The nineties, that was the last decade that a select group of Dutch uncles and (grand) fathers still bought brand new American Fords, Lincolns, Mercuries, Chevrolets, Buicks and Cadillacs. Nothing sporty or tall, I’m talking about the segment of the big, low-riding, family-oriented cruisers.
Something like this Buick, with its first registration in the Netherlands on June 7, 1991.
The Roadmaster Estate Wagon’s V8 didn’t even get an LPG conversion; which would have resulted in substantially lower fuel costs, yet at a higher road tax price.
Is that a dog or a hairy calf?
The Buick is parked next to a more Europe-oriented “big” wagon, a 2010 Skoda Superb with a 160 DIN-hp, 1.8 liter turbocharged gasoline engine. The small green hatchback is a Peugeot 106.
Curbside Classic: 1996 Buick Roadmaster Collector’s Edition – “B” There ‘Til The End
Curbside Classic: 1992-1996 Buick Roadmaster Sedan – Who Needs An SUV?
I didn’t realize you could still get American cars that late.
I know the Buick name has some cache in Europe so I guess a Roadmaster is not as much of a surprise.
The official list of General Motor’s North American vehicles exported to Europe changes over the time. In the late 1970s and most of 1980s, I would say half of model range was modified to meet ECE regulations and exported to Europe. However, in the 1990s and Noughts, GM had consolidated the model range down to Cadillac and Chevrolet before eliminating Chevrolet in the 2010s: this consolidation was necessary due to lot of confusions about the overlapping models (i.e. Buick Regal, Pontiac Grand Prix, etc.) and to reduce the cost of distributing them in Europe.
If this vehicle has been officially exported to Europe, it would have different lighting system and external rear-view mirrors like in the photos below. This Buick is either a personal or grey import.
Could there be a difference between the usually utterly strict German Tüv-regulations and regulations in other Euro-countries, like in the Netherlands?
I’m very sure that US FoMoCo and GM cars were officially imported into the Netherlands in the nineties and even later. No need at all to import a new Buick through grey import back then.
My ’69 Plymouth, imported late 2010, still has the all-red US taillights, “old school” chromed US-mirrors, and amber running lights at the front. They only had to replace the sealed beam headlamps (not allowed) and it was good to hit the road after the official RDW-inspection (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer, our Tüv, so to speak). But maybe that was because it was an older, classic car.
Again, I’m far from an expert when it comes to this subject.
Of course, any vehicle that is imported, distributed, and sold in the European Union by the manufacturers must comply with both ECE and EU regulations (the latter is also responsible for pedestrian safety regulations). The local mish-mash regulations set up by the member states have been superseded by the EU directives in 1994. That meant France lost its selective yellow headlamps and Germany added the side turn signal repeaters as mandatory fitment. Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland are members of EFTA (European Free Trade Association) and have required ECE regulations to the various degrees for years.
Some member states allow the limited number of vehicles to be imported and sold without compliance to the ECE and EU regulations, namely the United Kingdom (50 units per annum). This allowed Nissan to sell Skyline GT-R (R32, R33, and R34) and Vauxhall Motors to add its sensational Australian-sourced VXR8 saloons and estates to its model range.
The volume grey import specialists must carry out the compliance work in order to sell them. Lately, I’ve seen more and more North American vehicles, especially Ford F-Series, Ram Trucks, and Chevrolet/GMC Silverado/Sierra, with yellow bulbs in the reverse lamp for turn signal indicators and addition of rear red fog lamp and reverse lamp under the bumpers. The caveat of grey imported vehicles is no manufacturer’s warranty: it is the sole responsibility of specialists to carry out the warranty work and cover the expense.
The personal import is allowed, yet each member state has its own rules on how much they must be modified as well as whether they could be allowed on the road unmodified. I’m told Germany is more tolerant toward leaving the grey imported vehicles unmodified other than changing the headlamps when possible.
As for the antique and classic vehicles, it is up to each member state to determine how much compliance work to be done based on the vehicle’s date of manufacture, provenance, and so forth. For instance, Germany allows vehicles 30 years or older to be qualified as Historisch (historic, classic, etc.) and do not need to be modified at all.
Thanks for all the extra info!
Were there yet EU regulations for automobiles in 1991? Seems a bit early for local control to have been given up. Yellow headlights in France remained a requirement ’til 1993….
How did one buy an officially imported Buick in 90s Netherlands? Were they advertised?
Or did it involve whispering in the ear of an Open salesman? Presumably there weren’t actual Buick dealers?
Only Chevrolet version of this road whale were officially exported to Europe by General Motors. This Buick estate is either personal or grey import. I am not going to hazard the guess how it ended up in the Netherlands without any requisite ECE-mandated lighting system and different rear view external mirrors.
Whatever General Motors (or Ford) didn’t export to Europe and sell through its sales channel (Opel), the grey import specialists do that. You could ask them for specific vehicle to be brought from the United States or Canada (latter is easier due to metric speedometer). In the pre-Internet days, you could buy the magazines that specialised in classified ads.
Hessing De Bilt, for example, was a major US car importer for many years. They did advertise, they had a showroom, and they had plenty of US cars in stock.
I remember that in the nineties cars like the Ford Thunderbird and Mercury Grand Marquis were stated in the weekly pricelists in the car magazines, right inbetween all the Euro cars.
Ah, OK. I guess I was wondering if GM had a dealer network for US cars, given that they went to the bother of providing different light units etc.
I suppose it was (and is) similar to the setup in the UK, except that sales were presumably lower there due to LHD. The difference being that in the UK it’s all blingy pickups and Challengers (and Mustangs before Ford offered them officially). The old man in a yank tank wasn’t a thing there.
Nice find Johannes. Were all these brands official imported to the Netherlands? I know that US cars had their loyal customers there, but now times have change right!?
Where did you know the regristration date from? Is there a code on the number plate like in UK?
https://www.rdw.nl/
Fill in the plate at TIK HIER and hit Enter. Everything is there, except personal information (name, address, etc.) about the owner.
On paper this gen Roadmaster seemed like a good idea, especially from ’94 forward with the LT-1 V-8. Bigger and more powerful than a Cadillac de Ville, and cheaper to boot. While not a total sales disaster, it ran straight into the emerging large SUV headwinds. This, plus the later emergence of 4 door pickups, finished off the station wagon and in a year or so will finish off the large sedan entirely. Taurus, Impala, Charger and 300 are not long for this world.
I remember that in Spain a small selected number of Opel dealers sold (officially) a few GM cars: Corvettes, Sevilles STS, Firebirds, SUVs…meanwhile some grey importers brought american cars on request, so in theory it´s not impossible to see a Roadmaster in Spain. Just don´t expect it.
Predictably sales were very low, but I guess that in some central Europe and scandinavian countries, where they had a small following of american cars, sold better.
Chrysler had a relative success here selling Cherokees, Grand Cherokees, Voyagers, Neons and Stratus. Even the 300M and 300C sold relatively well.
Then in 1999 the Oldsmobile Alero was launched in Europe as the Chevrolet Alero, trying to compete with mainstream medium size family cars like the Ford Mondeo and Passat, and perhaps entry luxury like the BMW E46, too. I hope GM expectations were low, because sales were almost non-existent.
Yes the Alero was a flop. I worked for a Opel/GM dealer in my hometown around 2000. I can´t remember that one was sold.
It bothers me to no end that the Roadmaster wagon used the Caprice front clip. Oldsmobile’s version I begrudgingly get, since they had no B-body sedan, and the split grille was somewhat distinctive, but I’m almost certain the Roadmaster sedan front clip would interchange to the wagon body.
Maybe using the Caprice clip on the Roadmaster was cheap cost-cutting, but I think that it looks better than the Roadmaster sedan’s “inverted” grille.
Better or not, it’s indistinguishable from this. I don’t know why they bothered with a bespoke Roadmaster sedan if they were just going to badge engineer the wagon. This is THE laziest badge engineering job GM ever did, even more so than the N-body Cutlass.
Apparently the sedan front clip will fit on the wagons – I’ve seen some online with this swap done, and it’s discussed on the thread below. I can understand use of the Caprice front clip in ’91 – for the first year the sedan was not yet available – but from ’92 onward why didn’t they use the proper Buick front end?
http://buickforums.com/forums/threads/18502-Do-Roadmaster-Wagon-Front-Clips-Interchange-with-the-Sedan-Front-Clips
I recall one of the car mags of the 90s doing some performance upgrades on a Roadmaster wagon. One of the things they did as well was to fit a Buick front clip to it. It is my recall that it was more than just a simple bolt-up, but required some professional body work.
I seem to recall that article as well. Car & Driver, maybe?
The 1990s was the last decade that our American parents, uncles and grandparents were buying cars like this, too. The Grand Marquis stuck around for a bit but you never saw nearly as many of them new in the 00s as in prior decades, when they were relatively common.
It is fun to see these in other habitats.
Great example of the “bloated whale” Roadmaster and a nice contrast to the modern wagons beside it!
I seem to recall that in the last year that they were produced an equestrian organization gave the Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon an award for being the best tow vehicle for towing horse trailers.
A question for Johannes. I’ve mentioned here before that there are plenty of Dutch-descended people in Australia, particularly post-WW2, and particularly in the part of Melbourne where I grew up. As they became the omas and opas here, they didn’t buy Yank Tanks (as we called such cars) like this Buick Roadhogger. And in this country, a Buick Roadbloater like this would be fairly expensive to run, but in the Netherlands, I’d imagine the cost of just filling a Roadsquasher to be prohibitive. Is there some cultural reason for the purchase of cars, which, while inconspicuous in their homeland, are – in rather compact Holland – fish surely so far out of water that they’re ossified?
Cars from all over the globe found and still find a way to my country. Obviously most of them came from Europe (including Yugo, FSO, Trabant and such), but also from Russia (Lada was quite popular around 1980), Japan, South-Korea and North-America.
The cultural reason may be hundreds of years of experience with exploring the world and international trading. It has always been a nation of global traders and distributors with open borders, plus the fact that there never was a domestic car industry (except for the small DAFs).
When it comes to cars, regardless their age, nothing here “fishes so far out of water that they’re ossified”.
Great find Johannes. Loved the beached whales, but one of the few US wagon shapes I prefer without woodness.
You wrote that ” an LPG conversion… would have resulted in ….. a higher road tax price” – I didn’t know that. How high are yearly road taxes in NL and by how much are they increased with a LPG conversion.
It seems odd to me, why would a LPG car be taxed more heavily..?
In Slovenia, there are no extra taxes for LPG cars – except import customs duties if they find out the LPG conversion was done outside EU (Bosnia and Serbia are popular due to their proximity).
This Buick (weight 2,030 kg), in my province:
Gasoline € 342 per 3 months / LPG € 631 per 3 months.
LPG and diesel powered cars are supposed to drive (much) more than gasoline cars, they’re simply using the public roads more. LPG and diesel are cheaper than gasoline, so the higher road tax can be seen as some sort of compensation (LPG being the cheapest fuel per liter by far).
The vehicle’s weight is also an important factor. In short: a big, heavy diesel or LPG car is the most expensive, road tax-wise. Once the car is 40 years old, it becomes road tax-free (as in zero), regardless fuel / weight.
Hence that many 40+ years old US Brougham sleds run on LPG.
Thank you for your reply. Well, apparently in the Netherlands you have a complete different concept…
In Slovenia, yearly road tax is levied depending on engine displacement, regardless of fuel type, car weight etc, The highest rate is of course for engines with 4000 ccm and above and is 560 EUR per year.
If your car is at least 30 years old, you can apply for a “oldtimer/veteran car certificate” which should give you a 90% discount on that…
That same discount applies to mandatory liability insurance – at least in theory; insurance companies can have different policies.
Liability insurance cost is calculated based on engine power (kilowatts) but can vary depending on the owner’s “insurance history”.
My Chevy Tahoe is only 20 years old, but it has the coveted “oldtimer car certificate”. Alas, as it’s not 30 years old yet, I have to pay full amount of yearly road tax – 560 EUR. Fortunately, I was able to find a really good deal on liability insurance, 200 EUR yearly.
So my total annual costs (including technical inspection) for putting a large American V8 monster on the road amount to about 800 EUR.
And I have LPG installed, too. 🙂
For comparison, years ago I bought a new 2007 VW Golf. Total annual costs of insurance and registration were almost 1000 EUR… of course, a large chunk of that sum was due to having “full insurance” (Kaskoversicherung) which is practically a must if you buy a new VW (very prone to theft).
For the Tahoe, I only have basic mandatory liability insurance (my insurance company will not provide full insurance for cars this old)..