(first posted 1/3/2014) After the brilliantly adventurous 1961 Buick Special failed to make much of a splash in the market, Buick (along with the rest of GM’s midmarket divisions) went the opposite direction with the 1964 model. We present to you the 1964 Special. What was so special about it?
The 1961-63 Buick Special (CC here) had been a good idea, at least when it was being thought out in 1958 and 59. There had been a recession on, and compacts (in America and from abroad) had been quite the growth industry. Having a car of compact dimensions had been a life preserver at Studebaker with the ’59 Lark (if a temporary one), and if having a compact could sell Studebakers and Ramblers, then GM could not afford to overlook that market.
However, the Y body Special had not been the success that the boys at Buick expected. It had sold decently, but not in the kind of numbers that excited folks used to a pretty substantial market share. While planning the car’s 1964 replacement, the market was becoming muddled. Compacts were getting larger (Studebaker and Rambler) while some larger cars were getting smaller (’62 Plymouth and Dodge). Ford was first into a genuine middle ground, staking out a segment that would become known as “intermediate” with the 1962 Ford Fairlane and Mercury Meteor. Within a few years, this “small, medium and large” size classes would become fairly standardized, but in the early 60s, it was still in flux. 
For 1964, the intermediates from all four popular Divisions would share a new “A body”, a designation not used since the demise of the 1958 Chevrolet and Pontiac. This new A body would be thoroughly conventional affair. Gone was the unit construction, the aluminum V8, the two piece driveshaft, and almost everything from the earlier Y body that had been so technologically interesting. In its place was a conventional frame, conventional powertrains, and a size almost perfectly between modern compacts and full-sized “standard” cars. In fact, these cars were quite close in size to the Buick Special of ten years earlier.
The Buick Special (and Skylark) would share a new V8 engine. In place of the fascinating but troublesome aluminum 215, would be a new engine with a block cast from good old ‘Murcan iron. Based on the 215’s architecture, the new engine would displace 300 cubic inches (4.9 L) from a .25 inch increase in bore and a substantially longer stroke. The engine would retain aluminum for its cylinder heads and intake manifold. The new engine’s output would be a more Buick-like 210 horsepower with a two barrel carburetor, and 250 horses with a four pot and higher compression.
Even with this new engine, it is plain that Buick was still being punished for its bet on the earlier 215. Because the Division was still working with that earlier engine’s foundation, it came to market with the smallest V8 engine of pretty much any competitive car. Oldsmobile’s 330 and Pontiac’s 326 provided a substantial displacement advantage over the Buick 300, which was barely larger than Chevrolet’s aging 283 and even the ancient size-limited 289 in the final U.S.-built Studebaker. Even (especially) in its later 340 and 350 cube versions, the Buick small block V8 would have an unusually long stroke to get its displacement due to the narrow bore centers inherited from the old 215. Also, the odd, rough Fireball V6 (Paint-Shaker V6 might have been a more truthful name) would carry over, though it would now be up to 225 cubic inches (3.7 L).
Buick also continued with its two speed automatic transmission, the Super Turbine 300. Really, by 1964, was there any reason for a car in Buick’s place in the world to be equipped with a two speed automatic? Not that Olds or Pontiac were any better off in this regard. GM seemed to be in a sort of automatic transmission wilderness during this era, from which it would not emerge until the Turbo HydraMatic began to filter through the line. Even the ’64 Ford Fairlane now sported the new three speed C4.
Two speed automatics notwithstanding, it can be safely said that GM nailed the new intermediate market right from the beginning of the 1964 line. Buick’s version finally started to sell in decent numbers, approaching 200,000 units in 1964, now handily outselling the LeSabre. The car did a nice job of mimicking the styling of the larger Buicks, which were not unattractive cars in 1964.
I saw this Bronze Mist Special Deluxe sedan in a restaurant parking lot in Muncie, Indiana after I dropped my middle son off at his dorm one day last fall. I was not excited enough to take pictures before going through the drive-up for a coffee, and the car drove off before I could shoot it. After Thanksgiving break, I was back and so was this Special. I decided that the car fates had given me another chance, so I stopped for pictures first. As I was leaving, I got to meet the young owner who happens to work there, and who drives this car every day. It was no surprise to learn that he bought the car from longtime elderly owners, who plainly lavished lots of care on this old car.
It was only then that I got to see the one feature that makes this Special special after all. I have looked at a lot of old cars, but have never before seen a car equipped with factory air conditioning, yet without a radio. Have you? Didn’t think so. Also, even though the first owners would not pop for a full-on Skylark, they saw fit to pay for the spinner wheelcovers. Jason Shafer was exactly one day early with his piece on oddly equipped cars, because this one should have been the poster-child.
