Junkyard Jewel: 1999 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight RHD Conversion Rural Mail Carrier

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor the imminent demise of Oldsmobile shall stay this courier from its appointed rounds.

If you get a job as a United States Postal Service rural carrier, your top three routes to a right-hand-drive work vehicle are:

1. A factory-built Jeep or Subaru made for the North American market.

2. A vehicle made for Japanese Domestic Market use, generally a Jeep.

3. A US-market vehicle converted to dual-control use via hardware of varying degrees of sketchiness.

I’ve documented multiple examples of each of those three types during my junkyard travels, but today’s Junkyard Jewel is by far the most luxurious machine of the bunch. I shot these photos at the Aurora (Colorado) U-Pull-&-Pay back in March.

The Jeep DJ-5 Dispatcher was made from 1965 through 1984, in both left- and right-hand-drive versions. Essentially a rear-wheel-drive steel box on wheels with whatever engine and automatic transmission combination was cheapest at the moment, these “mail Jeeps” were sold in huge numbers to the USPS as well as to the independent contractors who do rural mail delivery.

I’ve shot a bunch of these Dispatchers in the car graveyards of several states over the years, including a 1968 Kaiser Jeep DJ-5A with Chevy 153 power, a 1971 AM General DJ-5B with AMC 232 straight-six power, a 1972 AM General DJ-5B with AMC 232 power, another 1972 AM General DJ-5B with 232, a 1979 AM General DJ-5G with Audi 2.0 power, a 1982 AM General DJ-5L with GM Iron Duke power, and a 1983 AM General DJ-5L with another Duke under the hood.

I’ve found a couple of used-up RHD Jeep XJ Cherokees made for the US market in recent years, including this ‘01 and one I haven’t written about yet.

Chrysler built plenty of RHD XJs in the United States to sell in Japan and other drive-on-the-left countries, and some of the JDM ones make the return trip across the Pacific to deliver mail here.

You see quite a few XJs still being driven in Japan. I shot this one in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, last year.

Because Stellantis still does good business making RHD Jeeps for sale in Japan and the UK, rural mail carriers in the USA can buy them new to this day.

Subaru spent the 1990s building RHD versions of the Legacy wagon for sale in the United States (as well as to export from Indiana to Japan), and I’ve found two such cars in the boneyards. This ‘91 currently resides at the Pick-n-Pull in Sparks, Nevada, and I haven’t done an article about it yet (stay tuned for that).

I found a RHD ‘99 Legacy Outback ex-mail-carrier wagon with 431,702 miles in a Denver junkyard last year.

Then there’s the type of mail-delivery machine we’re going to look at today, after this not-so-brief junkyard RHD history lesson: the conversion that puts a steering wheel and pedals in what began life as the passenger side. For example, this 1998 Subaru Forester.

I was impressed by that Forester’s innovative turn-signal-control relocation. Plumber’s tape, what can’t it do? It’s a good thing that passenger-side airbag never fired.

A few months after I photographed that RHD-ified Forester, I spotted these door signs on… an Olds 88?

Wait, make that an Olds Eighty-Eight. The numerals 88 as the model name were used for the 1949-1988 model years, with the name spelled out for added class during the car’s final decade of production.

The final two generations of the Eighty-Eight (1986-1999) were based on the same full-size front-wheel-drive platform as the Buick LeSabre and Pontiac Bonneville.

This car is from the very last model year of the storied 88/Eighty-Eight model. Oldsmobile itself was terminated after 2004.

It appears to have been sold new in Fort Morgan, Colorado, where Philip K. Dick is buried.

The USPS contractor who was its final owner also worked out of Fort Morgan.

The engine is the good old Buick pushrod 3.8-liter V6, in this case rated at 205 horsepower and 230 pound-feet.

But what makes this car special isn’t the engine, it’s the controls. There’s a second steering wheel, an ordinary dune buggy-style aftermarket unit mounted on the right side of the dash.

This rig appears to be a reasonably high-quality aftermarket kit. You adjust the steering belt tension with a couple of hefty bolts on a big bracket, presumably while some sumo wrestler-size dude pulls on the right-side steering wheel while reaching in through the window.

There appears to be a spacer between the factory steering wheel and the column, to allow the installation of a pulley on that side.

The right-side steering wheel is much higher than the original one, so we can assume that the ex-passenger seat has some spacers on the tracks to make it sit a few inches higher.

Interestingly, the brake and throttle pedals are controlled via cables, and the adapter hardware is off to the left and thus allowing a driver in the original position to operate the controls.

The sorting tray in place of the original driver’s seat would have made that difficult, though.

The pedal control cables snake rearward.

And then do a U-turn through all the water bottles in the rear footwells, around to the extra pedals on the right side.

The build sticker says this Olds was assembled at Orion Assembly in Michigan.

So much more comfortable than a Jeep.

For more Junkyard Jewels, go HERE.

For more Oldsmobile articles, go HERE.