I was scrolling through old pictures on my phone and came across this one I took of the dash of my friend’s 2006 Buick Rendezvous Ultra two years ago. I recall taking it with the intent of posting it, though clearly it slipped my mind until now.
Clearly meant to add a bit more regal-ness over the standard Rendezvous, Buick went all the way with a giant piece of clearly faux wood covering the whole center stack in the Rendevous Ultra. It’s by far an in-your face effect, only emphasizing how fake the “wood” actually is. Which leaves me to wonder, is this the largest singe piece of plasti-wood in a production car?
Yours may win for largest single piece but I would nominate the 1974-76 Coupe DeVille for the largest expanse of what has to be the worst, cheapest fake wood trim ever.
The “wood” (which looks like contact paper) covers the upper door panels and upper rear side panels and is partially topped by a really cheap foam-filled vinyl “pillow”, every one of which split when someone pressed on it in cold weather.
Your Buick example at least *could* have been made out of real wood if someone would have wanted to spend the money. This Cadillac trim was pure shelf paper.
Oh. My. God. That is horrible! I’ve never seen this overzealous Rendezvous fake wood before, but it’ll be hard to beat. One that does come to mind for me was also from Buick, with the door panels on the Electra Park Avenue models from the early 1980s.
Yup, Buick was an egregious plastiwood abuser in that era. And always that same exact pattern!
I thought of these 80’s Buicks too!
Was funny to see some demo derby Buicks, that still had this door trim inside, with just one seat left, ready for action. If only I had a camera!
Oh yeah – you remind me of my 84 Olds 98 with a similar huge hunk of plastiwood on the upper door panels. Plus lots of smaller pieces to cover most of the dash. Oy.
I met a young industrial designer at a party around 1983 or so. He worked for RCA designing consumer electronics. He said that the edict from management was “if it’s wood it’s good.”
Interestingly, this photo only serves to strengthen my opinion that despite the overt fakeness of the materials, Oldsmobile’s interior design team did a pretty nice job with what they had to work with during this period. (referencing my post below re the Toronado of the same time) When compared to the abomination that was the Deville and Fleetwood dash and door panels of the same era, Olds really did have the “upscale, but restrained” thing down. (If one can call fake wood, fake chrome, textured vinyl and polyester fabu-fabric “restrained”)
remember when the salesman told me the new Chrysler Cordoba had the finest fake chrome grille made
The FWD Electra’s also had a lot of fake wood trim. What I liked about my 86 Electra T-Type was no fake wood. Not that the plastic trim was really good, but it did not look fake at least.
That was my laugh for the day Paul. A german hating a french word! Ha!
Oh good; another reason to hate the Redezvous even more. I even hate having to spell its name, which of course spell check doesn’t recognize. 🙂
Really? But I thought you loved the Rendezvous? 🙂
Quick, you had better write your Deadly Sin before I publish another apologia!
Just kidding. 🙂
Funny thing about the name is it has a double meaning. “Rendez-vous” means a planned meeting in French like it does in English, but if you take the hyphen out, it means “give yourselves up / surrender”. From the imperative plural of the verb “se rendre”, which means both things (to go somewhere and to surrender, which is where the English word comes from), among other meanings…
So Paul, call it the Buick Surrender. Such a fitting name, right? And your spellchecker will be just fine with it too.
The meaning I like is the name of the video of a rapid cross town early morning drive in a Ferrari.
Well, here in the Yukon, Rendezvous has a whole different meaning.
It us our “spring festival” in late February.
Tradionaly when the trappers and miners come out of the bush to “Rendezvous” in town.
All sorts of drunken and cabin fever fueled hilarity ensues. Or at least it used to.
We had dirt bike races on the frozen river, complete with home made spiked tires.
The chainsaw chuck and flour packing contests were awesome. One dog pulls and cabin building contests. Arm wrestling and human jousting.