As I watched the owner fire up his Wildcat V8 and drive away, I contemplated this car’s place in the universe. Was the transition from the 1961-63 Y body to this car the ultimate fulcrum in GM history? The General’s takeaway seems to have been that the technically adventurous does not sell, while competent but boring is something that can be taken to the bank. It is tempting to denigrate the company for adhering to this philosophy more often-than-not in the coming decades, but my conclusion is that this car had everything that customers wanted in a smaller Buick in 1964. This car offered good portions of style, performance and durability. Other cars could out-do the Special in one or two of these criteria, but few could offer all three. And isn’t this what made people really rather have a Buick?
Nice find, good looking car
Agree. I’m a sucker for clean older cruisers. I’d leave this one just the way it is. I’d probably put dual exhausts . . . . otherwise, I’d leave it alone – no radio and all. Guessing this has the 300 2-bbl. We had a blue over blue ’64 Skylark with the 300 4-bbl.
Cool car. Those cool spinner wheelcovers were probably added at the dealer since the wheels are painted body-color. The car probably had dog dish hubcaps when it was built.
Actually, my first car, a light blue 1978 Firebird Esprit had Rally IIs, stripe, sport mirrors, power windows, power locks, tilt, A/C, 305-2, automatic, console, rear defogger but neither a radio nor clock.
No radio = less distracted driving. Not that I could drive a car very far without one…..
Less distracted until you start singing tunelessly to yourself because you’re starting to lose your mind…
The Cadillac I drove across the Prairie and over the mountains last summer had an inoperative radio and I forgot to bring headphones for my smartphone. It was a long trip.
Close to my heart! I have a ’65 Skylark hardtop with the all-iron 300 4 barrel…it’s a great car. I hope this car’s owner takes care of it during the winter so it can last!
Here’s my ’65…
Beautiful! I will confess that I always found Buick’s method of doing a contrasting roof a little strange. Hard to tell from the picture, is that black, navy or dark green?
It was originally Midnight Blue, but someone painted it ages ago in a slightly darker lacquer blue…I’ve had it for 10 years and just don’t want to paint it…It’s presentable and looks great from 10 feet, but the lacquer’s checked. This is by far the smartest purchase I’ve ever made, and echoes what you’ve said about A-Bodies…they’re just good cars.
Our Cutlass was a dark green so dark that it often looked black. It is a car that I would happily have back (had it not been driven into the ground later in its life). GM’s use of lacquer paint was one of the few issues those cars had. It looked so nice when new, but the finish was soft and not nearly as durable in the weather/carwashes as the enamel used by Ford and Chrysler. Ours was garaged, so looked good the whole time we had it.
The Buick was better looking in 65 than in 64, IMHO (as was the Pontiac), while the Olds looked better in 64 than in 65. Sorry, but the Chevelle was just dumpy compared to the BOP cars.
Hi Aaron you wouldn’t happen to still have that 65 Buick? Also is it a 65 Special deluxe? And would you consider selling it as I am in search of one?
This is my 65 Special Deluxe.
Conventional yes, but without these there would be no Sports/Vista. Great colour, lucky guy.
It helps a lot that this car is better looking than the 61-63 Special any day of the week. And not by a little bit.
Looks to be the perfect car for 2 young men from Brooklyn, New York to take a spin in. Nothing like an early 60’s GM intermediate to tour the back roads of deep Alabama; stopping off at the Sack O’ Suds for a refreshing drink or two. Yep, life is great for the 2 Utes……
🙂
In honor of this Buick “Nothing Special” Special, I give you “(The Name of This Train is The) Nothing Special”, by the ’80s pop eccentrics The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNGNA-cPs5Q
“It’s just an ordinary train.”
My Dad had one of these, a maroon ’64 two door. It was pretty old when he got it in the late 70s…my parents went through a “klunker” phase where they were tired of car payments so they bought some old cars. I don’t remember what engine the Buick had, but I remember it was a weakling with really noisy tappets. To my dismay, he pried that Buick logo cover off the dash to expose a slot for a radio and installed an AM/FM 8-Track. We had that car for many years, and it was simple for him to fix when something went wrong. Rust started eating it and Dad patched up body panels with cut-up buckets from work. My mom was pretty embarrased to drive it, with it’s DuPont bucket sheet metal work. My uncle ran a salvage yard and eventually the Special wound up there, then dissapeared soon after, probably to some kid with dreams to dropping a V8 in it.
I bought a ’64 two door in 1966. 6 cylinder, 3 on the tree. I didn’t like it much but it was amazingly reliable. I changed oil and replaced the spark plugs over 4 years driving it. Although I lived in the rust belt, no rust. I sold it when the US Army sent me to Germany so I could drink Bavarian beer.
