Cars That Could Have Been Great, But Missed

andre1969

This might be an old urban tale, but I heard that sometimes those autronic eyes could trigger road rage, especially out in wide open places like the desert.

The problem is that the autronic eye would detect the high beams of an approaching car from a distance, and then automatically dim the lights. So, the oncoming driver would more than likely dim his lights as well. But, from a distance, the eye couldn't detect the low-beams, so the high beams would come back on. Which would then prompt the oncoming driver to switch his high beams back on...only to trigger the first car's autronic eye again.

lather, rinse, repeat a few times, and it could cause road rage, I'm sure.

isellhondas

I wouldn't doubt that.

GM had those as far back as (I think) 1953 and the early ones were quite primitive. Under the hood there was a black box the size of a radio and when you removed the cover, it even looked like an old radio with vacuum tubes and all.

I read that they easily got confused. They might pick up a white picket fence or a reflective sign and react to that.

The one on my Riviera worked but I never messed with it.

I could see the rod rage factor come into play.

It was a pretty dumb accessory when the dimmer button on the floor was easy to reach.

andre1969

It was a pretty dumb accessory when the dimmer button on the floor was easy to reach.

Yeah, but the sensor mounted on the dash looked so cool, so futuristic. Almost alien!

lemko

It looked like one of the weapons on the Martians' spacecraft from War of the Worlds.

andys120

The whole vinyl roof thing started back in '61 or '62 when GM started offering a Faux convertible roof on their two door coupes. It had even had creases in the rear to simulate top bows.

However it did look a bit dumb with just the painted metal up top>



Adding a bit of contrasting color vinyl helped the convertible illusion>

ux 'vert roofline by many years.

Mr_Shiftright

Walllllll.....I did look up a photo of a '65 Riv with a vinyl roof and it doesn't look too bad at all I must say....but is it better than the painted roof?

I don't think so. Luckily the car pictured is in a dark color. If it was a white car or a red one, I think I'd throw a fit right here online. :P

uplanderguy

The '65 is my very favorite Riv...improves on the '63-64 I think, by dumping the fake scoops on the rear quarters and the inboard headlights, and moving the rectangular taillights down into the bumper. And no more "PNDLR" automatic. Just beautiful.

fintail

Was the 65 a "Prindle" ?(PRNDL - makes me think of Mama's Family when I think of gear selections)

uplanderguy

I'm pretty sure by then it was a "PRNDSL" pattern. 'Green Acres' also had 'Eb' talking about the "pernundle" of Mr. Douglas' Continental convertible!

uplanderguy

Although I think Ned Nickles is credited with the original Riviera design, I'm always proud to say that GM Styling VP Bill Mitchell and I grew up in the same tiny town in NW Pennsylvania!

isellhondas

No, I think it was Bill Mitchell.

I just think those were beautiful cars. They were also very fast and more nimble than you would expect. The T-Birds of that era couldn't begin to compare.

The 63's 64's and 65's all had different transmissions. The 65's got the Turbo 400's.

The headlight covers on the 65's were a nightmare even when the cars were new. The dealership mechanics just hated them. The slightest tap to the front bumper would screw them up.

They used micro switches and motirs and unless everything was adjusted perfectly, they wouldn't work. I was lucky and I found an old retired Buick guy who managed to fix mine perfectly.

Mr_Shiftright

I had a white '63 Riv and I really liked that car---it had a persistent overheating problem that I never did solve though, so I got rid of it. I think now that it was a defective engine block casting. Every conceivable external component related to cooling the engine was replaced.

hpmctorque

"... the dimmer button on the floor..."

Geez, it's been a long time since I last thought of those left foot actuated, round metal headlight dimmer buttons. Thanks for this bit of trivia nostalgia, isell. You may have reactivated a part of my brain that had been dormant for years.

lemko

I thought Ned Nickles was the guy who came up with the Buick Ventiports?

lemko

Taking it further back...didn't some cars have the windshield washer fluid dispensed via a floor button? I think some cars also had a "seek" function on the radio operated via a foot button.

isellhondas

When I was a kid, I bought a pristine, very low mileage 1949 Pontiac from an old lady who had given up driving. the car was like new but it had a strange overheating problem.

If I drove it during the day and it was much over 75 degrees, it would overheat. no problem at night or when the temperatures were cool.

I had the radiator rodded out, I replaced the head gasket, hoses, thermostat and everything else but the problem persisted.

Finally, I sold the car.

Years later, I told this story to a member of a local Pontiac Club.

He told me he knew EXACTLY what the problem had been.

It seems those old flathead six's and eights (mine was an eight) had of all things, a water distributing tube that ran through the block and cooled the valve seats. He told me that mine was no doubt clogged or rusted out.

