With Oldsmobile’s most powerful Rocket V8 and luxurious appointments, the 1962 Starfire was a strong seller for the Olds division, but sales faded from there.

The Starfire name has traveled around a bit in the Oldsmobile product portfolio. Its first appearance was on a four-seat, fiberglass sports car for the 1953 GM Motorama, the name no doubt inspired by the Lockheed F-94 Starfire jet aircraft. From 1954 through 1956 the Starfire was a 98 convertible, and in 1957 all 98 models bore the Starfire name. Then midway through the ’61 season, the Starfire name was reborn, this time on a specially equipped Super 88 convertible. For 1962, the Starfire was expanded into a more complete lineup with both a convertible and a Holiday Coupe.

The Starfire has often been described as an Oldsmobile version of the Pontiac Grand Prix introduced in 1962.  That’s fairly accurate in that the two General Motors products are similar in theme and appointments, but actually the Starfire came first. “An Oldsmobile original,” the brochure declared. The fabulous cockpit featured two-tone bucket seats in multiple color combinations and a long console decorated in bright metal, with a floor shifter for the automatic transmission and a 6,000 rpm electronic tachometer—attractive, but well out of the driver’s line of vision.

The Starfire’s standard and only available engine in ’62 was Oldsmobile’s best, rated at 345 hp at 4,600 rpm (so much for the 6,000 rpm tach) and 440 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm. The 1949 Rocket V8 had now grown from 303 to 394 cubic inches on the original architecture, close to the practical limit. With a 10.5:1 compression ratio, a sportier camshaft, low-restriction dual exhausts, and a Rochester 4GC carburetor, the Starfire V8 achieved the highest power rating ever for the first-generation Rocket V8. However, the only transmission offered in the Starfire was the 4-S Roto-Hydramatic, also known as the “Slim Jim,” not the most well-regarded among GM automatic transmissions.

By offering both a convertible and a hardtop coupe in 1962, Oldsmobile greatly expanded the potential market for the Starfire. Of the nearly 42,000 produced in  ’62, not quite 35,000 were hardtops. The Starfire continued in the lineup through 1966, though it sold in ever lower numbers every season. In the final year, when only a hardtop was offered, just 13,000 cars were produced. The Starfire name would appear one more time at Oldsmobile on a compact hatchback, a mildly facelifted Chevy Monza offered in 1975-80.