Nice ride, but personally I prefer the ’61-’62 Special myself….They were distinctive, this just looks like a five dollar whore version of a Chevelle…
I have to admit that I don’t get the “how many speeds in your automatic?” snobbery.
Keep in mind that, back in 1964, the person who paid extra for an automatic didn’t give a damn about how many speeds the transmission had. He cared about two things: 1. Did it work? 2. How many pedals were on the floor. Period.
Those constantly maligned two-speeds did the job just fine for somebody who couldn’t have cared less about sporty driving.
I can be convinced to agree with you, but only to a point. For someone who lived in a small town and drove in the same conditions that folks would drive Model As in the 1920s, a 2 speed auto was just fine. For that matter, so was the old Chrysler Fluid Drive. But both of those solutions were woefully inadequate for modern, higher speed driving. The 2 speed saps performance AND fuel economy. First gear is too tall for real acceleration, and you are in a no-man’s land for passing in the 50-70 mph range.
However, it is true that Chevrolet sold a lot of cars in the Powerglide years. Most folks were brand loyal and didnt care (and it didn’t hurt that the SBC was uniquely strong in the upper rev range). But I also think there is a reason that you see so many THM 350s in restored Chevys.
Agreed. Back in ’96 I did a THM350 swap into an otherwise stock ’57 Bel Air 4 door, using all Danchuk parts so car could be put back to stock anytime. Owner loved it so much he sold the original Powerglide!! Wow what a difference it made.
I’ll concur, Syke as in the day, the average buyer of one of these was please to get a decently equipped car like this – with automatic and even a/c – and for the most part, in average driving the 1-2 shift was seamless and probably didn’t matter too much. Perhaps it might have, when Pops slammed the pedal down at about 60 mph to pass someone and the engine screamed for a moment with a violent upshift back to the second gear . . . . these B-O-P 2-speeders were everywhere . . . . growing up, we had two of ’em: A ’64 and a ’67 Skylark . . .
Today’s cars are terrible. Anything I’ve ever driven with over 5 speeds seems to always be hunting for gears. Very annoying.
That said, I agree with what JP said. I feel 3 speeds are the minimum needed for acceptable performance.
I agree, I really do like a good 3 or 4 speed automatic, over a busy feeling 6-8 speed unit.
The only time I’ve noticed a dearth of speeds on my 3-speed equipped 77 Chevelle was coming down the Smoky moutain pass outside of Asheville over the summer, 3rd was a bit too high to let it coast without gaining speed, and 2nd I was crawling along at 55 with the engine turning a fastish 3500 rpm.
I find the 4 speed on my 95 Explorer to be just right, since it shares almost the same gear ratios as the TH-350 in my other car, and has OD.
I’ve said this before, but I grew up around Powerglides and nobody gave two hoots about how many gears it had. They wanted an automatic transmission that was 1) cheap and 2) durable. Powerglide fulfilled those parameters just fine. I never head anyone complain about Powerglide. Most loved it because it would last the life of the car with zero attention. I can’t recall anyone I know ever doing any kind of service on one other than the modulator valve, which cost like $7.00 and could be replaced in ten seconds.
Back then, it just wasn’t the issue it is made out to be today.
It might have been an issue had you grown up around Torqueflites instead. 🙂 Once you have gone to a 3 gear its tough to go back. But Chevy had such brand loyalty back then that lots and lots of drivers never tried anything else.
” I never head anyone complain about Powerglide…”
You must never have known anyone with a ’68 Impala coupe with 307, PG and A/C. 😉
One of my friends from high school inherited one from his grandfather.
As a matter of fact, my brother had a 1967 BelAir four door post with 283, PG and factory a/c, which was very rare in Canada at the time. When I drove it the first time, right after getting my licence, the no-feel power steering stood out a lot more than the Powerglide!
I think our “68 Chev Biscayne” was “pg”. It was a 6 cylinder though.
Maybe there’s little sense in 8-speed transmissions (or maybe there is, I don’t know), but the left side of my brain would never allow me to be comfortable with the fact that a 2-speed is leaving so much potential power and efficiency on the table.
The 1958 Recession unnerved Detroit. First, Chrysler got the drop on the Market with its “Forward Look”, causing GM designers to swoon and race to their drawing boards – but then the bottom fell out of the Market completely the following year. Can you imagine a 40% drop in sales? Detroiters at this time, could. Eisenhower has a heart attack, the GOP nearly passes their Civil Rights Act, and the Recession sends America into a spasm.
With Rambler and Studebaker the only Market gainers, you better believe that GM was willing to invest in entirely new vehicles. Their new small cars are phenomenal – Corvair, Tempest, F-85, Special – these cars broke the mold with their engineering, new engines and transmissions and styling.
