Although the Buick Riviera line survived through 1999, as far as many people were concerned, it could just as well have ended here. The 1985 Riviera was the last really successful iteration of Buick’s personal luxury coupe, showing that the 1979-vintage design still had what it took to compete in the fashion-conscious ’80s.
1985 Buick Riviera / Survivor Classic Car Services
After arriving to great acclaim and solid commercial success in 1963, the Buick Riviera had a rocky road in the ’70s: The 1966-vintage body shell got an corpulent-looking one-year-only revamp for 1970, which was replaced for 1971 with the controversial “boattail” Riviera. Its tail was bobbed in 1974, leaving the Riviera without a clear stylistic direction, after which it spent two years (1977–1978) as essentially a fancier version of the newly downsized two-door LeSabre.
1979 Buick Riviera in Silver with red accents / Orlando Classic Cars
This could have been an ignominious end to a once-storied model, but the Buick styling studio then knocked one out of the park with the redesigned, yet-smaller 1979 model. The 1979 Riviera now shared the front-wheel-drive platform of the Oldsmobile Toronado and Cadillac Eldorado, with a new fully independent suspension and a choice of Oldsmobile V-8 or turbocharged Buick V-6 power.
1979 Buick Riviera in Dark Brown with a tan vinyl top / Mecum Auctions
Even more than the Toronado and Eldorado of this generation, the first FWD Riviera was a winner because it managed to successfully straddle several different sets of tastes. It was flamboyant, but its trimmer size, sporty S-Type and T Type models, racy turbo engine, and optional Gran Touring suspension gave the Riviera credibility with Baby Boomer enthusiasts whose ideas of automotive excellence were more “Bimmer” than “Brougham.” Meanwhile, the brougham crowd was still well catered to with the usual array of optional Landau tops, wire wheel covers, and color-keyed interior choices.
1979 Buick Riviera in Dark Brown with a tan vinyl top and wire wheel covers / Mecum Auctions
In short, the 1979–1985 Riviera was a higher-end car that affluent 30somethings weren’t embarrassed to be seen in, but that older buyers also loved — an increasingly rare phenomenon as the ’70s became the ’80s. The downsized Riviera was hardly a perfect car, but buyers can excuse a lot of minor deficiencies if a car looks good and the price is right. A Riviera wasn’t cheap (base prices climbed above $15,000 starting in 1983, and the convertible added in mid-1982 could easily top $25K), but it was a lot more attainable than an Eldorado or a BMW 6-Series, which struck an agreeable balance between exclusivity and affordability.
1985 Buick Riviera in Dark Blue with gold accents and a blue landau top / Mecum Auctions
It’s a testament to the strength of the basic design that the Riviera still looked pretty stylish in 1985. The ’80s were a period of rapidly changing tastes, and a lot of ’70s cars that had looked modern at introduction seemed very old by 1985. A 1985 Riviera, especially in convertible form, would not have looked at all out of place being driven by a glamorous celebrity guest star in the early seasons of Miami Vice. (I don’t know that the Riviera ever did appear on the show — the Internet Movie Cars Database doesn’t seem to think so — but it certainly could have.)
1985 Buick Riviera convertible in White / Mecum Auctions
The Riviera and its E-body siblings were starting to seem unfashionable big by 1985. A 1985 Riviera still stretched 206.6 inches long on a 114-inch wheelbase, which by that time was in the same realm as a Ford LTD Crown Victoria wagon (although with an overall width of 70.7 inches, the Buick was significantly narrower). Curb weight was still pushing 4,000 lb even in the lighter Riviera coupe. However, some buyers obviously liked the size just fine, especially as more traditional GM models received further rounds of aesthetically uneasy downsizing.
1985 Buick Riviera in Red Firemist with the standard Deluxe wheel covers / Survivor Classic Car Services
By 1985, a Buick Riviera coupe started at $16,710 (a relative worth of about $55,000 in 2025), which got you power steering, brakes, windows, and locks, plus air conditioning, power adjustment for the 45/45 split bench seat, an AM/FM radio, and automatic level control.
1985 Buick Riviera in Red Firemist — and, amazingly, no Landau top / Survivor Classic Car Services
The 1985 Riviera convertible started at $26,797.
