One of the employees of Hurst Performance was Jack “Doc” Watson, who would go on to join George Hurst in tirelessly promoting the floor shifter and getting Hurst Performance hooked up with General Motors. Watson was the one who connected with Pontiac and convinced the GM division, which was striving to become a performance brand, to install Hurst shifters as standard equipment in the four-speed versions of the 1961 Catalina powered by the 421cid Super Duty V8. Hurst Performance stayed involved with Pontiac through the ‘60s, including involvement with the classic GTO.

The 1979 Hurst Olds, the first created entirely by the Oldsmobile division, was built on a downsized two-door Cutlass body. (Photo: Barrett-Jackson)

But it was with Oldsmobile that the famed Hurst brand was finally incorporated into a vehicle name with the 1968 Hurst/Olds 442. The model was developed by George Hurst, who installed a 455cid Oldsmobile engine into his own 442, which put 390 horsepower under the hood of the then-midsize car, and Watson modified it with a special paint treatment and other modifications. The Hurst/Olds was a huge hit for the muscle-car crowd, and the company had to scramble to fulfill the first-year orders. In 1969, the Hurst/Olds came back fully developed as a super-hot performance car that Motor Trend magazine trumpeted as “The Hairiest Oldsmobile.”

Hurst Performance made headlines in 1972 when it stepped forward to provide pace cars for the Indianapolis 500 after the auto manufacturers nervously pulled out of the program following a crash of a Dodge pace car during the 1971 race. Besides filling in for pace-car duties and gaining even more favorable publicity, Hurst is also credited with rescuing the Indy 500 pace-car program from oblivion.

Promotion was always a major highlight of Hurst Performance, which developed a towering presence at drag races and other performance events around the nation, often with “Shifty Doc” Watson setting up his “clinic” to tune and repair Hurst equipment. The continuous PR push was what brought Linda Vaughn on board as the beautiful face and figure of the Hurst brand.

The gorgeous Georgia woman moved beyond her humble upbringing and her job as a dental technician when she won the title of Miss Atlanta Raceway in the 1960s. She then served as Miss Pure Firebird for Pure motor oil, appearing at race tracks across the country, and when that job ended, she won the contest, beating over 100 competitors to become Miss Hurst Golden Shifter.

The dovetailed stories of Linda Vaughn and the Hurst/Olds came full circle this year at the Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach collector car auction, where she continues to reign as a beauty queen when her celebrity-owned 1979 H/O crosses the auction block.

For more information about the Palm Beach auction, see BarrettJackson.com.



Bob Golfen, Automotive Editor for SPEED.com, is a veteran auto writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, with a passion for collector cars, car culture and the automotive lifestyle. SPEED.com fans can email Bob Golfen at