But the Market returned to normalcy by 1960 and the big scare was over. Yet, GM had these remarkable small car experiments on the road. (Let’s not forget Chrysler’s Turbine Car, smaller Plymouth and Dodge, and Exner’s style insanities.) With the scare over, GM could rethink and regroup and that is what we are seeing in 1964.
The first normal GM car was the Chevy II. The Corvair was an expensive flop compared to its competition. It was losing sales to a 1955 Ford reformed into the Falcon, a 1954 Rambler American, and a 1953 Studebaker reformed into the Lark. GM’s competition beat them using decade old, paid-for engineering. Worse, the media beat GM up by highlighting Corvair’s flaws. So, not only was GM not getting extra compensation for their new car’s cutting edge engineering and expense – they were getting criticized for it. The Chevy II was the first step towards GM’s return to normalcy.
Then GM brought out their larger compacts, derived of experimentation and uniqueness and engineered for profits. What was once compact, was now intermediate sized GM offerings. The Compact Craze of the past five years was toning down and it became clearer that America was not abandoning its love for Galaxies, Impalas and Furys. With the new Market success of the Fairlane, GM trumped Ford by taking their newer nameplates and hitting the new intermediate auto segment head on. This size car was also more profitable than their smaller offerings from a generation earlier as well.
These are handsome cars that don’t try too hard. Nice.
Buick was the #3 seller in 1955 and ’56, even beating Plymouth. Then Rambler outsold Buick in 1959, 1960, 1961 (#3!), 1962 and 1963. (Wikipedia). You bet that got and kept their attention.
Neat car. The 64 A Bodies, I believe were the first regular production GM cars with curved side glass windows, something I thought made a car look so sleek. My maternal grandmother always wanted a Buick Special but my Grandfather always pushed for stripped Plymouths. He also would not get a car with a Radio since he thought it would run down the Battery.
Ha! My dad always had a radio in his cars because he spent most of his workdays on the roads od our county, but he insisted the radio had to be turned off when the car was shut down, otherwise it would run down the battery. Were radios in the 30s not wired through the ignition switch?
Nope…Two summers ago I accidentally left the radio just barely on in my ’53 Special…dead battery the next day.
Before transistors made it into car radios in the 1960s, those tube radios would really suck down the (6 volt) juice, even turned all the way down.
When did Detroit’s ignition switches get the accessory position? Without that the radio would be wired direct so you could listen while stopped.
Great condition car. There’s one of these about a mile away from my house that sits in someone’s driveway. No idea if it runs. It’s not in as pristine condition as this one, but still looks a lot better than most cars of this age.
Your comments on the transmission remind me of how the Buick Skylark came standard with a 3-speed automatic all the way up to 1996, rather late even for a compact.
I should have done a better job of stating just how innately good these 1964-67 A body cars from GM were. I grew up in a 64 Olds Cutlass hardtop that my mother drove until 1972. In 8 years and 60K miles, that car had zero real repairs. Brakes, shocks, and tires. It did not need either a battery or a muffler until year 7 (really unheard of, but the car always started immediately, either hot or cold). These were excellent bodies that were quite resistant to rust for the era, and interior materials were very nice. Ours got a couple of cracks in the steering wheel, and that was about it. The vinyl seats had not a single split or crack when we sold it to relatives. These were really good cars.
I also just noticed how the tail end of this car was highly predictive of the rear styling of the all-new 65 big Buicks. The sculpting of this Special’s tail end is very attractive, even in this lower trim version.
I like this a lot,not as much as the Chevelle though.It’s strange how so often a badge engineered car often looks best in the cheapest make.
I’m going to agree with the earlier post that, maybe the salesman threw in a set of Skylark wheel covers as the wheels are body colored. I wonder if this car was specially (no pun intended) ordered not by the original owners, but by a dealer who was optimistic in believe he’d push a bunch of “A” body Buicks in humid Indiana by ordering a shitload of Specials and Skylarks with air. Unusual that this didn’t come with a factory radio, but to keep stickers down, in the day, dealers would order blocks of cars without them and then sell the prospects the dealer installed (and more profitable) retrofit radio.
The ’61 Pontiac Catalina wagon we had was fairly well equipped, but without a radio. Nine years later, my Dad got a ’61 tube Pontiac/Delco radio and had it installed. The following year, he traded it. Go figure.
That dashboard is absolutely beautiful! I’d probably get in a wreck as I’d be staring at it the whole time. A wonderful find.
I was mesmerized by the little plastic holder for the oil change card that is stuck onto the dash. When I was a kid, my Grandma had one of those stuck on the dash of her 69 Pontiac. The small-town service station she went to used those. Pull the little card out, write the oil change date and mileage, then slip it back in. I have not seen one of those in eons.
Ha, I didn’t notice that. My dad’s cars used to have those too, stuck on the side of the dash if I remember right.
