This is the tuned car.

This is the tuned car.

My friends have been outpacing me drastically with the automotive finds and today is no different! Robin of Omaha recently stumbled upon a brace of beautiful Buicks:

This is a 1966 Buick Riviera in what seems to be an aftermarket two-tone graphite over black with a fearsome red stripe dividing the colors. The reason we know this is a '66 as opposed to the almost-identical '67 is the fact that those angled square lenses on the sides do not have a horizontal bar going down the middle of them. Even though they're large those are just the turn signals on the sides. This ride has 4 headlights hidden concealed in the grill. When they're open they look a bit crowded in there to me.

This ride is largely the same as the Cadillac Eldorado and Oldsmobile Toronado of the same year. However unlike the others the Riviera is a traditional rear wheel drive car. This is the final year for the venerable Buick Nailhead motor, this one a 425 V8.

Obviously the lines on this ride are fantastic and dramatic! The rear roofline swooping down to frame the trunk makes this beast seem like it's moving while standing still.
*Notice the lack of little vent windows! This is the first year since the '30s that a Buick didn't have them.

This is an evil ride with the black bumpers (something I usually frown upon). The vents beneath the back window are where the air exits the cabin as a part of the fresh air system.

Right next to the '66 is this 1967 Riviera with its tell tale horizontal turn signal bars. This is a mild custom like its brethren so the chrome hood trim has been shaved. 

I couldn't find any proof of two-tone Rivieras from the factory but this is a pretty common restoration choice. The mirrors on this ride are later replacements (the other ride has the correct driver-only chrome unit). 

I dig this roofline without the vinyl roof too. The wheels on both rides work really well. Both of these have the optional bucket seat interior essentially making them 4 seaters.

Somebody added a little pin striping to this ride.

1967 saw a new engine for Buick; the 430 V8 good for 360 horsepower and a whopping 475lbs of torque! Even at a weight of over 2 tons it was enough to move this beast around with alacrity. 

Buick (and indeed all of GM) was riding high through the '60s and they were understandably proud of the Riviera. It was touted as the "Tuned car" in their literature. In fact the entire opening paragraph is so assured that I'm going to close it out with this quote:
"We regret to destroy (again) the old theory that great road machines always come from Europe. But this one comes from exotic, far away Flint, Michigan - home of Buick, home of the Tuned car."

The perfect blend of luxury and crushing brutality

THE PERFECT BLEND OF LUXURY AND CRUSHING BRUTALITY

I was gazing out the front window of my shop when this improbable vision presented itself:

Yowza! This is a 1971 Buick Gran Sport Stage 1 GSX 455 in Apollo White with a Red stripe. The name is a mouthful but suffice it to say that each major option added another title to this ride. 

Basically this is a Buick Skylark body (the sibling to the Chevelle, LeMans/GTO, and Cutlass/442). If you really wanted brute power you upgraded to the Gran Sport which came standard in '71 with a 455V8. If somehow that wasn't enough and you were trying for the Most Powerful Muscle Car on the Road you had to throw an astonishing $1,100 on top of the Gran Sport option for the GSX Stage 1 Performance and Handling package. Very few were built and fewer remain but get this: the '71 GSX outperformed the HemiCuda! Blasphemy they say!

That's right. The whopping 360 horsepower and 510 lbs of torque this setup produced helped the GSX outperform both the 454 from Chevy and the mighty 426 Hemi. The 455 block weighed approximately 150 lbs less than the Hemi which made a huge difference. In fact the GSX held the record for highest torque rating of any American performance car for 33 years until the V10 Viper came along. 

Keep in mind that this is a Buick; second only to Cadillac in the GM hierarchy. Unlike the miserly list of delete options the Mopar Hemis sometimes required you could get your Buick fully outfitted in creature comforts. You'll never see a GSX with a factory delete rear seat or heater, and the body parts are all regular steel.

I barked out to this guy "is that a '71 Stage 1?" and he yelled back "yup, with the 455!". Then he proceeded to light up the tires for me as much as he could in heavy traffic.
I love the idea of a Buick walking into the final round at the muscle car table only to drop a royal flush and walk away the victor. The value is plenty strong with auction prices for these getting close to $200,000 for numbers matching examples. However it is still a Buick so fit and finish were excellent and the non-performance parts are widely available. This is the perfect example of a car that can be eviscerated with rust but still worth your while to restore as long as the drivetrain, vin number, and build plate are intact. 

Antique Buick in Antique Gold

ANTIQUE BUICK IN ANTIQUE GOLD

I had a rare bout of insomnia recently and decided to bike out to Brighton Beach at dawn. On the way back I took 86th Street past the Dyker Beach Golf Course. Look what I found waiting to tee up!

