Jay Leno checks out a rare 1991 Oldsmobile Quad 442 W-41

Regular viewers of "Jay Leno's Garage" will be familiar with the Oldsmobile 442. This time, however, Leno features a very different take on the 442 nameplate.

The 1991 Oldsmobile Quad 442 W-41 was one of the last attempts to revive the hallowed nameplate after its heyday in the 1960s. Like the original 442, the Quad 442 was a more sober model, in this case a performance version of the Oldsmobile Cutlass Curry. Oldsmobile did not cram a powerful V-8 under the hood like the original 442, explains Jeff Zafraniec, owner of the W-41 road and race car featured in the episode.

In the late 1980s, General Motors began working with outside engineering firms to develop high-performance four-cylinder engines for many small front-wheel drive models. The result was the Quad-4 dual overhead cam inline four-cylinder, a 2.3-liter version of which is used in the Quad-442.

While it may not sound as exciting as the V-8 engine in the early 442, the Quad 4 has an impressive resume: GM installed the twin turbo, which produces about 1,000 hp, in the first Oldsmobile Aerotech prototype and was a four-time Indianapolis 500 winner A.J. Foyt set a closed-course world speed record of 257.123 mph on a Texas test track in 1987.

Around the same time, GM also began building Curry racing cars with quad-4 engines for SCCA competition; since the SCCA did not like teams with non-production engines entering and winning races, GM actually built a road car with a quad-4 Curry Safraniec explains in the video.

The result was the Quad 442, followed by the W-40 for the 1990 model year (referring to the W-30 code used in some of the previous versions of the 442) and the W-41 for 1991 The W-41 produced 190 hp, up from 180 hp of the W-40. The suspension was tuned differently and the gearing of the five-speed manual transmission was changed (an automatic transmission was not offered). The racing version featured a forged crankshaft and titanium connecting rods and produced 240 hp.

The one-year-only W-41 was one of the rarest of the 442s, with only about 200 built. All cars were built in March 1991, but Safraniec said that the race cars on display here were not delivered to the team until 1992, and some had been sitting in dealership parking lots for some time. 1991 at GM, from the C4 Corvette ZR-1 to the GMC Cyclone, Admittedly, there was a lot going on performance-wise, with everything competing for the attention of enthusiasts.

While it may not have made much of an impression when new, the Calais-based 442 remains a fascinating part of GM's nameplate history. For more information on this four-cylinder 442, see the full video.