My grandparents’ 1970 Pontiac Lemans sedan also had that hard plastic oil-change reminder cardholder stuck onto the dashboard IIRC. I had forgotten all about that until reading this. Four adults and three children all stuffed ourselves in that car every Sunday morning for the ride to church.
Got one of those from Bodwell Chrysler-Plymouth to the left of the steering column. Can’t bring myself to write on the little cards! Masking tape inside the fender will have to do.
Picture of my 1965 Olds F-85 Deluxe dash.
Boy does that look familiar. Dad’s ’50 Olds he used as his beater DD finally gave up the ghost in ’65. His replacement criterion was pretty simple- V8, Automatic, and Bucket Seats. Friend of my mom’s had a ’64 Skylark Coupe, and that seemed about right. Folks went to the Buick Dealership for a test drive, and the transmission failed on the test drive. Came home with a Mohave Mist Cutlass Coupe.
Dad could’ve cared less about the 2 spd. Automatic. It had 315HP, and that’s all he cared about. I might add the brakes were terrifying if you actually tried to use that HP.
+1.
We spent a lot of time in the ’65 F85 Wagon my father bought new at Val Preda Olds in South Burlington after our ’63 Rambler wagon was totaled in an accident. Part of it was all the trips we took in it but also I remember sitting in the car waiting for my parents when they were shopping (guess that’s not a good admission, but not usual back in that day, we lived in a temperate climate so car was OK temperature wise…we even watched my younger sister, guess we were a pain to take shopping).
We would play with everything in the car when trying to burn time waiting…the disappearing ashtray was a particular treat…and of course the radio….I remember my sister trying to teach me to sing “Do you know the way to San Jose” during such a session (we lived in Vermont so had no real idea where San Jose even was nor how to get there).
We had the car 4 years up until we traded it for a ’69 Ford LTD…it was a great car, despite the abuse…the headliner was torn in ’67 when my Dad bought us bicycles at Sears and a careless loader forced the boxes in (one of them was my sisters Spaceliner, which I still have)…also our next door neighbor’s boy, kind of a “Dennis the Menace” type of guy scribbled all over the inside of the tailgate with indelible marker. We started camping with the Olds, my Dad even bought a car top camper that sat on the raingutters that we took all over the northeast including a trip to Prince Edward Island.
As for the 2 speed transmission, I was too young to drive the car to have an opinion on that, but as passenger even with the 330 V8 I remember lots of times my father tried to pass other vehicles on route 7 (mostly 2 lane road in central Vermont) maybe with white knuckles but we lived through it
Great photo! Serious depth of field. Love seeing that level of detail.
Car guys love “interesting” cars to read about and admire, but do they actaully buy them? Most car buyers don’t want to be guenia pigs for the whims of car guys.
GM’s “phenomenal” Y body compacts ended up breaking down and costing loads of cash to fix. They were “phenomenal” in that they were start of the decline of the company.
PS: The ‘boring’ 1964-72 GM A bodies are hugely popular with collector car market. No need to elaborate that point.
Yes, GM has proved over and over that it can do good, and it can do interesting – but rarely in the same car.
The problem was that GM simply gave up on the features found in the 1961-63 cars, instead of fixing what was wrong and improving what was right.
The more conventional intermediates did sell well. Unfortunately, by the late-1970s, when emissions regulations and customer demands for improved fuel economy were big factors, GM had apparently forgotten how to successfully innovate. GM’s response seemed to be, “Offer the cheapest technology and features possible, all tilted towards cost savings and maximum fuel economy, at the expense of everything else.”
The company therefore offered customers cut-down engines and half-baked technologies that ultimately turned off more people than the old Y-bodies ever did. We got A-body sedans with fixed rear windows (Zackman’s ultimate nightmare!), self-destructing diesels based on conventional V-8s, and the annoying Cadillac variable displacement engine, instead of real progress.
If GM had kept refining the features found in the Y-bodies, and, more importantly, kept alive the spirit of innovation found in these cars, it may not have stumbled so badly by the early 1980s.
Agreed! When GM gave up being a company known for innovation, they were toast. I am sure they would have loved to have the 215 V-8 around circa 1974 as it would be much easier to meet emission and fuel economy requirements. Instead they were saddled with ancient powerplants that were strangled by the cheapest possible solution. Finally, let’s have a look at the only other engine GM introduced between 1961-1971: the Vega 2300. Compare that to the 215!
GM was incredibly dumb not to stick with the 215. It was the accountants more than anything that did GM in.
Hmmm, a 215 in a Vega…..I like it. Not to be nit picky, but a couple of pretty good engines came from GM in those years. Second design Olds, Buick, Cadillac and big block Chevy to name a few. Not to mention the “new” Chevy 6. But I agree, GM gave up on the little 215 way too early.
