![\"'53](\"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/RJ151-Olds-Photo-01.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Driving a big \u201853 Olds Super 88 sedan over Mexican roads at speeds up to 138 mph is no picnic, but Ed Gut\u2019s car completed La Carrera Panamericana – an epic Mexican road race – revival four consecutive times between 1994 and 1997. That was before Mark Gosh of Pittsville, Wis., bought the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cEd and his son Mike built the car in the early \u201890s,\u201d Gosh told Racing Junk<\/em>. \u201cIt was one of probably three cars out of 100 that drove from Chicago to the start of the race in southern Mexico, raced the 1,900-mile course and drove back to Chicago. And they did that all four times.\u201d<\/p>\n During the revival of the Mexican Road Races (the original races took place in the early \u201850s), this Olds finished as high as 10th<\/sup> overall out of 76 entries. It also came in third in the Turismo Major class.<\/p>\n Gosh bought the car from Roger Schmutzer, an old hot rodder from Wausau, Wis., who had rescued it after the Guts let it sit several years. Gosh first saw the Olds at the Iola Car Show and started a conversation that led to his buying it. He did some minor modifications to make the car run better.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, it\u2019s ready to run to California tomorrow,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was modified for endurance, not for speed, although it did reach 138 mph at one point during one race.\u201d<\/p>\n The Oldsmobile also crashed during another race. It went into a roadside ditch and still has the dent to prove it. Under the hood, the Olds has a Chevrolet ZZ3 350 V-8 that puts out about 345 hp. Behind it is a Turbo 400 automatic transmission with a shift kit and a Buick 10-bolt rear. The car has disc brakes up front and stabilizers at the rear. It has cruise control that was added to make the long trips to and from Chicago more comfortable.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were thinking about the ride,\u201d said Gosh. \u201cSo, they put some bucket seats in there from a Mazda RX7.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo build a car for the race, you have to make certain modifications,\u201d Gosh explained. \u201cYou can go to the La Carrera Panamericana Website and see photos of all the competitors. There\u2019s photos of this car there and they have a most-asked-questions tab that tells you things like how to deal with the Mexican police. They tell you how much money to bring, and you have to get Mexican insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n Gosh said that he likes taking an old beater, fixing it up and \u201cdriving the heck out of it.\u201d His Olds sounds like the perfect car for the job.<\/p>\n Driving a big \u201853 Olds Super 88 sedan over Mexican roads at speeds up to 138 mph is no picnic, but Ed Gut\u2019s car completed the LaCarrera Panamericana – an epic Mexican road race – revival four consecutive times between 1994 and 1997.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":42907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470,3699,5029,3713],"tags":[304,4179,41,1824,1632,542],"class_list":["post-42906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-other-racing","category-racing","category-road-racing","tag-john-gunnell","tag-la-carrera-panamericana","tag-news","tag-oldsmobile","tag-racing","tag-road-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/RJ151-Olds-Photo-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-ba2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42912,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42906\/revisions\/42912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"'53](\"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/RJ151-Olds-Photo-02-1024x685.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"'53](\"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/RJ151-Olds-Photo-03-1024x687.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"'53](\"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/RJ151-Olds-Photo-05-1024x687.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"'53](\"http:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/RJ151-Olds-Photo-04-1024x687.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"