roads of North America.

But then-high school student Laurer couldn’t have cared less about the historical significance of his car - it was his first, and he loved it. Little did he realize at the time that his first car would still be with him nearly 20 years later, and running faster than any stock 4-4-2 ever came close to, even in the halcyon days of the 1960s.

“I drove the car every day, back and forth to school,” Laurer said. “I had always been interested in cars, of course, but it was a shop teacher that I had who got me interested in drag racing. He campaigned a top alcohol dragster, and after going to a couple of races with him I got the bug.

“I was still driving the car every day after I got into college, but I started slowly making changes to it, and eventually it became a car that I only drove on the weekends to have a little fun with at the local cruising spots,” Laurer continued. “In fact, I used to hang out with a bunch of guys that I would ultimately end up racing with in the National Street Car Association. Patrick Budd, Randy Jewell and Bill Travato were just a few of them.”

After doing the mandatory cruising-the-local-drive-in thing for a while, Laurer eventually took his first stab at organized competition, as he recalled: “I started doing some bracket racing at local drag strips, but I soon got tired of that. I wanted to race heads-up, so by the mid-1990s I was running Easy Street in what was then known as the National Muscle Car Association or NMCA. At the time I had a 455-inch big block in the car, but had lots of trouble keeping it together. They just weren’t strong enough, and the blocks would actually split in half. In 1999 I went to the small block that I use now, and it was a great improvement. When the NMCA and NSCA merged, they dropped the Easy Street class and I then went to NSCA Limited Street. These days I also run in the Easy Street class that the Ontario Street Car Association has in Canada.”

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Now, in the ranks of organized Street Car racing these days, the sight of big, full-size factory “boats” out on the ‘strip is not at all unusual, but in the case of Laurer’s car there is one very notable exception - this machine hikes the front wheels high and runs the quarter in eight seconds with pure Oldsmobile power under the hood! While there are likely dozens of other easy to build and maintain powerplant options available, Laurer would never consider anything but the real thing for his fan-favorite white and gold-striped hauler.

Dave proudly discussed the details of his hard-charging wonder car, saying, “the engine is a 427-inch small block which is built on a NASCAR block, which is actually based on an Oldsmobile diesel block with the injector pump and other diesel components removed. These blocks have the same bore and external interfaces as the gas engine block, but have higher nickel content and are significantly heavier duty, with much thicker cylinder walls, main webs and so on.

“There were around 300 of these blocks made, and they’re real 80s technology, as are the Batten cylinder heads, of which six or seven hundred sets were made,” Laurer continued. “The Edelbrock intake is another relatively rare item - there were probably around five or six hundred of them made, also back in the 1980s. Everybody likes to talk about old school these days, well, this engine is as old school as it gets.’

The obvious question is how in the heck does he keep it running so well with 20-year-old components that just aren’t available at the local parts house?

“Well, this stuff is getting extremely hard to find, so if I have any major breakage I’m dead in the water until I can track down the parts I need to make repairs,” Laurer confirmed. “Right now I have an extra set of heads, an intake and a block on hand, and I’ll be buying another block in the near future. It usually takes a year or more to find any of these parts, and it took me two years to locate the new block I’m buying. There’s no such thing as calling the parts supplier and having something shipped overnight. When I find something I need I grab it, because I may not find another one for years!”

The engine also uses many modern parts, naturally, and Laurer described the induction system he utilizes as an example. “We use a stock Holley 1050 Dominator carburetor and a Nitrous Express Direct Port nitrous system. I also run the new nitrous solenoids developed by Bill Travato at BTR Performance. Bill’s another Oldsmobile guy, and he’s recently begun to market these new solenoids that out-flow everything else currently available. On top of that, they only draw one amp of power, so it’s quite a significant improvement.”

It appears that whatever Laurer is doing, he’s doing it right, as the big Olds seems to respond very well to judicious massaging and tweaking. “Last year the engine produced 1,340 horsepower, and I’m expecting it to make in the neighborhood of 1,400 this season,” he said. “We increased the compression a little over the winter, and did some minor head work as well. We’re going to make a cam change soon, and that should get us where we want to be.”

Getting all that power to the rear wheels and then to the ground is a necessary requirement, of course, and the straight-cut powerglide transmission and custom torque converter built by Competition Transmission does a great job for Dave.

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Moving on to the chassis, Laurer said “I have done 100% of the chassis work myself. The back end uses a ladder bar, coil-overs and double-adjustable Strange shocks. The front uses mainly stock components, with Moroso Trick Springs and Competition Engineering shocks.

“We run a 4:56 Richmond Pro gear, and even though it sounds kind of crazy, I still have a stock GM 12-bolt rear-end housing with Strange components under the car,” he added. “I’ve been able to learn some things over the years and been pretty successful in keeping the thing in one piece. I had some trouble with broken axle tubes and gear sets in the past, but over the last two years, knock on wood, it’s been real reliable. It’s lighter than a nine-inch, and it takes less power to turn it, so even though a lot of people think I’m nuts, I’m going to leave it in the car for now.”

