Curbside Classic: 1977 Buick LeSabre Custom Coupe – Mellow In Yellow

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– Posted on October 24, 2024

Here at Curbside Classic, we have written up literally thousands of old (and not-so-old) cars photographed in habitats all around the world.  I have, myself, been responsible for giving the CC treatment to a few hundred of them.  And there have been few models that have been more popular subjects than the much-loved General Motors B body cars from the 1977-85 generation.  So how can it possibly be that we have never given a 1977-79 Buick LeSabre its day in the spotlight?

As I have written before, I have taken to cruising through some of my older CC subject photos that I skipped over in my excitement or enthusiasm over something else.  I still remember the day (my photos identify it as December 29, 2011) when I found this car in the parking lot of Castleton Square Mall in the northeast suburbs of Indianapolis.  I remember being struck by the car’s excellent condition and by that clean pale yellow paint, and knew I had to stop and click off a few shots.

But even so, others were giving cars like this plenty of love and it was a bit out of my main zone of interest.  So it sat.  I never forgot about this car, but every time I thought about combing through my archives for something to write about, some other B body of the period came to the fore.   But on looking now through the CC index, there is not one full CC of a 1977-79 LeSabre.  Honorable mention should go to Joe Dennis who wrote about one (here) that he found on a walk through a college campus.

Up through my teens, I am not sure there was a single GM brand to which I had less exposure than Buick.  Buicks were certainly seen on the streets of Fort Wayne, Indiana in fairly decent numbers, but they were virtually absent from my circle of extended family and friends.  Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles were everywhere, and there was also a smattering of Cadillacs and Chevrolets.  But Buicks must have been for “other people”, though I am not sure who those other people were.

It is not like it really mattered to me.  By the fall of 1976 I could not have been less interested in cars built by General Motors.  I had been given an overdose of them through extended family and the families of several friends, and I was intoxicated by a love that dare not speak its name (Chrysler).  There was also a lingering affection by products of the Ford Motor Company, which would soon become requited in a particular 1967 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible that would show up in my driveway in the early months of 1977.

In the decades since I have become a fan of the GM B body of this generation, particularly the ones from the first three years of 1977-79.  Each of the versions of that car had a unique flavor – especially the 2-door models.  At the time I thought that Oldsmobile carried off the look best overall, with a solid, businesslike look that was modern but conservative.  The Pontiac was like that one friend of your mother – the lady with the outsized personality who wore loud outfits and too much jewelry.  I was disappointed in the Cadillac, which didn’t look as Cadillacky as it should.  And keeping my membership in the Contrarian Club in good standing, I continue to give Chevrolet a big shoulder shrug and wonder why the coupe’s roof was the only actual styling done to an otherwise nondescript car.

Buick?  I had terribly mixed feelings about these.  The front 2/3 of the car looked great.  The grille was quite nice, as were the wheel openings that suggested forward motion.  The coupe roof (shared with Pontiac) was also nice and it came off as the sportiest of the bunch – especially with Buick’s great road wheels.  But then there was that tail end.  It was as though the styling team ran out of time, money or both after they got past the rear wheel cutouts.  “OK Bernie, I guess we will just have to smooth it off and toss some taillights on.  It will have to do.”  Even the Chevy’s tail end had more personality than the Buick’s plain, droopy butt.

I finally got to experience one of these LeSabres when it was quite new after I went to work for a big funeral home the summer I graduated high school.  For someone into experiencing as many different cars as I could, that job was a bonanza.  Beyond the four Cadillac funeral coaches (two 1977 models and two 78’s) and the limo (’71 Cadillac) there were several silver sedans.  All of the cars carried a two-digit number on a big  key tag, which matched the two-digit number on each car’s license plate).  Car No. 67  was a 1976 Buick Electra 225.  There was also car 33, a 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood.  That Fleetwood, with its 425 V8 would really scoot.  When I would get sent somewhere in a sedan, the manager (a good guy named Al) would tell me which car to take.  I always scowled to myself when he would start his sentence with “Take 71 and go to . . . . ”  Because car 71 was a 1977 or 78 LeSabre sedan with a V6.

