Luxury and quality are the themes in this posh marketing pitch for the 1966 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight.

The jewelry box is a familiar gimmick in automotive marketing over the years, and here it’s used to fine effect to pitch the attributes of the luxurious 1966 OIdsmobile Ninety-Eight. First offered in 1941, the Ninety-Eight—rendered as 98 in some model years—was the flagship of the Oldsmobile division at General Motors for decades, all the way through 1996. Five body styles were offered for 1966: a Holiday two-door hardtop, a convertible, and a trio of four-door sedans, all based on the GM C-body package shared with Buick and Cadillac and sprawled out on a spacious 126-inch wheelbase. Under the hood was a freshly designed 425 CID V8 introduced just the year before.

Priced at $3,996 to $4,443, the Ninety-Eight featured virtually all the same deluxe equipment as the Cadillac DeVille, and with all the familiar luxury appointments and styling elements, we note, but at a significantly lower price: around $1,500 less than Cadillac. As we take in the posh atmosphere of this original Oldsmobile commercial spot, we can almost see the smoke coming out of the ears of the Cadillac management team. Oldsmobile, along with Buick, Pontiac, and even Chevrolet, too, were now openly poaching on Cadillac’s traditional luxury-class territory. While this couldn’t be called a positive development for Cadillac. this blurring of the traditional boundaries among GM car brands worked well enough for Oldsmobile, as the Lansing division actually gained market share in ’66, a lackluster year for the rest of the Motor CIty. Now let’s see what’s in the box. Video follows.

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