And you’re certainly right about the bean counters killing the old GM.
I am more thinking of engines that would have been useful after 1973, and big blocks were by then doomed. GM knew emission laws were on the way as early as the late 1950’s and their solution was the fight the laws in court, as they saw it as cheaper. They then went on their merry coming out with 455 big blocks, which were basically useless after 1973.
The big blocks were certainly a dead end. Another interesting engine GM quit on early was the OHC Pontiac six. I’ve often wondered how it would have fared in the ’70s if it had been developed fully.
GM really tried for awhile in the ’60s, it’s a shame they didn’t keep at it.
Wow, I didn’t realize that yesterday’s question was such a good transition to this Buick!
This Buick is really nice. It would almost be a shame to install a radio and remove that delightful chrome plate. A ’62 Galaxie I once had was originally built with a radio delete plate and it was a bit tacky, totally unlike this.
It’s a good thing you went back for a Big Mac so you could capture this.
I laughed out loud when I saw your post come up. I had toyed with doing the same thing in follow up to this car, but you saved me the trouble. 🙂
Nice Buick, but it is gonna turn into a pile of Iron Oxide if it is driven to work all the time unless this is Southern Indiana. Given this Buick does not have “In God We Trust” plates I doubt this is Southern Indiana. So, what is with the front license plate, it looks quite odd.
Indiana doesn’t require a front plate.
And when someone is nice enough to talk to me about the car I usually scramble personal info on plates just out of courtesy.
Interesting reading. These are the kind of American cars I have a lot of affection for, simple, unpretentious, honest. Kind of like the sort of American people I like!
The styling of these cars was a long way from all the fins and scallops of the late ’50s, and so much the better for it.
As for two speed autos; I will suggest this. I own a three speed auto, which is fine, so long as I drive on the flat. Around where I live it’s very hilly and driving a three speed auto up 20% grades is tiresome, you’re either labouring in second or screaming in first.
The old two speed Torqueflite equipped cars must have been dreadful to drive around SF or over the Rockies.
Torqueflite was the Chrysler 3 speed auto. Not sure if you are thinking of Chevy’s 2 speed Powerglide or Chrysler’s earlier 2 speed Powerflite.
One small afterthought- suprised no-one has mentioned, it must be that small block Buick which went on to become a very successful British Rover V8. It has been in constant demand for 40 years, in fact there were problems at times building enough of them to meet demand!
That was the aluminum 215 that GM discontinued after 1963. The link near the beginning if this piece on the 62 Special goes into this a bit.
yup, powerglide was what I was thinking of!
A nice car for nice people who are not car people, I think. A good honest and simple car.
Pretty face. Not a fan of that backside, though.
I’d rather have a ’64 Fairlane.
Ouch! Damn Ford lover would say something like dat. Ha Ha Ha!! Whatever, dude.
I love the ’60-’63 compacts more than perhaps any other American vehicle, but these were great cars as well. Aaron65’s black Skylark up above is the type of thing I dream of constantly – driving that exact car with the 300 and a 4-speed stick down a gently curving road near the coast somewhere in sunny California. And this plain-Jane sedan looks damn good as well, look at all the little details in that dashboard!
i always have felt the 1965 skylark convertible was a bucket list car of mine. beautiful simple, yet stylish.
i love the lit up full width taillights
When I look at these they almost seem like inspiration for the later b-body, angular styling and all. The wheelbase and dimensions are close too. Just a simple yet interesting car.
The Skylark version of this sedan was the first in a long line of midsize Buicks my grandmother (father’s side) owned. She (and her mother and father before her) swore by Buicks and were loath to drive anything else. When my great grandmother was driving, she preferred Roadmasters or Supers, so a fullsize Buick was just a regular part of the family. However, when this car hit in 1964, my grandmother thought it was sized just right and got a Skylark sedan (I don’t remember it, but have been told it was white with a “turquoise” interior and it definitely had A/C in the Deep South, but I’m sure she would have had an AM radio too). She clearly loved it, given that the ’64 Skylark was followed by a ’67 and ’70, and then a ’73 and ’76 Century. Only the malformed aeroback prevented the ’79 Century from continuing the tradition.
“1964 Buick Special DeLuxe – Nothing Special”
Oh I dunno, it looks pretty special in the menu pic, it looks like a Chrysler!
Fascinating. I evidently forgot to set a featured image, and the site decided on this one. I guess it knows me. 🙂 Fixed now, thanks.
Late to the party am I but……..reminds me of a ’64 that our elderly customers owned since new! Theirs was the original surf green w/ a tan interior. Also it had the base 225 V6 mill………pretty decent Buick!