I was excited the first time I got to drive it, because the car magazines had spilled much ink on Buick’s new (though old) V6 engine.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I got was the slowest car I had driven in a long time.  How slow was slow?  I had spent lots of time in my mother’s 74 Pontiac Luxury LeMans with its dog of a 2 bbl 350.  And the 2 bbl 390 in my 67 Galaxie was no race engine.  There was also the car my best friend drove frequently, a 1973 International Scout with an AMC 258 six and an automatic.  But this Buick was in an entirely different league.  Keeping up with traffic from a stop light required full throttle.  It was like my father’s boat with its 55 horsepower Johnson outboard trying to pull a skier out of the water with the rest of the family aboard and watching.  I will confess to being more of a lead foot in those days, but that V6 Buick instilled in me an intense dislike for a species that would become increasingly common: the large, underpowered car.

Fortunately, Buick built many of these with an assortment of V8 engines built by an assortment of GM’s Divisions:  The Pontiac 301 (5.0), the Buick 350 (5.7) and the Oldsmobile 403 (6.6) almost certainly solved these cars’ worst feature.  With a little torque available from under that pedal on the right, car no. 71 would have been a very pleasant place to spend time.

I did like the rest of the car quite a bit.  It handled more nimbly than I was used to, and the finishes of its blue velour interior were quite nice. I especially loved the classic look of the dash – which I still think is the best dash out of all of the GM B and C body cars of this series.  There were those who criticized Buick for putting the clock in front of the passenger.  But it was plenty big to read from across the seat.  And it didn’t bother me, because I could not recall anyone in my family who had a car with a functioning clock anyway, so I viewed a clock in the car as something to ignore.  Except for that engine, I could see someone in his 40’s with a wife and a couple of kids being fairly satisfied with a car like this.  Not me, of course, because the ’77 Chrysler Newport Custom owned by my best friend’s dad ruined my ability to fully appreciate this Buick.  And the universe can play funny jokes on us, because I eventually found myself as a 40-something guy with a 2-door LeSabre in my own driveway – if only for three weeks.

Now, I can look at this Buick as a lovely period piece, especially in its Cream (code 50) paint and Buckskin landau roof and velour interior.  If a guy had a plaid sport coat and a pair of white loafers, this car would be just the thing.  About that landau roof:  This is one mystery I have not been able to solve about this car.  This is clearly a LeSabre Custom Coupe.  But is it a LeSabre Custom Landau Coupe?  The “Landau” label is in the rear side windows, but I can find no reference in Buick’s printed materials to a Landau model, or a Landau trim package.  Were all 2-door LeSabres called Landaus?  Was this a mid-year addition?  Or a window from a newer car?  Or was it a designer edition named for Martin Landau, the Hollywood star who died at the age of 89 in 2017?  I have invested enough time looking into these possibilities (OK, except for the last one) and will leave it for the CC Commentariat to resolve.

The boring tail end no longer bothers me (much), and maybe I could even say the same of the glacial acceleration if this model is saddled with the V6.  And even though I am not a yellow-car-guy, I can even appreciate that shade on a car like this.  Hey, at least it’s a color.  And has anyone noticed the window crank?  Even Buick owners were not always eager to embrace power windows – because everyone knew in 1977 that “they are just one more thing to go wrong.”  I love that the current owner has made some upgrades to the electronics, with a freshly fabricated console for a cutting-edge Garmin navigation system.  Hopefully there was a jack for connecting an iPod – because no local stations were playing Barry Manilow, ABBA or The Bee Gees in late 2011.

This was another of many cars that found their ways into my phone camera’s view and which I never saw again.  It might have found its way back to Palm Beach where cars like this were once so common.  For this car to have survived its first thirty-something years in such fine condition, I am hopeful that a careful owner continues to pamper this lovely relic from the 1970’s.