Over the last thirty years it has “evolved” (or devolved) into a “safe” event, that is about as genuine as the wood on this Buick.
What was once the way, has gone by the wayside.
If we (average Joe) ever see real wood trim to to an extravagant level again it will be only thanks to genetic engineering.
That said, my RamCharger is a contender for fake wood, and is as “real” as they come.
And our Rendezvous is still a great event!
Come freeze you a$$ of some time! ☺️
I’m off to plant some plasti-wood trees.
lol
The worst “wood” trim that I’ve ever seen has to be the stuff on the dash of 1970s Mopar “A” cars (Dart, Valiant, Duster, etc.). It’s cruddy-looking and cheap-feeling streaked brown plastic with a bit of “woodgrain” relief. My ’75 Duster had this junk on the dash, and the closer you look, the worse it gets.
It doesn’t look that bad really. A lot of late ’90s and early ’00s vehicles had the trim in a ridiculously shiny way, like the Buick above and many Japanese vehicles. I saw plenty of bad ones.
Pretty horrible console too. Looks like a Craigslist finger.
Also, the later Chrysler F/M-body products had the similar wood trim like yours, and it’s in one piece on the driver’s side ( and the whole dash leans towards driver )
It looks kind of good by compare to the Toyota Hiace van though.
Simulated rosewood, my Town & Country had it on the steering wheel as well.
It came from the Sequoia PlastiWood Forest! Where beneath the high canopy the Nauga roam free and the DiNoc is struggling to re-establish itself.
It’s really nice to see the Nauga make a comeback after almost being hunted to extinction in the Seventies.
I think the green Naugas were my favorite. They are so docile and just like to be caressed. But the key is to keep the hand moving. Otherwise they start to sweat under your skin. I wish our local Zoo had some, I’d love to show the kids.
On that note, what’s the biggest using real wood/veneer? Is it this one from a Saab 9-5? Note that it wraps from the left side all the way over. The fake Buick one doesn’t even do that. It seems immense from a square footage aspect.
The GLK has a pretty large single piece of genuine walnut veneer spanning the width of the dash from the steering column to the passengers side door. I personally really like it, especially its organic shape and how it almost looks like a structural part of the dash as opposed to just an insert like on so many other vehicles.
Mom’s GLK has the lighter “Almond” interior, which I think looks even better in contrast.
Not the best quality picture, but this is from her actual car:
That is pretty good. We had one as a loaner once for a few days and I ended up liking it a LOT more than I thought I would. The cabin was a well-built and attractive (while still feeling durable) place to spend time.
Indeed! The lower dash around the center console is the only area where some cost-saving can been seen, but at least it’s still relatively soft-touch even down there.
The GLK has been a great car so far, all four years and now 71,000 miles. That’s why we’re going to hold on to it even with a new replacement/supplement vehicle on the way.
The only downside of it has really been its unfortunate nature for attracting collisions (3 so far; currently at the body shop as we speak getting the rear bumper replaced after it was rear-ended a few weeks ago) and numerous parking lot dings.
The style is all right, but I can’t help thinking a slightly less glossy finish would be more convincing.
It is real wood though.
If age isn’t a barrier, I had a Mark V Jag sedan and a Bentley, both looked like they decimated a forest AND a herd of cattle. Wasn’t sure which was squeaking and creaking more.
I actually like some plasti-wood interiors. The featured Buick isn’t too bad. The contact paper style described by JPC and tonyola – BARF!!
I come by my fondness for plastic-wood honestly. My dad’s first and only new car was a ’69 Impala Custom Coupe with simulated wood panels on the doors. (Like this one, except his interior was gold.)
One more try on the picture…
The first iteration of the late and unlamented Jaguar S-Type was a pretty horrible place to be.
It could be just the lighting, but from that picture it appears that the upper dash, center stack, and center console all have different grains of veneer too.
