Minneapolis Street Sighting: Oldsmobile Cutlass F-85

Here in the Midwest, Oldsmobiles tend to be somewhat common; I've seen a boatload of models spanning the brand's extensive history, but even so, a few models have escaped me until recently. The Cutlass moniker has been used on a vast array of drive configurations
and bodystyles; but what some Oldsmobile enthusiasts may not know, is that the Cutlass didn't always start out as a "economy luxury car.
The F-85 was supposedly labeled as a "sporty variant", but with a meager 215 cube V8, it was anything but. According to Car Life magazine, 60 miles per hour came in a rather bleak 14.5 seconds, and it tripped the quarter mile in just under 22 secods. Hardly performance by anyone's standards. As luck would have it, the F-85 moniker was dropped after the 1964 model year due to faltering sales.
As the years went by, the Cutlass got bigger, and bigger, and the absence of a smaller Oldsmobile Cutlass was quite evident. With the rise of fuel-conscious cars appearing in the 1980s, GM saw room to add what would become one of the most widely known (and successful) addition to the Cutlass lineup--the front-wheel-drive Ciera. Produced from 1982-1996, this bread and butter medium-compact made up the bulk of Oldsmobile sales during its entire production run; it would also represent the first "little" Cutlass in about 20 years since F-85 ceased production.










As readers can plainly see, this example wears quite the patina; rust and faded paint adhere to this vehicle like a fruit fly does a restaurant wall. Although most "patina'd" cars are quite deliberate, this alley-parked F-85 doesn't appear to be an act of deliberate "weathering". Rather, it looks as if it was freshly pulled from an outdoor resting spot.
The paint appears mostly solid, and the surface rust appears relatively minor; the trim, too, is in fairly good shape considering its age. I doubt trim pieces for a first-generation Cutlass of any sort are very easy to find. All the glassware (including the headlights and taillights) are in impeccable shape and free of any sort of damage. As far as I'm concerned, this particular car would be a great restoration candidate; no immediate damage, rust isn't overly ruining the metalwork, and its complete enough that restoration shouldn't be too difficult.
I've never seen one of this generation till now, and I think it needs to be saved. Even though the 1968-1972 cars are more common, and the 1978-1988 cars catching up quickly, there's still room in the Oldsmobile hobby for a few of these; I just wish more people would think of saving these.