Then he told me how to change one not that it mattered at that point.

My Riv never overheated but one time I bought a new radiator and had it installed only to have, for some bizarre reason, the harmonic balancer decide to come off by itself the following week. Of course, it went through the new radiator!

I had to chase it down a hill and through a busy intersection!

A shop straightened it out, put it back on and it never came off again!

uplanderguy

I thought Ned Nickles was the guy who came up with the Buick Ventiports?

Could be. I thought I'd heard his name associated with the first Riv, but I could be wrong. I'm too lazy to check.

texases

"didn't some cars have the windshield washer fluid dispensed via a floor button? "

Oh yeah, attached to a rubber bellows kind of thing, IIRC...

edit: here's one on ebay for Dodge trucks:
foot pump

isellhondas

Our '68 Mustang had a foot operated pedel that you pumped to squirt washer fluid.

And, yes, the GM cars that had a "Wonderbar" radio did have a button on the floor to change stations.

Mr_Shiftright

Oh yes I've heard of that cooling system. That '63 Riv is one of the very few cars I ever regretted selling. I'd really like to have one of those.

fintail

My fintail has a washer system like that too.

isellhondas

I would rather have a '64 or a '65.

The 64's had a better transmission and they had much better heating and A/C controls. The '63's had that round rotary knob that you twisted.

I also didn't care for the B-U-I-C-K big letters across the trunk lid.

Funny. the '63 's had the 401 325 H.P. engines unless you ordered the 425 engine with dual quads. Those had 360 H.P.

For 1964, the standard engine was the 425/single 4BBL that put out 340 H.P. In 1965, they went back to the 401- 325 H.P as the standard engine.

The Gran Sports had the mighty 425 360 H.P engines along with HD suspension and a few other goodies.

The Buicks ad's called the '65 Riviera.." An iron fist in a velvet glove"

Quite fitting I would say!

isellhondas

Currently on Ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1965-Buick-Riviera-Gran-Sport-425ci-2x4bbl-s-Matc- - h-/270690229585?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item3f06651d51

Now, this is an oddball. I wonder why anyone would buy a stripped Gran Sport?

It's missing a lot of the desirable accessories and it has Mickey Mouse A/C installed.

Nice car but unusual since most Gran Sports were loaded to the max.

Bringing a lot of bids and decent money seems like.

uplanderguy

That Riv would look nice in my driveway!

My guess is the fact that it's a GS will add significantly to its final selling price, despite the lack of factory air. I know green isn't typically a 'resale' color but I like it on this car. I saw a car very much like this one, same color, too, at Carlisle in 2004.

Mr_Shiftright

Hmmm....color is unfortunate but it looks like a nice car.

Probably a high #3 car, so maybe $20K--$22K final price?

Grand Sport isn't that big a bump in price--maybe a 20% add-on, something like that.

ab348

Back around '94 or so I had owned my '64 Skylark convertible for about a year and was on the verge of falling into the crevasse of old collectible cars, wanting to buy one after the other. I had joined the Buick Club of America and was looking at getting another old Buick when I learned of a friend of a friend who was into 1st-gen Rivieras and had one for sale.

I went to visit and saw a car that was originally much like that one - same color green (ugly), but with an interior that a previous owner had redone in what I recall being a teal velour, just awful. A shame, really, for what it must have cost to re-do it, why not do it right. It was a GS, but the carbs were off the car, so it needed to be flatbedded out of there and fixed, and the whole thing just struck me as a money pit, the kind of car that everything had already been done on poorly, and so you would have to re-do it all. The asking price was $6K IIRC, and I passed.

The thing I learned at the time about Rivs was that they really weren't bringing big money, even if nicely restored. Don't know if that's still true. I still think about what it must be like to drive a nicely restored one though.

andys120

Second Gen of the four seaters 1966-67. IMO one of the cleanest, purest shapes ever put on an American car. I realize the market does not agree, IIRC they're much cheaper now than '63-'65 cars.

Appropos of our discussion about vinyl roofs, I couldn't find and '63-'67 Rivs with vinyl tops for sale in either Hemmings or Auto Trader.

Where'd they go? Back in the day nearly half were so equipped.

ab348

Reading the entire thread it seems most of the discussion was on cars of the '70s and '80s, which is a good thing, since that was the era in which I started driving and then started buying cars myself. While I'm sure every era has its share of good and bad cars, from the early '70s to the mid-80s there seemed to be more than their fair share of turkeys.

Right now I own a '68 Cutlass, and I mentioned earlier that I had a '64 Skylark. Aside from the higher maintenance needs cars of that era have, with things like points ignition, and the need to get a rust-free example given the lack of rust control measures taken in that era, they both seemed to be pretty solid cars without any particular issues.

