10/23/2026
🎃 Feature Friday: The Classic
The 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88
Not every horror icon has to have a chainsaw, a creepy face, or an evil personality.
Sometimes it's just a big, yellowish-brown Oldsmobile that refuses to die. 😂
Meet “The Classic” — Sam Raimi's 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale.
The car first appeared in Raimi's 1981 horror classic The Evil Dead, where it belongs to Ash Williams, played by Bruce Campbell. Ash and his friends take the Oldsmobile out to an isolated cabin in the woods, where they discover the Necronomicon and accidentally unleash a whole lot of demonic trouble.
And that's where our Halloween connection comes in. 👻
The Oldsmobile isn't just a random movie car. It became one of Sam Raimi's trademarks. The same 1973 Delta 88 has appeared throughout the Evil Dead films and in numerous other Raimi productions. Raimi's family originally owned the car, and it was already being used in some of his early filmmaking before The Evil Dead.
🚗 What was it in real life?
The 1973 Delta 88 was a full-size American cruiser powered by Oldsmobile's Rocket V8. The standard engine was a 350, with a 455 available as an option.
So while Ash's Oldsmobile spends its movie career dealing with Deadites, demons and supernatural chaos, the real car was basically designed to haul people around town in enormous amounts of 1970s comfort.
Which somehow makes it even funnier.
👀 Fun Fact
The car has survived so many cinematic beatings that Bruce Campbell once joked about how difficult it was to get rid of it.
And when Evil Dead II was being filmed, the original car was actually transported from Michigan to North Carolina on a flatbed because it wasn't running.
After more than four decades of horror movies, The Classic is still showing up.
So this Halloween, remember:
You don't need a scary car.
You just need an Oldsmobile that has seen some things. 😂🎃