This is a 1969 Buick Electra 225 in Antique Gold Poly. Talk about stage presence! With a wheelbase 1" larger than the behemoths that preceded it the '69 Electra is large and in charge. From the front the lines are straight as an arrow. Rarely do you see a raised middle section of a hood that doesn't open up towards the windshield in a V shape.

The wipers are concealed below the hood adding to the clean look. The split grill is housed within a double loop bumper that pretty much incorporates the entire front of the car.

That swooping accent line going down the side was a Buick hallmark for '69 that can also be seen on the Skylark (the Riviera was the lone holdout). Above the front wheels you can see the now stylized Buick portholes. The portholes were officially named Cruiser-Line Ventiports when they were introduced on 1949 Buick. Back then they were functional in taking heat away from the engine. They became synonymous for Buick and were added in one form or another to most of their cars for decades.

This old girl's resting on semi deflated tires. The paint is faded completely and surface rust is emerging but for the most part this thing looks solid.

That Sweep Spear (as that swooping body line is known) really helps to keep this massive brick dynamic.

I love how unforgiving the rear end of these land yachts are. The '65-'67 taillights spanned the full width of the car and just look incredible. Starting in '68 we see this treatment with the license plate in the middle but the overall look is still substantial.

Of course the trunk is as big as you can imagine. Even a full size spare does nothing to take away from the truly colossal square footage inside this beast.

While you could specify a plain metal roof for your Electra we know this one had vinyl at one time. The chrome line running from the rear quarter window under the back window is the clue. This owner was smart to remove it because anything less than totally dry and pristine means the metal underneath will rot out.

It was a quiet block with nobody around so I didn't want to get right up to the window. Looking at it now I think this thing is unlocked though; watch out people!
The interior can ferry 6 well fed adults in ocean liner comfort. There were no manual transmissions available for this car; that wasn't the point!

Beneath this mighty hood lies the 430 V8 rated at 360 horsepower! Don't worry about the gas mileage. Feel confident in the fact that you can tow a large boat or camper, pull stumps out of the east, or simply lay strips until your tires dissolve. 

I found a commercial for the 1967 Electra that sums up the ride quality so well that I thought I'd include it here even though the year is different. The thought of combining glasses of wine and a car speaks to a simpler, more naive time!

Well at this point the sun was just coming up and I needed to head home for coffee. There seem to be a decent amount of these full size Buick sprinkled about Brooklyn, 2nd only to vintage Cadillacs. Speaking of Cadillac this ride is very similar, sharing the underpinnings with the Coupe DeVille. If you love big American iron and want a classic to use daily I highly recommend an old Buick. 

LeSabre by night

NIGHT MOVES

It's frustrating for me to encounter a sweet ride at night. Sometimes I'll circle back around in the daytime and find the same rig but more often than not the nighttime pics are all I'll get. I have several amazing cars that have never been posted because they're too dark. Somehow the after hours vibe seems to suit this car just fine:

This is a 1963 Buick LeSabre in Regal Black. This car is so well dressed that you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

'63 was the only year for this strange widely spaced headlights configuration. The grill is a cast piece that probably weighs a good amount on its own. Behind that grill lies the a V8 engine in either 300, 364, or 401 cubic inches. I know the 401 Nailhead was good for around 300 horsepower and a mountain of torque. I had a '65 Electra with the 401 and that beast could dance around like a small sports car despite its gargantuan proportions.

This is the sedan version that could also be ordered as a hardtop.
When featuring a car I'll look it up in various places for the odd fact I might not know or even just to confirm a year, etc. Imagine my surprise when this exact car is the example posted in the Wikipedia page for Buick LeSabre!

This full size cruiser was close to the flagship Electra 225. A quick way to identify the difference is that this has 3 portholes on the front fender while the Electra has four. By '63 the famous Buick portholes had become stylized rectangles.

Let's try with the flash.

And let's try without.
As was the norm for full size GM cars in the early '60s the rear looks a lot like the front. That formal roofline is tall enough for the bank manager to keep his hat on while driving.

These tall Gothic taillight housings are great. If the grim reaper drove a car this might be it.

The proportions are pretty good for such an enormous car.

Well that's where I'll leave this black beauty. Having the pleasure of owning that '65 Electra I wholeheartedly vouch for any '60s full size Buick. The build quality was spectacular and they are extremely responsive. Now for no reason other than I wish I had it today here's a beauty shot of my old ride:

George Orwell was right

YAWN ON WHEELS

I was walking along last Summer when a Victorian fainting spell came over me. Was I a narcoleptic? Had I somehow forgotten to breath? No, it turn out I was passing by this Buick and it sucked the energy right out of me. Please read this post sitting down.