Our family were typical domestic-car buyers when I was a kid. My dad was a Ford man when I was really young, then switched to GM in the 60s. I don't recall any real lemons in the bunch. In the early 70s he bought a '68 Volvo 144 and loved it. It was a revelation after the big Detroit boats he had driven until then despite the troublesome twin carbs, lousy auto trans, and manual choke. So when time came to replace it, he bought a new '73 144. Not only did it have the same lousy carbs and trans as his '68, but everything that could go wrong with it did. If you could define the term "lemon", this would be it. Things would pull off in your hand, parts would literally fall off, and it didn't like running at all in the rain, as opposed to on dry days where it just ran poorly. Just a terrible, terrible car.

But he didn't want to go back to big Detroit cars, so ended up buying a Ford Maverick LDO 4-door. That would usually run OK, but it had just terrible body integrity and rust issues. After 3 years it had holes in it and it leaked both water and air from day one. And while it ran alright, the platform itself made for a poor drive - the steering was numb, the brakes inadequate, and the handling atrocious.

When he decided he needed something else, that became a second car and he bought a Hornet Sportabout. The Hornet drove far better than the Maverick. Despite our host's disparaging remarks about the AMC 258 6-cyl, it seemed to be a good engine and worked well with the Torque-Flite they used. It handled far better than the Maverick and had disk brakes as well which were far better. The Hornet's problem was the interior. It was beyond crude. Lots of painted metal and cheap plastics, terrible design, and even worse assembly of what seemed like badly thought-out pieces.

When he decided to trade it in the fall of '77, it was a tossup between the downsized GM intermediates and the Fairmont. The contrast was like night and day. The GMs seemed smoother, quieter, and more refined. the Fairmont just seemed cheap. I remember test driving one on a rainy day and being stopped at an intersection. A wire overhead was dripping water onto the roof and it sounded as if there was no insulation in it at all. I wanted to love it so bad, because C&D was raving about it, but it just seemed very tinny and cheap compared to the '78 LeMans dad ended up buying. It was a lousy car too, but I think it might have been one of the very early builds since he bought it during introduction week and a lot of pieces just didn't seem to fit right. It had terrible build quality and lots of material quality problems.

My first purchase was a used '77 LeMans which was pretty good, but had some obvious problems with materials quality, like bad weatherstrips and some tendency towards rust, though not nearly as bad as the Maverick. Our best car in that era was a '79 Impala dad bought, which I thought was by far the best thing he owned in the entire period. That was a very nicely designed, good-driving car.

In the early 80s I was ready to move from the '77 Pontiac and looked at a lot of imports of the era. Honda's early reputation for being a great small car was already being corroded by word of them being ferocious rusters. Datsuns had the same problem and, in that time period, were not making very appealing cars. Toyotas didn't seem to have the same problems, and after looking at a Celica I bought an '85 MR2 brand new. It was a really fun car, but it had loads of problems during the nearly 5 years I had it, and when some minor body work developed into some rust repairs I could see the writing on the wall and dumped it for a good price to a fan of the car. It was not a car I would want to drive regularly after it had some years on it.

So while our memories may be clouded by time. I think you could look at almost any manufacturer of that era and point to issues that would make it seem to be a problem, because there were lots and lots of problems that seemed endemic to the entire industry.

isellhondas

Those were beautiful cars and they were very well built too.

I had a 1969 that was the same color as the one above.

Then in 1970, they totally ruined the looks of the Rivieras.

isellhondas

Here's one for you!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1960-Mercedes-220S-sedan-one-owner-40-year-storag- e-/230573480463?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item35af401a0f

Look like fun?

Mr_Shiftright

Actually it sounds like this 82K orig miles car was rather abused during its short time on the road. Hardly 'beloved" IMO. It was hit in the fender, allowed to rust, and served as a dumpster. Maybe a good parts car for a better example.

Mr_Shiftright

"Despite our host's disparaging remarks about the AMC 258 6-cyl, it seemed to be a good engine...."

I did? Really? I'm sorry. I can't think of any grudge I had against that engine per se.

uplanderguy

Those '66-67 Rivs are good looking, but they seem so much looonnnngggger than a '65. An acquaintance in the Studebaker club locally has a beautiful light green metallic '67 Riv with black vinyl top, and it's a stunner. I think they watered down the interiors in that iteration though...it has bench seats that look like they came out of a LeSabre Custom--no center armrest or anything. I'm nearly certain all first-gen Rivs had buckets and console.

isellhondas

Yeah, I was thinking that Mercedes wouldn't be worth much except maybe as an organ donor.