1985 Buick Riviera convertible in White / Mecum Auctions
A 307 cu. in. (5,033 cc) Oldsmobile V-8 was now standard on both the coupe and the convertible — still carbureted, but with electronic feedback controls. The T Type coupe, which cost $944 more than the standard coupe, had the turbocharged 3,791 cc Buick V-6, which was also optional (though very rare) on the Riviera convertible. Gluttons for punishment could still have the 350 cu. in. (5,737 cc) Olds diesel V-8 for an extra $99, although only 411 self-loathing souls did so this year. Sole transmission was the chain-driven TH325-4L automatic, a four-speed unit with an overdrive top gear.
1985 Buick Riviera T Type in Red Firemist with aluminum wheels / Barn Finds
Looking at these cars from the perspective of a car magazine subscriber, the turbocharged Riviera T Type seemed like the one to have. The turbo V-6 had gotten a lot of improvements since its ’70s debut, and since 1984, it had used port fuel injection rather than a carburetor, along with fully electronic distributorless ignition — a useful addition for an engine that relied on spark timing control to prevent detonation under boost. The 1985 Riviera T Type had a respectable 190 hp and 300 lb-ft of torque, putting it way ahead of the carbureted V-8, which had just 140 hp and provided only adequate performance.
1985 Buick Riviera T Type turbocharged V-6 engine / Barn Finds
I’d have been awfully tempted by the turbo engine, but I can see why most people at the time didn’t go that route. Only 1,069 1985 Riviera buyers ordered the T Type coupe, and just 50 people ordered the turbo V-6 on the convertible. Buyers who wanted a hot turbo Buick mostly chose the somewhat smaller, significantly lighter Regal, and the V-8 was probably more in character for the Riviera anyway. In retrospect, I think it’s too bad GM didn’t give the Olds 307 port injection, which would have given somewhat more respectable acceleration, and probably also have improved fuel economy. However cheap gas had again made most American buyers not care — most Riviera customers saw the 17/22 EPA numbers for the V-8 (15/20 on the modern adjusted scale) and just shrugged.
Oldsmobile 307 cu. in. (5,033 cc) V-8 in a 1985 Buick Riviera / Classic Cars of Sarasota
Four-wheel disc brakes were standard on the convertible, but a $235 option on coupes (even the T Type, ridiculously), and very rare; only 5.3 percent of 1985 Riviera production had discs all around. V-8 buyers could order the T Type Gran Touring suspension for a mere $27, which sounds like a bargain — it wasn’t really that stiff, and it made the ride and handling less floppy — but I suspect that option was even rarer than four-wheel discs.
1985 Buick Riviera in Dark Blue with gold accents, a blue Landau top, and tan interior / Mecum Auctions
Far more common was the padded Landau top option, which include coach lamps and was often paired with wire wheel covers. I still see that stuff as needlessly sullying a basically attractive shape, but the margins were high, and there was still a market for it: 77.5 percent of 1985 Rivieras had vinyl tops.
1985 Buick Riviera with tan Prima cloth upholstery / Mecum Auctions
1985 Buick Riviera with tan Prima cloth upholstery / Mecum Auctions
Bucket seats were no longer offered even as an option, although cars with leather upholstery had a notchback treatment for the 45/45 split bench seat that looked more bucket-like.
1985 Buick Riviera convertible in White with red leather notchback seat / Mecum Auctions
There was also a rare limited-edition W51 interior package with leather-bolstered suede seats, a wood steering wheel, and real walnut veneer.
1985 Buick Riviera with beige leather and suede upholstery and burled walnut veneer / Classic Cars of Sarasota
1985 Buick Riviera with beige leather and suede upholstery / Classic Cars of Sarasota
An even rarer and pricier option was the factory-endorsed, dealer-installed AT&T cellular telephone. This had become available on a limited basis in the Chicago area in 1984. It was incredibly expensive: about $3,000, plus monthly access fees of $20 to $70 (depending on location) and airtime charges ranging from 22 to 45 cents a minute. Some pundits at the time figured such toys were much too expensive to ever catch on except for well-heeled business types who could write off the enormous cost.
The Riviera was pricey enough that it wasn’t ever a volume seller, but it was one of the most all-around desirable Buick models of this time, and it sold very well. 1985 model year production totaled 65,305 cars, the best year ever not only for this generation, but for the entire 36-year run of the Riviera.