Nice looking cars. My favourite years for the Buick Special are 1962, 1963, and 1964. The only thing I’ve never liked are the lack of proper instrument gauges. Why should the fuel gauge be the only proper gauge? Warning lights are fine supplement to the needle gauges, but a poor substitute.
Classic GM. For most of the 60s, it was not easy to get a GM car with more than a speedo and a gas gauge. They figured out that most American drivers just didn’t care. Chrysler routinely offered temp and amp indicators but were always a distant third on the sales charts.
Didn’t care? How can anyone not care? That’s what I’ve always liked about Chrysler cars, the inclusion of temperature gauge, if not much else.
I find that either the Special or the Skylark look more attractive with the Buick logo on the grille.
I liked the Buick bonnet mascot on our 1965 Skylark better and of course the full width tail lights.
Our new 1965 Skylark arrived from the USA with the 1964 hubcaps,instead of the 1965 caps with circular slots,much prefer the 1964 caps as shown above.
Great Buick! This reminds me of a ’64 Skylark that an elderly couple had bought new…they were regular customers of ours (Dad and I ran a garage together). The Skylark was the original light green w/ beige interior, 225 V6, 2 spd. auto. and of course…4 doors. Even at that time (late 80’s) it had around 68,000 miles and still ran like a top!!! I’m sure they are both gone now and I always wonder whatever became of the the wonderful ol’ Buick.
“After the brilliantly adventurous 1961 Buick Special failed to make much of a splash in the market, [GM]… went the opposite direction with the 1964 model.
Wonder when GM green lit the BOF A bodies. They were not “whipped up” in summer of ’63, as so many car history write up make it seem. They took at least a few years from paper to assembly line.
Was it when Ford came out with mid size Fairlane? Or earlier?
I would suspect that it didn’t take long in the fall of 1960 for early sales numbers to indicate that these were not going to be big hits. It would not be surprising that after the huge development expenses of the Y body any follow-up was going to have to be a lot more conventional, especially given the kind of numbers the Rambler and Falcon were racking up in those weeks with their more conventional (read cheaper) smaller cars. Concerns about break-even and profitability must have been apparent from the very beginning.
The decision was probably not even all that much based on sales. After GM’s deep dive into all things experimental in the ’59-’61 time period, it made a major swing back to safe conventionality.
It was safe to assume that the replacements for the Y Bodies would not be sharing the Corvair’s body anymore, and the Chevy II was also rightfully considered taboo. It just made a lot of sense to move them to a more conventional BOF design, and undoubtedly GM knew by 1960 or so that the Fairlane was in the works, so a Chevy version (Chevelle) was a no-brainer.
What else were they going to do? Update the Y Body? Not.
These Y bodies were conceived in the depths of the ’58 recession, when Rambler was exploding, and the big American car being increasingly questioned. By 1960 or so, that was quickly changing.
I feel the 61 to 63 were more…………………………special. the 64’s looked more bland and really not so distinguished. the 61 had more style, more personality these look like just a car and nothing else. the 1968 models also had more of a look to it. i just feel that for a Buick….it’s lackluster. this could easily have been more in line with rambler than buick.
I agree about the early models. I wanted one of these little 62 coupes way back in the day – a real compact luxury car of the time.
The Pontiac version is my fav.
One other thing is GM spent money on the ’63 restyle of Y bodies, then cut them after only a year. They were probably eager to get the conventional and more profitable A bodies out there. And they were huge hits, and popular collector cars.
It is fun to see this article again. New cars were not cheap in 1961 when you factor in what it was going to cost in depreciation and maintenance, it cost a lot more then. Nobody could keep a car in Canada for a decade and sell it on. It would have disintegrated from rust long before. They didn’t care if the engine was aluminum and needs special coolant. They wanted a good, reliable car for five years, or less.
Even today, buyers are extremely conservative, because they don’t give two hoots about what a car is. My wife couldn’t care less about cars. All she wants is a car that will start, go, and stop safely to her destination. At the same time GM was starting to see that it could not afford the model proliferation and duplication within their system. Body on frame is what GM did best, and it is no surprise they went that way.
In a Buick, they buyer is looking for a nice interior, good power, comfort and conservative style. That is exactly what they got in the Special and the Skylark, and they cars sold well. What’s not to like?
The long stroke V-8 is a topic all for itself, and I think Paul has covered it. The long stroke gave just lovely torque right up to 4000 rpm, when the engine wouldn’t rev much more!
It’s probably worth mentioning that GM engineers didn’t consider the A-bodies’ body-on-frame construction a reversion from the unitized Y-bodies. Sixties American cars with perimeter frames were closer to unitized than earlier models with self-supporting X- or K-member frames because most of the rigidity was coming from the body shell. The perimeter frame was essentially intended to act like a full-length subframe, not a driveable chassis.