Rounding out the package, the big Olds depends on Wilwood disc brakes all around to whoa everything down at the end of a run.

As mentioned, the car has been known to put on some pretty spectacular aerial displays, hanging the front wheels way up off the racing surface. In spite of the pounding the Olds appears to take, this tough old hot rod has never suffered anything more than a broken shock, a dented oil pan or a slightly crushed header in all its years of competition. In spite of the fan appeal and photo ops the wheelies elicit, however, it appears they may be a thing of the past according to Laurer.

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“We’re actually trying to keep the car tamed down a little more this year,” he said. “We tightened up the rear suspension and lowered the car all around over the winter, so hopefully it won’t do the big wheelies, which the fans really like but which also unfortunately hurt elapsed times.”

Laurer’s Olds has run a best elapsed time and mile-per-hour of 8.52, 161, but that was last season when the car weighed in at 3,260 lbs. After going on a “diet” over the winter, the 30-year-old beauty is now a svelte 3,140 pounds, and Laurer has high hopes for her greatly improved performance. His short term goal is to dip into the 8.20s this season, which he said should be a “walk in the park,” and then go for the “teens.”

As far as the future goes, Laurer is contemplating a couple of options. He knows his beloved 4-4-2 is far from the ideal platform in terms of weight and aerodynamics as he looks to pick up speed and elapsed times. In that respect, he has put a far amount of time into thinking about converting the machine to turbo power for the Super Street wars, which would be very interesting. He is also thinking about building a front wheel conversion Olds Alero or an older Starfire.

If he does make such a move, it could provide an excellent opportunity for his most important crew member to get behind the wheel as well. Dave’s wife Shannon is as dedicated to the sport as her husband, and she readily admits that she shares her husband’s sickness. Judging from the identical Oldsmobile logos she and Dave have tattooed on their backs, it’s pretty obvious she isn’t exaggerating at all.

Shannon is an instrumental part of the team’s racing effort and Dave will tell you right up front that without her help and support he could never do what he does in the sport of drag racing. Now, there is a chance that her dedication to Dave’s efforts may pay off for her, as there’s a chance we may someday soon see her out on the track in NSCA competition alongside Dave.

“If I do build another car, then Shannon can race the 4-4-2 in something like the American Muscle class in NSCA,” Laurer explained. “She really likes to drive the ’86 Monte Carlo street car we have. It has a 400-inch small block in it and she races it from time to time, but she’d like to step up to something a little quicker. I think it would be great for her to get out here and have some fun racing right along with me, so we’re going to see how it works out.”

In order to finance his racing, Dave works as an engineer at a division of Motorola that manufactures air pressure sensors, MAP sensors, fuel pressure sensors, transmission control modules and lots more for the automotive market. “It’s a demanding job, and there are times I work up to 80 hours a week,” Laurer said. “I’ve been there 11 years, though, and I’m the lead engineer, so when I need to take some time off to go racing they are very accommodating; it works out well.”

Working in the high-tech field that he does has also yielded other benefits for Laurer, who has recently designed and built a state-of-the-art instrument which may greatly help engine builders and tuners in the near future. “In my ‘spare time’ I have designed a digital fuel pressure gauge which I’ve just started to market, Laurer explained. “It’s used for doing fuel pressure tests on nitrous systems. I found that analog gauges were often inaccurate and hard to read, so I built a better one on my one. It’s accurate to a hundredth of a PSI and reacts to barometric pressure changes the same as a fuel pressure regulator would. It’s much more accurate and much more repeatable than an analog gauge, and it’ll react to air pressure changes. Hopefully this gauge will fill a void in the market, because I think it’s something that’s long overdue.”

Laurer knows that he wouldn’t be able to do the things he does without the help and support of many people and companies, and he wanted to be sure that the following received the recognition they deserve: Bill Travato at BTR Performance, Competition Transmission, Nitrous Express, Straightline Performance, Oldsmobile Performance Products and Carl McQuillen Racing Engines.

He went on to explain that long-time friend and fellow Oldsmobile racer Bill Travato has been particularly helpful. “Bill manufacturers the new nitrous solenoids that I use, as mentioned, and he also does cylinder head work, transmission work, competition engine design, blueprinting and assembly. Not just on Oldsmobile stuff, of course, but on everything out there. I’ve been trying to help him out as much as I can this year, and hopefully down the road it may turn into a joint venture for us.”

However it goes for Dave Laurer, it’s a safe bet that whatever he drives in the future will have a rocket on it somewhere. As a popular ad from the days when his car was new said - he’d rather fight than switch!