1985 Buick Riviera in Red Firemist / Survivor Classic Car Services
Sadly, we can sum up what happened next in just two images:
1986 Buick Riviera in Crimson Metallic, dealer introduction date Nov. 14, 1985 / Bring a Trailer
It probably didn’t help that Buick jacked up prices by over $3,100 for 1986, but this wasn’t an especially price-sensitive segment, so they probably would have gotten away with it if the new Riviera had looked good. Unfortunately, the awkward proportions of the new car were just hopeless. The 1985 Riviera was aging but still stylish; the 1986 looked like a toy car, awkwardly re-scaled so that it could carry Barbie dolls without being the size of the dining room table. All at once, the Riviera wasn’t fashionable anymore, and if it wasn’t fashionable, what was the point?
1986 Buick Riviera in Crimson Metallic with a white carriage top / Bring a Trailer
The Riviera never really recovered. It got a stretched tail for 1989, which some people will tell you was a great improvement (I’m not convinced, although I guess its proportions were less bad), but it only helped a little. Fashion trends are kind of like favorite neighborhood hangouts: Once people move away, they probably won’t come back, and even if they do drop in occasionally, it won’t be the same.
1989 Buick Riviera in Ruby Red Metallic with a red Landau top / Mecum Auctions
There was one last Riviera generation from 1995 to 1999, with swoopy styling and no pretense of downsizing. I found it a big improvement, at least on the outside, but the cheap-looking plasticky interior gave the game away, and by the late ’90s, almost no one was buying big coupes like this anymore.
1995 Buick Riviera Supercharged in Smokey Amethyst Metallic / Bring a Trailer
The 1979–1985 Riviera was popular enough that it probably could have continued for a few more years with a few minor updates, although it was getting old, and it would probably have succumbed to diminishing returns before too long.
1985 Buick Riviera in Red Firemist / Bring a Trailer
I could say some mean things here about Irv Rybicki, who succeeded Bill Mitchell as GM VP of Design from 1977 to 1986, and bore a lot of responsibility for the embarrassing collapse of GM styling leadership in the ’80s. Instead, let’s take a parting glance at the 1985 Riviera — the last time Buick stylists tried their hands at a big luxury coupe and got it almost exactly right.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1985 Buick Riviera – A Ray of Light in the Darkness (by Dave Skinner)
GM’s Deadly Sin #1: 1986 Buick Riviera – How To Kill An Automotive Legend (by Paul N)
Vintage Car And Driver Review: 1986 Buick Riviera T-Type – What Is This Car Supposed To Be? (by Rich Baron)
Vintage R/T Review: 1979 Buick Riviera S Type – The “S” Stands For “Sharp,” Not “Sporty” (by me)
The 200-4R was a RWD trans. The E-body cars used the TH325-4L, which was a longitudinal (thus the “L”) FWD transmission that shared many internal parts with the 200-4R. It was, however, similar in configuration to the original Toronado TH425 in that the gear case was located to the left of the engine’s oil pan and connected to the flexplate and torque converter using a chain drive. The three speed TH325 first replaced the TH425 in 1979. The four speed OD TH325-4L incorporated the OD stage behind the torque converter.
Well, that’s embarrassing, but you’re quite right, and I’ve adjusted the text.
Joe is the Olds and anything related guru, and he’s usually right!
A dead friend’s dad bought a brand new 79 model.
He was coming from a 77 Eldorado Biartiz and really liked the smaller size.
The first week he had it, he was at the bank drive up window to deposit some checks. At -22° outside he wasn’t walking into the bank. He powers down his window, drops the checks into the drawer, and tries to roll the window up. Nothing! I belive he said some choice words, tried everything he could, but the window was stuck down. He promptly drove his car to Buick to discuss the high quality of his new car! As I recall, he had many more issues in the 2 years he kept it. He never owned another GM car.
The one discordant note on these, at least the coupes and not the stratospherically expensive convertible that I never saw in the actual ’80s and didn’t know existed until well into the 3rd millennium, is the extremely upright formal roofline on an otherwise-flowing design. It’s out of place in a way that I’m not sure the padded carriage top makes worse or actually helps ameliorate.
I have to wonder if the 1984-5 and possibly even the 1983 Riviera were supposed to belong to the next generation, but it was yet another project delayed in Roger Smith’s ill-conceived and massively wasteful reorg while the compact N-bodies were deemed important enough to go forward on schedule meaning the Skylark* to appear in showrooms first leading the ’86 Riv having a disastrous resemblance to the only slightly smaller but much, much cheaper car that PN discussed at length.