This is a 1984 Buick Century Limited in one of FOUR color choices named Silver Poly. I believe this is the perfect summery of the domestic automobile landscape in 1984. Vehicles were so damn boring that they needed 4 different colors that are hard to distinguish all named the same thing.

Maybe the 4 Silver Polys referred to how many repaints it will require before the decade is out? Shout-out to whoever grabbed that hood ornament.

In the 1980s the Big Three auto makers had to switch their paint to a low VOC (volatile organic compound) recipe. They complied without fully realizing that this required a longer curing time. The result is that almost every car from the mid '80s has serious paint issues.

Let's get back to the hooptie at hand. We know this is an '84 due to those 7 vertical bars spanning the grill. Interestingly the registration sticker in the windshield says it's an '85. Maybe it was a holdover languishing in the factory lot until the model year changed?

My sympathies always lie with the copywriters who have to describe these utterly boring rides in their sales material. For 1985 Buick separated their brochure into 3 segments: The Art of Buick, The Science of Buick, and The Buying of Buick. In The Art of Buick they mention how European this car is no less than 4 times in the first 2 paragraphs. Poor Europe!

One thing I will give it up for are those sweet factory hubcaps!

To be fair these were actually well engineered cars compared to those just a few years previous. They were all fuel injected and front wheel drive with well tuned suspensions. No longer would the mighty Buick be a listing yacht in the corners. Yawn.

If anything this sticker might be the only thing to entice a thief because they might be wondering why they would bother? By the way Custom King Electronics is no more; replaced by a real estate office. Such is Brooklyn in 2017.

The name Century was first given to a 1936 Buick that could go 100mph. The British auto community in the '30s called 100mph "doing the century" and someone at Buick was amused. The official top speed of this ride was 98mph. FAKE AND SAD. Maybe the Limited refers to its limitations?

If you really squint you can imagine some continuity between the Buicks of the '60s and this car. The taillights are almost full width and it's a mostly squared off design.

Again with that sweet paint.

The mighty Grand National was available from Buick in '85, and happened to be the fastest American production car due to its turbocharged V6 engine (even beating out the Corvette!). If you were so inclined you could order a Century T-Type which sported blackout trim and a slightly better engine but it still didn't amount to high performance.

Oh yeah dig that Malaise era velour! This is the quintessential '80s GM interior with slabs of faux wood, plush cloth seats, and flat dashboards filled with buttons.

Well that's that. 

When my beloved Grandmother passed away she stipulated in her will that I could have either her Buick identical to this in every way or $3,000. I took the money without blinking. Part of it was my memory of riding in that car with several smoking adults and the windows barely cracked, but the other part was that this encapsulated all that was boring in modern automobiles for me. It is the perfect grandparent car for the mid '80s but other than that I was surprised to see it even exists in 2017.

Sweet Bittersweet Buick to start your work week

SWEET BITTERSWEET BUICK

Pardon the leaves on the trees in these pics! It was a warm and lovely day months ago when I walked by this beauty in the East Village:

This is a 1971 Buick LeSabre convertible in the awesome original color Bittersweet Mist Poly. This is just a really nice unique classic that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

This is the last moment for pre-emissions and safety regulations domestic cars. In 1971 GM had a corporate mandate to slightly lower compression in order to run on unleaded gas. The engine choices for this beast would be the 350 V8 or the mighty 455. The design of the front and rear bumpers was still entirely up to the automaker as opposed to having to meet federal standards.

This was the largest generation of LeSabre. For a 2 door car this really is gigantic.

With the top down on a ride this big you can easily cruise with 5 adults in total comfort.

The integrated rear bumper frames the taillights nicely. 2 years later there would be massive bumpers hanging off of the front and rear with the taillights and grill positioned above completely separate.

These vents in the trunklid are a part of the new-for-'71 ventilation system. The air comes into the cab through the cowl and exits through the trunk lid.

As with just about every GM product from '71 the gas cap is hidden behind the fold-down license plate.

Those are the original Rallye wheels from '71.

There's a radio visible and of course it is a convertible but other than that there doesn't seem to be any other options. Roll down windows and a bench seat keep it humble.

This CUSTOM badge tells us that this ride is equipped with the 350 V8. An emblem that says 455 would replace it if it had the huge motor.

Sometimes a car can be great without tons of flash or luxury. This ride is super comfortable, powerful enough to do whatever you ask of it, and is a ragtop from the era when they were still pretty common. A '71 LeSabre will never tear it up at the big classic car auctions and as a result they are pretty affordable. Combine that with the fact that parts are universally available and you've got a great ride for the summer months. To see one in an odd color is a treat.