I thought fintail might get a kick out of it!

Mr_Shiftright

Fintail runs a rescue mission for these things, so don't tempt the man.

isellhondas

Yes, all of the 63-65 Rivs had buckets and a console.

There were several interior options. The deluxe interiors had the wood trim on the doors and consoles. Real wood too and a couple of other nice touches. You could also order cloth seats although few were made.

I never could understand why anyone would order a upscale car and then cheap out on it?

The 66's and newer had several interior options too including a bench seat, buckets, cloth etc. My 1969 had the "bucket bench" seats that looked like buckets when the armrest was down.

isellhondas

I know..Heck, he could throw a battery in it, grab some starter fluid and drive it up here. I could have a buddy pick him up at the airport!

Fintail.....are you ready?

andys120

I had no idea you could order a bench on a Gen II car. I'd have no interest in those. I agree that they looked longer, I've always assumed that they were.

isellhondas

Yep, they were longer but only by three inches.

The 63-65's were 208 inches and the 66's were 211 inches.

lemko

Yecch! It looks like a Skylark on steroids! How about that tacky thick vinyl molding and fender skirts? What were they thinking? This looks like the dream machine of a retired middle manager with white shoes and sans-a-belt slacks.

andre1969

Yeah, I never really cared for the '70 Riv, either. Up until that point, the Riv had a youthful, sleek, sporty, sexy look about it. Amazing that it would go through such a horrible transformation for 1970.

I actually prefer the 1971-73 Boattail Riv to the 1970. It may be a lot bigger, pimpier, and not as well-built, but as least it managed to recapture some of the youthful, sleek, sporty aura about it. But alas, it wasn't meant to last. For 1974-76, the Riviera became little more than a fluffed-up LeSabre coupe...except the LeSabre had the advantage of roll-down rear windows!

The '77-78 is no great shakes, either...again, just a glammed up LeSabre coupe, more luxurious inside, but with styling that seemed a bit clumsy to me. I thought the '79-85 Riv was a sharp looking car. Nice, conservative, neoclassic look to it.

isellhondas

It's like Buick figured they HAD to do "something" with the Rivieras in 1970 and they did! They ruined the looks.

Ypou could order one without that ugly side moulding and tacky skirts and those did look a bit better.

1970's had the most horsepower of any of the Rivieras. I think 360 like the 2 4BBL ones.

Things went downhill after that.

I liked the boatails too until they were forced to hang on those ugly bumbers in 1973.

andre1969

Now that I think about it, didn't GM sort of screw up the Toronado in 1970, as well? I thought the '66-69 Toros were gorgeous, but seem to remember something about the '70 as being not quite as attractive. Maybe it was the exposed headlights that were inset too close together?

I don't think the Toro was as bad as the '70 Riv, though.

andys120

It's like Buick figured they HAD to do "something" with the Rivieras in 1970 and they did! They ruined the looks.

Back in the day changing the look of a car on a regular basis was the ruin of many a well styled car. In fact the better looking a car was the less likely a restyle would improve the looks. That's why the '66 Riv was so exceptional. The '65 Riviera was certainly nice looking but somehow they managed
to come up with a completely new look that was (IMO) even better. Of course, there's no way they were going to manage that twice.

tjc78

and it has Mickey Mouse A/C installed.

I was looking at the pictures and are the A/C vents on the rear package tray? I can't imagine that working all that great.

isellhondas

I saw that and was surprised they had done it that way.

How would you like to be sitting in the back seat with a blast of cold air two inches from the back of your head?

Wasn't that an Arizona car? WHY wouldn't you just order it with factory air?

tjc78

It certainly makes no sense to me either. Maybe it was ordered wrong and the dealer installed the A/C to satisfy the customer.

fintail

Looks like a money pit of no return, only needs everything. I like seeing ones that make mine look mint. But, it looks reasonably complete, and it is a very early car, I would be interested in the serial number. In Germany, someone might go for it. Here, you're only 40K (or more) away from a 15K (if you're lucky) car.

If I could pick up heaps like that for a couple hundred bucks and store them somewhere, I would...start a parts cache.

It's also just a 220, not a 220S as the title says. It's a lowline car.

isellhondas

What are the differences between a 220 and a 220S?

Looks like it's had three bids and the hign bidder bid against himself at 800.00!

No reserve on it either so this guy may end up getting a whole lot more than I figured he would.

fintail

220S was fancier - dual carbs, more interior chrome and better interior trim in general, chrome on the entire tailfin, reclining front seats, beauty rings, probably some other things I can't remember.

It's probably a decent parts car, but once you hit four figures you're stretching it.