(*”Somerset Regal”, yeah, but I’m using the name it should’ve had on day one as Buick repeated Pontiac’s mistake with the J2000/Sunbird of a couple years earlier of renaming a car a year in so the launch publicity’s under a different name not seen before or since)
The original Toronado and the concurrent RWD Riv ran six years, so GM probably wanted 5 to 7 years from a low volume specialty platform like this.
Cadillac chief engineer Bob Templin said in 1979 that they were hoping for six years if it could remain regulatory-compliant, and that’s what it did.
See, I think that’s the part that makes it: It’s the last “Sheer Look” design that I think mostly works, and the combination of the roof and the flowing body is the part that gives it style (even compared to the E-body Eldorado and Toronado, which are obviously similar in broad proportions).
My main objection to the Riviera design is that the headlight treatment seems cluttered. It’s like they had some more creative idea and were handcuffed by the sealed beam requirement, so they resorted to adding a lot of brightwork around the parking lamps.
These were certainly a huge improvement after the 2nd and 3rd generations. You saw them everywhere. Sadly Buick/GM completely fumbled the ball with the ’86 models, and by the time they added some length in ’89/’90, the moment had long passed.
While not a bad looking car there has always been something bit off in the styling. It just doesn’t quite come together. The visual mass of the c-pillar combined with that low dash to axle ratio perhaps. And the massive doors give out an impression of shrinkage.
Vastly superior to the one that followed though, that one is a real head scratcher and would love to hear some inside about how it came to be.
Those are very ugly cars, the ragtop loses that hideous roof styling and looks passable in a cheap plasticky way, Rivieras were a stylish car for a long time that all went out the window.
Sales numbers for the E bodies and Seville in this period are deceptive. They were capacity limited by the unique transmission that was scheduled to end production. Olds, Buick, and Cadillac dealers were hollering for more, more, more. Bustleback Seville production in this era was below first gen levels because of transmission availability, not styling.
If nothing else, I like to think of the limited production of the Seville as one of the universe’s occasional little mercies. A hideous design that did real damage to Cadillac’s credibility for years afterward, a sign of Wayne Kady’s awful taste and a last knife-in-the-back to Cadillac from Mitchell on his way out the door.
Were the ’86 Riv to have continued to use that E-body platform, or even just its fore/aft engine the new styling would have looked meaningfully better. Blame the platform strategy team first and foremost.
At that point, they could just as well have left it alone to run out the clock, like they did with the G-body cars. The main object of the 1986 model was to bring the size of the platform down to something more suited for the latter ’80s, since the ’79 was still the size of an overstuffed ’70s intermediate. That was a perfectly reasonable objective; the problem was that they tried to fit the outgoing model’s styling cues onto it and gave it the proportions of a $20,000 Barbie Dream Car. (As I said in the text, I’m not persuaded that the 1989 tail stretch was much help; it made it gawky rather than stubby, which was kind of a lateral move aesthetically.)
In the early 1980s when these cars were being designed, who knew that it was the 4th quarter for the big American luxury coupe and the clock was ticking? If a significantly better ’86 Riv was possible on that new platform, I’d love to see it. Something along the lines of the ’92 Eldo certainly wasn’t the answer. Maybe a stretched Reatta, but only because it had a mysterious face. But now Buick would be asking the driver to sit lower, which is not what some folks probably wanted.
FWD w/longitudinal engine would have given the car needed length.
Length isn’t the problem, the problem is that the relationship between the backlight and the rear wheelhouses is all wrong for these dimensions, a problem that also afflicted a lot of GM cars of this era. They were desperate to cling to the upright backlight (understandable insofar as the outgoing E-bodies had sold well) and it just sunk the whole thing. Adding length to the tail or nose wouldn’t have helped — the longer tail added in ’89 only accentuated the bowed-back look, although I guess it was less stubby.
I remember reading that some contemporary journalist somewhere wrote something like “Whoever has married GM to the formal roofline should be brought up on formal charges.”
It worked great on the downsized models in the ’70s, starting with the “sheer-look” Seville. Less so on the second wave of downsizing in the ’80s.
I didn’t find the ’86 Riviera super offensive on that ground, but the one car I absolutely could not stand the first time I saw it is the ’86 Seville, which was on the same platform (albeit designated K-body). At least the Riviera had that subtle curve under the windows that assisted the beltline back up the body and made it a smooth transition. The Seville had no such thing. The windows simply plunged deep into the sides of the car, and the C-pillars were vertical, narrow and abrupt. To top it all off, the wheel openings were disproportionately large. It looked for all the world like someone had cut the upper cargo area out of a wagon and then enclosed what was left…and I cannot believe multiple people signed off on the design.
There’s an Internet cat I see sometimes who has a spinal deformity: Part of her spine behind her shoulders curves down more sharply than it should and then curves back up again. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to impair her in any substantial way, but sometimes she stands up in a way that makes it clear she’s kind of oddly bowed in the middle, and that’s what I see when I look at the greenhouse treatments of those cars.
Car and Driver speculated years ago that after getting burned on the awful Aerodeck models in the late ’70s, there was some kind of internal edict saying that never again should any of their bread-and-butter cars have sloped rear windows. This was hyperbole, of course (obviously, the A-body cars weren’t that upright, nor were the X-body FWD cars), but the upright backlight look’s moment had truly passed by the mid-’80s, and clinging to it didn’t do them any favors.
Insofar as sales went, I think a more steeply raked backlight like LeSabre would have helped at the margins, at best. These cars had more fundamental problems, and Studio has taken the rap all these years for what was flawed strategy and execution at many levels, and in a new environment where Studio’s hands were tied like never before.
Re: ’71-73 Riviera, I don’t think size was the issue, not with all those other monsters in its competitive set selling well. With a center console, it was a dang good cockpit for big Americans. And to my eye, the canoe tail was great. The real problem was the clumsy boat bow shape, Mitchell seemingly incapable of approving a swept back front with more overhang and hidden headlights. Frontal styling was his Achilles heel in these years, at least with several of the B and C-bodies. Ford and Chrysler were for the most part, way ahead.
I have a hard time imaging anyone in their thirties would jump to be seen in one of these. I worked in an architectural office where the boss was forty-five when he bought an Eldorado of this generation for his wife. There were howls of laughter from those of us who were in our thirties.
Everyone has amazingly mean things to say about Irv Rybicki… or nothing at all. I suspect there’s way more to the story. The fact is GM chose him for the qualities he offered, as much for his acquiescence as his solid styling chops –and he’s the lucky one who happened to be at the styling helm coincident with Roger Smith and the perfect storm of emissions, safety and fuel mileage requirements. Sadly, there was NO press coverage at the time of Rybicki’s death (someone please prove me wrong), and unlike many stylists who have design running through their blood and remain active on the industry sidelines (Jordan, Manoogian, Ioccoca, Lutz) Rybicki just shuffled off to Florida. Even the Henry Ford’s 1985 interview with Rybicki is… oblique.
The coasts bit on foreign prestige cars before the heartland. Olds, Buick and Cadillac sold about two and a half million cars per year, including people in their 30s. My folks were in their thirties and they bought GM midsize and full size cars, they would have loved an Eldorado. I worked for two guys in their thirties who had a Riviera and a Cutlass Supreme.
There’s another interview with him in Edson Armi’s 1988 The Art of American Car Design that isn’t any more revealing, although it does have less of his tendency to refer to himself in the third person. Armi got the impression Rybicki didn’t give a lot of interviews, and that the main reason he’d agreed to speak to Armi at all is that Armi’s previous attempt to interview Chuck Jordan had ended with Jordan throwing a tantrum after 15 minutes and storming out.
Rybicki seems to have been aggressively nonconfrontational. The most useful comment to come out of that interview was that Rybicki argued that the longer shelf-life of ’80s designs (running for five-six-eight years instead of two or three) led to more caution, and he believed that if Mitchell had been in his place, he would have looked at it the same way. I don’t know that I buy that, necessarily, although Jordan’s tenure is revealing of the level of institutional malaise. (Jordan produced designs that were often conceptually more dynamic, but suffered badly from aggressive cost-cutting at every stage, whereas Rybicki produced mostly very bland designs that suffered badly from aggressive cost-cutting at every stage.)
Wow. I thought I was the only guy who read that book; I found it at John R. King Used and Rare Books in Detroit last year. “Aggressively nonconfrontational” is the correct descriptor for Rybicki’s interview. What a corporate piece of nonsense.
The big shock from the book (to me)? Bob Gregorie saying that the best car he designed was the ’49 Mercury. He mentioned that he didn’t like the original Continental very much, and he styled it to please his boss, Edsel Ford.
Is there a soul alive who could have produced designs during that era of GM that didn’t suffer badly from aggressive cost-cutting at every stage? It was a time of great tumult. The company was hemorrhaging money like no one’s business. I’m not sure even Mitchell or Earl could have kept the accountants and stockholders at bay, by that point. GM was collapsing under its own weight, and facing never-before-seen encroachment from competitors on both the high end (Europe) and low end (Asia) of its portfolio. That there were so many brands didn’t help, because now they needed to share more body tooling, too.
It just plain *cost* GM more money than its competitors to produce a worse or thoroughly mediocre car (or, in many cases, a range of insufficiently differentiated cars).
And then there were really goofy decisions, like the overbudget GM10 program, in which they stupidly released the coupes first…and in which every one of the products was markedly worse than the Taurus and the Japanese competition. Or the Saturn Division, which was doomed from the start. Why anyone thought a $5B investment in a company selling low-margin, fully unique products was going to pay off, I’ll never know. Toyota probably spent less to develop the LS 400 and to launch the Lexus brand, and you see how that paid off.
Likely not, but the Jordan era at least produced some designs that might have been appealing if the cost-cutting and de-contenting crew hadn’t gotten to them, while the Rybicki era produced mediocre designs that often wouldn’t have had much appeal even if they’d had a much higher level of quality in materials and assembly. (There were notable exceptions on both sides, of course.)
One other footnote about the 1985 Riviera – a handful were equipped with the much-maligned CRT touchscreen, which became standard on the ’86.
Buick only made about 100 ’85 Rivieras with the touchscreen, but it became standard on the ’86 and was used for a few years. Touch screens in cars were a bad idea then and a bad idea now. Navigate through two layers of menus, then tap up or down to adjust, meanwhile keep your eyes on the road…
I did not know Lincoln also had an (even rarer) touchscreen on the ’85 Mark VII, although it’s unclear if any of these reached customers, as Ford lawyers had issues with it. At least the audio system controls were not folded into the touch screen in Lincoln’s system.
Love how they trimmed the size/proportions back down to the original 1963 car. As much as I love the 71-73 boat tail cars, I dunno if I would have bought one new. They are really damn big, floppy handling and bad visibility. I think GM(and Detroit) really did get the message that their cars had gotten too damn big in the 70s, especially the prestige cars. Just because you want the best doesnt mean you want an ill handling 20′ barge that takes up two lanes.
Anyways, by 1985 GM had kind of painted themselves into a corner with the brougham treatment. Cars like the BMW 325i, Nissan 300ZX, mk III Toyota Supra, Lincoln Mark VII were the new hip fashion. A radical departure was needed and landed with an absolute THUD with the 1986 model. I call them and the new Cadillacs the shrunken head models.
My understanding is that the designers (Bill Mitchell and Jerry Hirshberg) intended the Boat-Tail to go on the A/G-body platform, but (either for cost or practicality reasons), that didn’t happen, and instead it got put on the newly-upsized B/E-body program. So, yes, it looks awkward. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Boat-Tail, but it was one of the better Riviera designs.
As far as the downsizing, I think that was as much about fuel-economy concerns as design, but it sure didn’t help. In addition to these stylish 1979-1985 cars, the B-body got put on a diet in 1977, and most of those cars belong in GM’s Best Hits category. In fact, the Riviera was on that platform from 1977-1978, although I wouldn’t say it was particularly a looker at that time.
If I had to rank all the generations of Riviera for design, it would be:
1. Gen 1 — 1963-1965
2. Gen 6 — 1979-1985 (the subject of our article)
3. Gen 8 — 1995-1999
4. Gen 2 — 1966-1970
5. Gen 3 — 1971-1973 (the aforementioned Boat-Tail)
6. Gen 7 — 1986-1993
7. Gen 5 — 1977-1978
8. Gen 4 — 1974-1976
The 1979 Eldo/Riviera/Toro trio were the first GM cars (and among the first anywhere) to have the new chrome-trim-less, glued on windshield and rear window that is now universal.
Nice post. I always assumed this generation was the best seller and this confirmed it.
Regarding the 66-70, I’ve contemplated a QOTD post on which generation of car came in beautiful and went out ugly – and my pick would have been this one. I remember reading I think in Collectable Automobile the ever-diplomatic Dave Holls saying the 70 Riviera was “not a happy car”…
On the 86, all I can say is when I first saw one I mistook it for a new Skylark. I’m betting a lot of other folks did too.
That is a whole lot of fake wood on the dash of that 85. Was there any other car that would have outdone this one?
Probably, but it IS very fake-woodsy (except in the W51 car, where there’s real walnut veneer). Not being a big fan of plastic wood, I find it sort of a shame that Buick never saw fit to offer a soberer interior package with an actual gauge cluster, at least for the T Type.
The early S-type (turbo) Riv did have mostly black dash trim rather than fake (or real) wood, although oddly the doors and rear side panel still were trimmed with woodgrain. But yeah, no gauge package available.
The early S-Type was also still available with buckets, which had been dropped by the end of the line in favor of the 45/45 bench. I assume Riviera buyers just didn’t order buckets.
Always thought these were hideous, but I do appreciate the independent rear suspension.
Do you have any stats on how many convertibles were produced? In the movie La La Land, the main male character Seb drives a Riviera convertible; we first see it in that opening dance sequence on the 105 / 110 freeway interchange. He’s a bit of an iconoclast who wears vintage clothing, so it fits his character. As he grows more successful, he trades up to an Eldorado convertible. That Riviera convertible is a car one rarely sees in the wild.
Production figures for the convertible were:
So, it was pretty rare, especially by the end, in part because the convertible production process was torturous: Coupes were shipped from the Linden plant in New Jersey to ASC in Lansing for conversion, and then sent to Flint to be prepared for shipment to dealers. The shipping costs alone probably accounted for a good chunk of the price premium.
There’s a website that has a detailed production breakdown: https://www.rivieraconvertibles.com/production-figures
Yep, and when, in 1984, GM decided to commission a Cadillac Eldorado with the same convertible hardware, they earned the ire of the 1976 Eldorado Convertible Bicentennial Edition owners…who were apparently under the impression (because GM had said so) that the 1976 would be the last convertible from Cadillac. They argued that their cars were worth a lot less since the 1984 debuted, and filed a class-action lawsuit.
They lost, too.
Yours truly was brought home from the hospital in such a Riviera, a 1985, brown with brown leather and a brown landau top. It belonged to my grandmother. And I’m positive it had the Olds 307. It was dog-slow, but the longitude-FWD setup worked great in the snow. And the steering was pinky light. Grandma used to let me sit on her lap and help steer when I was very young, and I tried to put us into a few curbs!
Anyway, I owe a lot to the gen. 6 (1979-1985) Riviera, because that was the car that got me interested in cars. I was very little when Grandma had it (under 7).
And Great-Grandpa (her father) had a 1983 Riviera T-Type that he kept until death. My Great Uncle (his son, Grandma’s brother) inherited it when he died in 2005 and…ahem…misplaced it somehow.
It’s worth noting that while the gen. 6 Riviera was fairly tidy, it would be quite a large car by modern standards. At 206 inches in length, it’s within spitting distance of the Rolls-Royce Wraith/Dawn (208.5 inches) and the newest Dodge Charger 2-Door (206.6 inches).
This was also the first Riviera to have major commonality with the other “E-bodies.” Near as I can tell–and please correct me if I’m wrong, Aaron–the gen. 1 Riviera (’63-’65) had its own body, a real extravagance at GM at the time.
The gen. 2 (’66-’70) shared a largely unibody setup with the Toronado and Eldorado, but traded those cars’ partial frame–which was really just to hold the powertrain and longitude-FWD–for an X-frame, the same X-frame that had otherwise been abolished in every other GM car, and traditional RWD.
The gen. 3 (’71-’73) got the boat-tail design, but still did not adopt the other E-bodies’ longitude-FWD. Indeed, it shared some of its body hardware with the B-body-designated LeSabre. As far as I can tell, the B and E were variations of the same thing during those years, but I might be wrong. Ditto the gen. 4, which was again apparently closer to a B-body.
The gen. 5 (’77-’78) actually *was* a B-body, benefitting from that platform’s tidier dimensions starting in those years, but was little more than a LeSabre with a suit on.
Finally, the gen. 6 adopted the full E-body layout, replete with the longitude-FWD setup (which GM called the Unitized Powerplant Package), for that system’s last hurrah before it was retired in favor of transverse-FWD for 1986.
What I find especially attractive about this generation is the fact that the Cadillac, Buick and Oldsmobile E-bodies all looked quite distinct, despite all sharing a very distinctive roofline. And the rear fender hop-up on the Buick looked like it belonged there. There is a pleasing coherence about the design which had been misssing on the post-boattail ‘LeSabieras’.
A question: if it hadn’t been for CAFE regulations, do you think the market would have been looking for a smaller E-bodies? The dimensions of this car seem quite reasonable for a luxury coupe.
I think the market was primarily interested in style and prestige, rather than necessarily being keen for smaller dimensions per se. This had been the case with the 1979 E-bodies when they launched: Personal luxury buyers were not deterred by grotesque size (the Lincoln Continental Mark V was very popular and it was a full 2 feet longer than these cars), but they were willing to be persuaded by something smaller if it seemed appealing. The 1979 E-cars looked and felt stylish and modern, and their being a bit less thirsty and a lot easier to park was something of a bonus.
Thanks Aaron. Being outside the US I tend to regard the Mercedes-Benz coupes as ‘normal’ for a prestige car, and these seem about the ‘right’ size comparatively speaking. Any smaller and – well, GM found out…
There were certainly limits, but I think when it came to “personal cars,” the key point was that they be different and special. The U.S. market had long since abandoned most sense of hierarchy based on size (you could get lots of quite cheap big sedans that were absolutely enormous), so the game became how unique a specialty model had to be in order to seem worth a bit of extra money.
My favorite aunt in South Carolina bought her first new Riviera in 1976. This was shortly after I came for a visit in my new 1976 white Eldo conv. Shortly thereafter, I was instructed to return to SC and go car shopping which was OK as I was living in Richmond VA at the time, still at University. We shopped so many makes & models but she special ordered an all white 1976 Riviera. Most likely because her family had been buying Buicks from the same dealership since the mid 1950s. Every few years uncle would buy top line wagons to tow his fishing boats and she would buy some top line two door. No convertibles or sun-roofed options for my aunt as the hair-dos had to last a week between beauty shop appointments. So the first special order Riviera, 1976, white w/white vinyl top as she wanted the biggest engine and all the options. But she hated the vinyl top, I think she once used the word “pretenses”. Her next special order Riviera was a 1985 all white (no vinyl roof or sunroof), otherwise fully optioned. At that time I was living in Philadelphia, but given my marching orders to be in SC in two weeks and go shopping. Again, view brands and models all over town, then back to the same Buick dealership to place her special order for another white Riviera with red interior. I think the 1985 was a beautiful car and somehow had the power she wanted. My aunt loved to just get out on the back roads of SC and drive FAST. Foreword to late 1997, I was living in Dallas, got the call to report to SC and go car shopping again. Repeat…view everything, then special order another white Riviera, this time a 1998 with everything but a sunroof (remember the hair issue). By this time my aunt is in her early 70s, still likes driving fast. But OPPS, the car received had a buzz sound at 80 mph she didn’t like. Back to the dealership a few times, “nothing found”, not acceptable. So back on the plane I went, back to SC, test drove her new 1998 pearl white Riviera, and yes a strange noise that only started at about 80 mph. Keeping this massive long post a little shorter, I contacted GM, told them not to their advantage to mess with an elderly southern bell, after about five months they replaced the car with an identical white Riviera. My aunt left me that 1998 Riviera when she passed in 2005. I had it shipped to me in Ottawa Ontario where I was living at the time. I loved that car, but 2014, bought a 1966 Bird conv., lived in a Highrise & only two parking spaces. Sold the 1998 to an older couple who shipped it to their winter home in Arizona. The car found a good home and I kept my aunts red umbrella she had kept in her Riviera’s since the 1970s.
So many wonderful memories of my aunt and her white Rivieras. The times we spent together driving the back roads of South Carolina.
What a wonderful story, thanks for sharing! Your aunt literally drove the history of the post-war American automobile!!! And what a thrill it must have been to own and drive three completely different Rivieras, each with its own special appeal. And you got to experience lots of cars in the process. If only one could go back in time and special order a few choice cars.
I never really appreciated these but in context they do look especially compared to the hideous ’86 to ’88 models.
Do we think if the ’89 restyle had been the replacement it would have done better? I think so but this market was in quick decline and the few I was familiar with that drove the ’89 style ones were quite old. The 95-99s definitely got some younger buyers but I felt they did not promote the car after the 1st year.
But this is a car Buick should bring back in some form. At some point there will be some crossover fatigue and the market might have room for a PLC or 2.