I’m not sure it’s original. Photo was borrowed from this website, which also shows you the kit of parts required to assemble your very own S-Type dash: https://www.bitrim.com/wd306.htm
The second generation S-Type was much more restrained and all together more effective, but the retro ship had sailed by that time, and Jags were looking like Mitsuokas.
It’s indeed not original. That pic got a dash kit. That means stick-on trim around the radio/AC area and center console. Those are not wood in the original one.
But even in original form, it gets shamed by the lower priced Rover 75 on how to make a retro interior. Note the way the restyled S type dash looks much nicer and also more similar to the 75…
The upper piece around the IP and vents, and the lower piece around the shifter, are original and actual wood. The middle piece around the radio/climate controller is added and probably not wood.
One thing about Jag in that era-the dashes were genuine wood, albeit a thin veneer over a metal backing plate for ease of assembly. That’s true of all of them, from the X-Type all the way to the XJs. I’ve pulled panels from junkyard X-Types and verified that, yes, it is in fact real maple on the dash.
Also, the X-Type did that interior better than the S-Type.
I don’t know what it’s supposed to be, but this ’79 Cadillac has lots of swirly tan and brown stuff.
The pattern is very reminiscent of the cigarette smoke that was much more prevalent inside Cadillacs back then than now 🙂
It was mentioned in my social psychology class about smoking in popular culture.
I pointed out those Cadillac models had one ashtray plus a cigarette lighter on all doors except driver’s, with a bigger ashtray in the middle as a compensation. Modern vehicles no longer have that number of ashtrays or cigarette lighters and mostly are used as power source.
Most modern vehicles don’t even come with an ashtray or feature a lighter as standard equipment; all new MINIs being one of them, and there’s no longer an OEM option for a lighter and cup-holder ashtray.
Even the cigarette lighter plugs are gone? I agree it’s a terrible form-factor for a power plug, but it seems that too many accessories use it now for it to just go away. Every new car I have seen has at least one, and often several, though admittedly I’ve not been in a newer Mini.
Then again with USB becoming so popular, maybe it can kill it off?
Todd, that’s a really good question that I would trust a product guy like Brendan to answer even though I’ve had a 2015 Mini since new. It’s been almost three years of ownership and as far as I can remember there is not a “12v outlet” (if you’re over 30 it’s a freaking lighter) in the console. But on the other hand if you pointed to it and called me an idiot, I wouldn’t be surprised. Never had a reason to look for it or use it.
@CJC
If you have a 2- or 4-door hardtop, there is a 12-volt outlet, along with a USB port directly in front of the cup holders and below the tier of toggles where your ignition switch is.
@Todd Stanley
If you can find a spare one lying around, a MINI/BMW cigarette lighter will still fit into the 12-volt outlet. Conversely, BMW also makes a device that plugs into that 12-volt outlet giving you 2 additional USB ports if you prefer.
There are still ‘cigar lighter’ plugs in most cars, but used mainly as power ports for cell phone charging. Have to get a ‘smoker package’ from dealer, to get a lighter and tray, though.
The Nauga likes to rub itself on the bark of that type of tree. It helps to make the hyde more supple.
Any word on the Morrok population? 😉
The Morroks have been ok for a while, especially with Pontiac gone. The real endangered species these days are the tiny cows they use to make Leatherette.
I think this takes the cake, except that fairly late in the Brougham’s run they started fakewooding the center stack too (rather than make it in all the many interior colors still offered)
The swirly stuff is an accurate representation of a grain pattern known as burl. It is a highly desirable premium grain. I would imagine the wood would be maybe walnut or something equally desirable. Just for the record, no dash wood is a solid two inches thick. There is not a car made that has a premium grade wood on the dash that is anything but a veneer. Translation of a veneer is you have a particleboard dash board covered in a very thin, ( think not much thicker than tape), layer of premium wood. It’s the cheapest way to offer real wood that will lift and Crack where the cheap plasticwood won’t.
Yup, you’re correct. It’s also known as Bird’s eye or Curly maple, depending on how the grain goes, and it’s very expensive and highly prized because of it’s rarity. This wood, when finished, has a 3-dimensional depth to it unmatched by any other wood, it’s really beautiful. Real walnut is very hard (harder than maple or oak) and very, very difficult to work with. A few years ago I made a rocking chair for a friend out of black walnut. It turned out well but I found out then how difficult it is to work with.
Years ago I made a Cabriole leg chair of the sort you’d find around a fancy dining room table using black walnut. And I’m here to vouch for you-black walnut is an absolute bear to work with! It’s absolutely magnificent when its done well, though.
The real thing may be highly desirable and premium, but the screamingly fake version that slathered the interior of our ’79 Sedan DeVille was not. Especially when contrasted against the powder blue dash, seats and carpet we had (barf).
The cheap reproduction of the curly pattern looked dramatically more artificial than the more conventional grains they started using in 1980
It may all be veneer now, but dismantle a British cars dash from years back, once disassembled, there is no dash, just brackets and gauges waiting for the refitting. Chrysler was proud of the fact the 66 Imperial used “Exclusive Clairo Walnut to create the finest wood veneers” They were right about the quality, it’s just fine in my Imperials.
I will leave this for a judge’s ruling but I note that the specific question was
“Is this the largest single piece of plastic-wood in a production car?”
It depends on what the meaning of the word “in” is, I guess.
That woodgrain on the air deflector is really too much!
Haha, I was implying interior-only, but you raise an excellent additional question regarding di-noc on the exterior.
The ’68 Mercury wagon might take the prize.
I LIKE THAT!
Happy Motoring, Mark
Well, there’s always the Morgan.
That’s real wood. Ash if I remember correctly. A very nice garden shed on wheels.
Have a look around inside some American trucks if you want to see examples of the endangered plastiwood tree, its truly amazing,
It makes me think of the explosion of imitation wood in the ’70s and ’80s. The stuff covered TVs, stereos (both the cheap department store varieties and the components from Pioneer, etc.), phono turntables, speaker cabinets, tape decks, cheap furniture (especially the assemble-it-yourself stuff), and all kinds of small gadgets. I think it even showed up on small kitchen appliances like toasters and toaster ovens.
Imitation wood grain was a thing in past generations, too. My dad’s 1947 Cadillac Fleetwood had a wood-grain painted dash (everything that wasn’t covered by chrome or instrumentation!), and the wood-grain finish extended to the interior door frames. It didn’t look great by the time I knew the car growing up.
It made its way onto larger kitchen appliances too! When I was growing up, our neighbors, the Przybyszewskis, two doors down had them. An elderly couple who lived in this large 3-story Victorian house, and drove a 1980s Lincoln Town Car.
I recall visiting them once as a child to drop off a note from my grandmother, and of course, I was invited in to take home some cookies or something. What I remember most is their kitchen. Clearly not updated for decades, it had turquoise-colored wallpaper and was filled with matching appliances all in woodgrain “di-noc”. Looked something like this:
Remember everything had a little sticker with “SIMULATED WOODGRAIN CABINET” printed on it?
Once collectors realized I could fix or completely re-do wood grain on cars from the 20’s through the early fifties, I can’t start to remember how many were done. Quite a number of “Woody wagons” as well.
Check out old Let’s Make a Deal episodes from 70’s, to see the huge woodgrain box TV sets that my grandparents and parents generation loved at the time.
…and cats, too. Our old Siamese used to love sleeping on top of the giant (and warm) TV cabinet.
You mean they even woodgrained the cats in the 70’s?
Our cat rolled over and fell off the TV quite a lot, which sometimes caused a slight altercation when she fell on the dog.
Tonyola, the swirly stuff in that ’79 Cadillac is supposed to be burl, perhaps Carpathian Elm burl. The ad-writers don’t know what burl is, so they refer to it as “burled” wood. You can’t burl wood; either it’s burl or it isn’t. Burls are growths that appear on the trunks of both hardwood and softwood species. Redwood burl is quite spectacular. Walnut and Elm seem to be commonly used in furniture and other decorative applications. The characteristic is a radically complex grain structure, with no recognizable direction to the grain.
Burl veneers have been used for centuries in furniture, where book-matching can achieve a symmetrical image somewhat akin to an ink-blot. Traditional auto dashboard and other trim was presumably made with pieces of solid burl, where thickness and a sculpted effect are desired. As with many other exotic substances, relative rarity, and (in this case) difficulty of manufacture (cutting the veneers requires special technique) give the material its up-market caché.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl
I was looking at ’34 Fords the other day, online, and saw two with metal dashboards painted to resemble some kind of wood grain — I think: a red-to-green irregular vertical pattern, blotchy and smeary. Not sure what I was seeing; re-created texture or worn originals ?
Lots of 30’s to mid 50’s cars had painted woodgrain dashboards.
What makes it look so bad is that the shapes of the vents, sound system and heat/ac controls are so uncoordinated and unaligned.
That may be the largest piece of fake-wood! But it made me think about the C5 Corvettes which have a piece of real wood in the floor! I don’t have the engineering schematic handy, but I seem to recall that GM engineers decided that was the best material for strengthening and sound-deadening a portion of the floor! I wonder how big that piece of wood is?
I remember that, too! It’s balsa wood…not sure of the size, though.
I know the C6 had it, and I think the C7 may as well. It’s a sandwiched part of the floor.
One of the worst offenders in Europe (if one doesn’t count the Facel-Vega, which took fake wood to the level of artwork) was Simca, then under the influence of Chrysler. This is the inside of a Simca 1100 Special (a.k.a Simca 1204) from about 1976. It’s like a plague of formica took hold of the entire dash, including the steering wheel.
I kind-of like this too.
Happy Motoring, Mark
Buick Rendezvous should have used the radio and HVAC from the 1990 Chevy Caprice to complete the look.
Not sure if “factory” applies, but the dashboards in most conversion vans have been replaced with massive wood, or sometimes “wood” panels.
No further input on sheer expanse of wood, but that just drives home how cringeworthy GM interiors had gotten by the mid-aughts. When car shopping this spring I looked at a ’12 Impala LTZ–it looked reasonably good (black, tint,18″ wheels), had great features (sunroof, leather, bose audio, backup camera), and a great engine (the ~270 HP 3.7 V6). I so wanted to buy that car, but I couldn’t. The interior, and most specifically the dash, just put me off, and that’s where you spend the most of your time. Bad fake wood, and lots of it. Rubbermaid buttons. Questionable build quality. And to top it all off, the steering wheel was misaligned. When was that execrable interior designed? Yep, around the same time as this Buick, I’d wager.
From head on, that looks homely. From an angle, it looks vile. It looks like those tables they make out of tree trunks, just a giant slab of misshapen, glossy wood. Except it ain’t real! The sad thing is, this wasn’t the worst of GM North America’s interiors at the time… They were almost all rubbish, even an expensive Seville had cheap trim pieces (although it had nice real wood).
The Terraza, Rendezvous and Rainier were all pretty half-assed, as demonstrated by how easily they were replaced with one competitive offering, the Enclave.
Weirdest use of “wood” must be on the speedometer of an AMC Matador
But did it match the rest of the dash?
My first car was a 75 Matador Coupe Brougham, in triple black with a 304 and a cherry bomb muffler that fell off every three weeks or so. It had the “wood” gauge cluster trim. It only appeared in the upper trim levels. The base 6 cylinder, non brougham cars had a silver background on the gauges. I know as I remember pulling a 6 cylinder cluster from a junkyard and swapping the silver one in for my wood brougham cluster as I thought it looked more “race-car” and less “old man.” This was in the mid 90’s BTW.
My 66 Imperial has wood under the clear instrument section, it’s real and matches the grain on the rest of the dash.
That is quite a lot of cards and trinkets hanging from the ignition key in the Rendezvous in the first photo. I can see how all of that can weigh down the detent in the ignition switch in some GM cars.
GM ignitions of my childhood had “wings” the key would fit into, so if they keychain itself had a pound or two of metal attached it didn’t matter because the bottom edge of the key would rest against the housing and not put stress on the actual key tumbler mechanism.
How it’s done, properly.
Cut Buick some slack with that fake wood – have you seen that dash without it?! The largest single piece of cheap, unfinished plastic ever used on a dash? Is actually looks like it left the factory without any of the dash trim attached, but no, that’s it.
I’ve actually thought about getting one of these on the cheap to haul the crumb crunchers around in instead of dirtying up my “real” car. No way I could ever care what they did to something that looked like that to begin with…
It takes close examination (and a look through the windshield) to realize that is not a black-and-white picture!
I had to install a kit in my RDV back when my parents bought it brand new to make it look a bit better.
And if you haul kids in it, be sure to get one with leather, as the cloth seats are dirt magnets due to the light color.
I only get leather in all my cars (and furniture) for that very reason!
You commenters are overlooking an American sub-genre of fake wood–what is bad in two dimensions is worse in three. I’m talking about those plastic “hand carved” “wood” appliques (Were they made by Mattel?) that appeared on a lot of ’70s car interiors. These dubious contributions to the wood carver’s art were, I suppose, designed to emulate old world renaissance revival furniture–and fooled nobody.
This cartouche is from a ’76 Fleetwood Brougham, but there were other examples even gaudier than this, but I can’t remember what cars had them. I think this is a big reason why U.S. luxury buyers fled to Mercedes and Jaguar, who used REAL wood and had finely crafted interiors that didn’t insult people’s intelligence.
Poindexter: I have that plastic “hand carved” wood on the sliding panel of a coffee table purchased in 1970 by my parents. Real marble inserts and genuine cherry wood everywhere else.
I refinished the whole thing, but that panel remains just as plastic and “timeless” as it day my folks bought it. It was too nice to trash and not good enough for Goodwill.
Now if I could find the barrel shaped table [with the same plastic on the door] that was part of the set, I could complete the “look”.
That table sounds pretty neat- any pics?
My personal fave, 1991-93ish Chrysler town & country. Birdseye maple?
I can just see Lido’s face light up at the sight of that… “No cockpit-style interiors in my Chryslers!” 🙂
While real wood, your QOTD made me remember this post:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/wordless-outtake/wordless-outtake-so-youd-like-to-have-some-genuine-wood-trim-sir/
There are aftermarket companies that make wood veneer, plasti-wood and wood like decals for cars even today. I think there’s even a kit for IONs.
I’m of mixed mind about this. A little is okay. Too much seems to be an irritant to the eye.
But I would prefer plain plastic over piano black any day, which always looks like cheap hard shiny plastic no matter how well it’s executed.
Buick’s been so hit-and-miss with their imitation wood. Terrible through the ’70s into the early ’80s. From the mid-’80s into the mid-’90s, they actually were pretty thoughtful and tasteful with the applications (my ’95 LeSabre had a believable amount that actually worked well with the rest of the interior and made it somewhat attractive).
But by the 2000s, this garbage was happening.
As a question to the commentariat: I recall reading years ago that there was some federal regulation from the early 1970s that banned the use of real wood in cars for awhile, right around the time they dropped the hammer on convertibles. Frankly, the notion seems ridiculous, but is there anything to it?
The 1995 LeSabre, with a believable amount of faux wood that worked well with the rest of the car.
The 1997-1999 LeSabres got a darker faux wood trim. I preferred those, but I really liked the interiors of the jellybean LeSabres
Buick really had it going on in the 1990s. That ’95 I had was a brilliant car, and I cried the night I totaled it. With a gray fabric interior instead of the blue, the wood-look inserts really looked at home.
GM in the 70’s and early 80’s has already been labelled as one of the worst offenders, but our 1980 Toronado XSC was festooned with some pretty wide swaths of the fake stuff, even going so far as to have contrasting “inlaid veneer” around the edges of each panel. I actually thought it all came together pretty well from an aesthetic standpoint, but there were some pretty huge expanses of it.
And then there were the door panels: Plastiwood, complete with “inlay”, surrounded by a “chrome” strip, which itself was surrounded with a puckered “leather” motif. (The seating surfaces and steering wheel were actually leather, and ours was in exactly this color.) I still think it was overall a very attractive interior, but between the obviously fake “wood” details, the extensive use of Plastichrome and the similarly heavy-handed use of faux stitching and texturing on the vinyl surfaces it was full-on “Faux-verload”.
Hey lets not forget the wood in the back of the Peugeot 404 and 504 wagons. This is real veneered plywood which i guess is a step up from plastic. And it looks really good.
1955 and 56 DeSoto and Chrysler wagons had beautiful wood you didn’t want to haul anything on.
That Rendezvous dash bezel is what I want to replace the stock grey plastic one for my 04 Rendezvous, the color brightens up the otherwise drab interior. (yes I installed a woodgrain kit on my RDV ages ago at Mom’s request since she didn’t care much for the bland look either)
And yes it looks really cheesy and fake, like the wood center stack bezel on 2nd gen Explorers.
Poindexter,
Right on, my ’76 Eldorado had the same door panel, you could see the mold lines on the “gunstock” genuine simulated wood like inserts, not to mention the one piece molded plasti-vinyl door panels and the wood like contact paper covering the rest of the door.
As a young engineer I worked on two large expanses of vehicular fake wood, albeit just flat vinyl-clad aluminum. Here’s the first, the 1977 Peterbilt 359 “Corvette dash”. In this case my photo is of an early proto, for which we used real wood veneer. But production dashes of course used vinyl.
Here’s the second, the Peterbilt 362 cabover from 1981. Again, my image doesn’t actually show fake wood, as used in production. Instead I chose the industrial designer’s early rendering, with panels in black. Even then, nobody but marketing/sales liked the fake stuff.
The plastic “piano black” crap found in so many of today’s cars is even worse. It looks and feels cheap and gets covered by finger prints in no time.
Hairline scuffs too. Black is hard enough to deal with on the exterior, interior has to be the worst place for that finish.
For the most interior “wood” in square footage it seems like some Dodge B-vans had a “stripe” at the beltline that ran from stem to stern and even crossed the tailgate before making the long the trip back up front to meet up with the dash panel’s L-R horizontal plank.
Sorry, no pic.
I swiped a couple of random images.
Not sure how many board-feet. haha
With regards to the name choice, the only time I had ever heard the word Rendezvous in American lexicon was in the original Toy Story when Buzz Lightyear says “…I have a rendezvous with Star Command. Come in, Star Command!”
It took a while for me to infer that it meant a gathering ?
Am I the only one here who always hears the Bruce Springsteen song “Rendezvous”, perhaps better know by Greg Kihn’s cover version, whenever I see one of these Buicks? And then Greg Kihn makes me think of Jonathan Richman, and “Dodge Vegematic”.
…and another
Wow! I don’t care what anybody else says. I’m really diggin’ that big fancy fake wood! Seriously! It makes a very nice contrast with that interior.
My ’78 Buick Riviera wood trim…….yes I like it…..the often dull trim of modern cars doesn’t thrill me at all, but that is my opinion.
1978 buick riviera …….by the way the wood trim of a ’77 riviera has a different pattern and is much darker.
1977 buick riviera interior
1977 riviera
1977 buick riviera has a different pattern and much darker wood trim.