Joe Mondello, an Oldsmobile expert and friend of the gear-head community, passed away Wednesday, April 8th at the age of 74. This comes as a massive blow to both the automotive enthusiast community, and to his fans here at PETACAR.
Mondello was born in Southern California and got his first automotive job before he could legally drive, at age 14. This position provided lots of automotive engine education, and led to doing valve jobs for his boss, who was impressed enough by the young apprentice’s drive and enthusiasm to allow Mondello to work on the shop’s flathead-powered circle track racer.
This in turn led to his next job, porting and relieving Ford flathead engine blocks for increased performance; it was this work that would form the foundation of Mondello’s vast contributions to automotive performance and racing.
Building a hot rod Ford was a natural, and Mondello’s 1940 coupe saw action at airports and dragstrips across Southern California. His ability to make power was recognized early on, and he soon became known for his prowess at reworking cylinder heads to optimize airflow and combustion efficiency. In fact, Mondello had gone so far as to design his own combustion chamber, dubbed the Posi-Flow, which was first applied to Chevrolet racing engines in the early ’60s with great success; it’s a design that would later be used by multiple auto manufacturers and makers of performance aftermarket cylinder heads alike.
In recent years, Joe Mondello was best known for his extensive expertise in Oldsmobile Performance. Because of this vast knowledge, he was rightly known as "Dr. Oldsmobile." Watch Dr. Oldsmobile in this clip explaining the Oldsmobile 442 / Cutlass:
As fans of all cars, not just the orphans, we are particularly saddened by the loss of Joe Mondello. Joe Mondello's expertise and performance heritage will live on in the 1969 Oldsmobile 455 Big Block that is owned by one of the very members of the PETACAR staff:
