The other day I shared with you a Trabant with a tow hitch. Given its 23hp 600cc engine, the trailer had better be small. Today we’ll look at the other end of the towing spectrum, with what was once the kind of vehicle very much desired to pull a nice long Airstream or such. As in, a 1969 Buick Electra, with a big, husky 7 liter V8.
This fine big Electra was shot and posted by Matt Z at the Cohort, and it brings back memories of riding one one identical to it except it had a black vinyl top. It was owned by the Greek owner of the Best Steak House in Iowa City, where I picked up a job as busboy and dish washer for a few months in the fall-winter of 1971.
His trajectory was the typical one of so many other Greek-Americans back then: he had come to the US as a young man, worked at a relative’s restaurant for 80 some hours per week, lived in a cheap room, and saved all his money. And eventually he bought the Best Steak House, which did not live up to its name. It should have been called the Cheap Steak House. He bought low-grade meat, marinated it to soften it up some, and then had one of his young Greek cooks tenderize it with one of those mallets.
You stood in line while it was cooked and a fillet dinner (with baked potato, garlic toast and little dinner salad) was $1.69; the sirloin was $1.59, and the chopped steak (hamburger) was $.99. It was popular with office workers and students for lunch. In the evenings, after the last dinner customers were gone, the Greek music went on the stereo, and genuine Greek food was made and served up to all the…Greeks, and me. Chicken cooked in olive oil with potatoes and vegetables. Much better than the non-best steaks.
And here’s the finale: “Bill” always hired young women to be the cashier. He had been a bachelor all his life. But then he suddenly announced that he and the current cashier were getting married. And so they did, and she started driving the big Electra to and from their mobile home. It seemed odd at first, but then it all made sense.
End of story.
Now THIS is a Buick!!!
Sure is! Not my kind of car at all but I still think it’s a good looking Buick, which is a Good Thing. The right choice to tow a big trailer.
There was always something both impressive and a little aggressive about the best Buicks. Long gone today.
Nice story too.
Quoting my observant Grandfather, from about when this car was new: “Gangsters, politicians and the ‘Nouveau Riche’ buy Cadillacs.
‘Old Money’ people and those with quiet, conservative good taste buy Buicks”.
We had the same kind of Best Steak Houses here in Minneapolis
I worked as a busboy in a fine Italian restaurant just north of Toronto. It was a weekend job when I was in grade 11 and 12. I remember that they pooled the tips and gave me $20 of tips each night that I worked, plus my hourly pay every two weeks. Not too bad always having $40 in my pocket. Minimum wage at the time was $2.65 an hour.
Sharp Buick, for those of us raised on cubic inches would that be a 455?
” For those of us raised on cubic inches would that be a 455?”
Nope- the 455 came out in 1970, and was 7.4 liters. In ’69, the Electra came with a 430 cubic inch version of that motor, which is 7 liters.
Thanks Dave, I forgot all about the 430 cubic inch Buick. High school pal used to sneak his Dad’s car to school and do some big smoky burnouts with it. Another fellow had a mid 60’s Buick with a 340 in it.
America!
When murika made great cars there is a 68 Buick wildcat being driven daily here in YAZD
Back when Mrs DougD and I were engaged her parents took us out for dinner. Same deal, Greek owned restaraunt / steak house. My future inlaws were welcomed with open arms, since Pa would regularly sell the owner a flashy new Lincoln (much like this Buick)
Tam was excited, she told me “I haven’t been back here in years, they have the BEST lasagna”. So we both ordered the lasagna which turned out to be comparable to cheap frozen stuff at the store. Actually that’s what it probably was.
We had a laugh about how pleasant childhood memories sometimes don’t stack up in adulthood, and I don’t think we’ve ever let her parents take us out for dinner again. 🙂
There must be something about these Buicks and steak houses. This picture is from a steak house in Fairfax, Virginia in the early 1970s — with a LeSabre right out front.
That’s an awesome shot. That 1970 LeSabre is such a great representation of the sort of Buicks you’d actually see in real life–popular then, gone now, much like these sorts of restaurants.
Brings to mind the ’69 “deuce and a quarter” featured in the Sir Mix-A-Lot video of “My Hooptie”.
‘ Cops say my car smokes but I don’t listen It’s a six nine deuce so to hell with emissions.” A vastly underrated car song.
This was the quintessential boring “grandpa car” when I was a kid. My childhood best friend had a grandfather who had a silver one, either a 69 or a 70. It always seemed odd to me that his wife had a 64 Studebaker Daytona hardtop which was followed by a 74 Javelin AMX, making for a very unusual his-and-hers combination.
And one of these (dark maroon with black top/interior) was my grandfather’s last car. He bought it used around 1974 or 75 after he decided that his 62 Cadillac was too old. He was in his 80s by then and didn’t drive much. I guess a car like this would make the decision to give up your license easier? 🙂
This was the quintessential well-to-do “grandpa car” of that era. Buicks still had a somewhat upscale image in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Practical grandpas bought intermediate or compact Mopars…or maybe a Plymouth Fury III without too many options. These Electras were still a cut (or two) above those cars.
Speaking of the Cohort group on flickr… it seems that someone is posting the wrong type of pics. I can’t tell if they’re product advertisements or a personal ad or what…. but they’re definitely not curbside classics!
It’s in fine shape, but these have always looked wrong to me, all these Buicks with the headlamps weirdly smashed inward from the edges of the car like that.
The 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado has the same problem. It’s too bad GM didn’t continue the hidden headlights on that year’s Toronado.
GM did move the headlights to the edges when it restyled the front of the full-size Buicks for 1970.
Just looked. Yechk! You’re right about the ’70 Toro. All these are illustrative examples of what happens when regulators don’t do their damn job. The headlamps are (and were at that time) required to be “as far apart as practicable”. No dimensional specification in terms of minimum separation or maximum distance from the outboard edge, just “as far apart as practicable”. Translation: “Yawn, we don’t care. Automakers, just do whev you want. Style and fashion matter and it’s not like this is life safety equipment lol”.
I would have that car in a heartbeat. Seeing it being driven in all of that salt causes me pain, though.
Spotted a number of years ago.
As above.
Sharp old Buick. They might get a real surprise trying to tow without a hitch pin though.
As much as I love these old cars, whenever I drive one, I am just dumbfounded at how much gasoline they hoover. The Grand Lady is EPA rated at 14 US MPG. That must be downhill with the engine off. On a 250 km trip last summer it was a lot more like 10 US MPG.
That said, every male in the universe gets better mileage out of their sleds than I ever have. I have never got 20 mpg with a 455 Buick or 440 Chrysler.
In a B-body with a 350, at a steady 100 km/h I could do the mythical 20 MPG.
I drove my uncle’s 472 1973 Cadillac for a weekend and it did exactly 7 MPG. I am sure someone else has done 30.
Someday someone will convert one of these with a 21st century electric drivetrain. There’s lots of room for a long-range battery pack and a motor with locomotive-class torque. That would be a proper Electra.
Yeah, neither have they. Fish stories to the contrary are usually grounded in nothing more than an odometer running fast, a beer fridge running low, and/or an imagination running wild.
For what it’s worth, I could hit 16 mpg with my 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme hardtop coupe. The car had a 350 Rocket V-8 and four-barrel carburetor. Conditions had to be ideal – a steady 65 mph on a limited-access highway during a time of moderate temperatures.
This was in the early 1990s. The car was in very good condition.
I find that completely credible. There’s a whole hell of a lot of real (and unreal) estate between 16 mpg at rock-steady 65 mph cruise in a perfectly-tuned ’72 350 Cutlass and the eyeroller stories that have 440 Chryslers and 455 Buicks getting 20+ mpg all day every day.
Maybe someone pushed those big Chryslers and Buicks for the first 12 miles while the engines were off, and the owners conveniently forgot that part while telling the tale.
I am right there with you on those MPG numbers. I recall my buddy’s father being thrilled and bragging about hitting 17 on one particular tank with his 72 Newport coupe with its 400 V8. I suspect that in the right conditions (and with radial tires) it could do it, but certainly not most of the time.
My 67 Galaxie 500 convertible with a 2 bbl regular gas 390 and a tall axle would run 10-12 in city driving and about 16-17 on the road, depending on conditions. But I one (and only one) time managed 19 in driving like I was in contention at an old Mobilgas Economy Run.
Total Buick torque monster! Hitch bolted to the frame could yank tree trunks and pull trailers. Under that bodacious ass was an ever empty 28 gallon fuel tank
Like Daniel Stern, I’ve never been fond of the ’69 Buicks with the inboard lights.
However, following yesterday’s post, it occurs to me that if they were covered it would look a bit like that ’67 Thunderbird.
Not sure that makes me like it better, but does give it some interesting context.
I like it but I like the Olds 98 even better. When I bought the Cougar from my father at the end of 1969 he got a brand new 70 Olds 98 as a company car. That car was so nice to drive and what a blast with that 455ci/365hp engine. Plus is that it wasn’t green but Twilight blue.
Like that one in the photos without the vinyl roof option, it reminds me of fellow student’s mom’s 1969 Electra 225. Like that one above, it was also a non-vinyl roof, but also monotone, and VERY sparsely equipped. It was the only one I ever saw with crank windows.
Like so many “rags to (almost) riches” Americans; this Buick would always be their choice over a vulgar, more flashy Cadillac.
My parents have owned one Cadillac but four Buicks in their 60 years together. There were several other makes as well, particularly Pontiacs, Volvos, and one BMW(!) but it seems the Buicks were the favorites. In their minds, I’m guessing, the Buicks seem to have class without being crass.
Our next door neighbor came home with one of these brand new in the spring of 1969 (4-door sedan in silver with black interior and no vinyl top). He had traded a colonial white 1964 Galaxy 500 4-door for the Buick. A few weeks later he pulled up in the silver deuce-and-a- quarter with a 26-foot Avion trailer in tow. For those who don’t know Avion was very much like an Airstream and maybe slightly less expensive.
A week later the whole family – dad, mom, two daughters, and infant son – were off on a trip out west. They were gone for a month. In the days before cell phones there was some concern among the adult neighbors about the family’s extended absence. When they returned the father reported that both the car and trailer performed flawlessly. They had covered over 4,000 miles and visited seven western states in the U.S.
Nice.
Ccol! What a throwback. The background looks modern, but the car is exactly the sort of used older car you would see tooling around in the 70’s and occasionally in the 80’s.
At least the roads were dry that day. I choose to believe the owner was taking it out for a quick spin on a nice day, rather than driving it all winter. Driving that on wet winter roads would be a classic car felony!