This argument might have been a little more convincing in practice if the A-bodies had been been stouter — even for the time, they were kind of flexy — but that was the theory.
Something I was thinking of when seeing old pickup bodies put on Panther chassis etc. How often must they find witness marks from the bed hitting the back of the cab?
By checking through the oldcarbrochures.org’s 1964 Buick full-line brochure, the wheels are a minor mystery. (EVERYONE ON HERE should know about oldcarbrochures.org, and should contribute to supporting their archive.)
The Special DeLuxe for ’64 is always pictured with full wheel covers. No painted rim showing. You had to move down the the plain Special to have a wheel where the painted rim showed.
This car has painted rims showing, but a deluxe spinner wheel cover. Certainly not standard stuff. Skylark for ’64 had spinner wheel covers, but much more deluxe than the ones seen here. I’m guessing these are a replacement for the original full wheel covers, from another year. Maybe replacements as the original covers were lost, stolen or damaged, I’d say.
Also, dealer accessories were more common back then. Backup lights, mirrors, moldings, hubcaps, etc were commonly added after the car landed from the factory.
Looking at the 1967 line catalog, it’s clear that Buick was focusing on the success of these 3 years later. I seems to me that for a small window in time, Buick knew that this was the right size car. Layout overwhelmingly depicts the Special and Skylark with only a nod to the LeSabre, Electra and Wildcat.
The 2 speed auto-box is misunderstood. It’s fine if you understand it’s not about the gears.
During my freshman year of college in 1975, I drove a 1964 Buick Special with 111,000 miles from The Bronx to Jamaica, Queens every school day. In addition to a paint job that wiped off on one’s finger in dry weather and a gas gauge that no longer worked, the Special’s greatest deficiency was its inability to drive through rain. When ever it rained, the Buick stopped. No matter where. I became expert in a great deal of New York City geography because that unreliable beast stranded me everywhere. The car sucked. After two years of agony, I gave up the Buick and made the mistake of acquiring another lemon, a Volkswagen Dasher station wagon.
Referring to the new ST-300 transmission as “Buick kept their 2-speed” is not accurate. The ST-300 (which would be used in leSabres, Cutlasses, GTO’s, LeMans, Tempests, Skylarks, etc. was a good transmission, with Buick’s novel “switch-pitch” torque converter. Many people to this day mistake them for a PowerGlide. And, they performed just fine for what they were.
Not directed at the author of this excellent write up, but regarding the broader pages of CC, it seems that GM is criticised for its retreat to rationalized technology across its line.
Their experimental period produced handling issues, cracked blocks, rough running engines, a front wheel drive platform that was inefficient and a growing lack of tolerance from GMs loyal customer base. The experiments were at best half-baked, and in the minds of buyers, half-assed.
Essentially, GM took the Toyota road to incremental improvement, and it paid off handsomely with mostly reliable products that performed well for their owners. The one major exception in the next 15 years being the Vega.
And, least we forget, Oldsmobile’s 1961 Roto Hydramatic wasn’t exactly a gem of a transmission.
Just another note on the hub caps. This Special has body painted wheels and the hub caps that allow the painted rim to be exposed. The ’66-’67 Riviera uses a similar hubcap as their base wheel cover. During my Riviera years I found a nice set of ’66 caps and they also expose the rim. They were also used on the Wild Cat, with a different badge. These hubcaps can add a nice accent or contrast to the wheels, I was planning on running red rims with the cover. I’m still holding onto this set in case I buy another car that has 15 inch steel wheels. Old OEM caps are usually very well made of stainless steel.
Great article on a very nice car, hope it gets the care it deserves and is not just a beater. It sure hit the sweet spot for GM at the time.
While it did have “the smallest V8 engine of pretty much any competitive car” the full size ’64 Ford had a 289 and the equivalent big Chev a 283, (the latter with PowerGlide), so the mid-size Buick was not at any significant disadvantage.
Dad had a Custom 500 4 dr with 289 and A/C and it was entirely satisfactory schlepping our family of 6 around Towson. Also in reality most GM mid and full-sized owners of cars having a small V8 with PG or Super Turbine 300 transmissions who drove in a normal fashion probably never even noticed and in reality may not even have realized what transmission it had.
My own ’69 Cutlass 350 with Jetaway (ST300) has plenty of pep in any situation and while I’d initially considered swapping in a THM-350 it performs just fine and it would not at all be worth going through the aggravation and expense to replace it.
My brother had a ’64 two door, and it gave great service until it overheated on a trip and the aluminum heads were toast. He sold that and replaced it with a ’66 Le Mans. The Le Mans was peppier with its 326, but both were reasonably priced, reasonable to own cars. Both cars had their respective division’s two speed automatics, and I could certainly see the appeal if someone wanted a transportation vehicle that didn’t look bottom of the barrel.