Have you ever been presented with a situation in which you just didn’t know what to say? It could be a matter of simply being speechless or perhaps you truly want to say something but the words just aren’t there.
This Buick falls into that category because what is there to say about a 1984 LeSabre? Let’s think about that.
My original idea was to compare this LeSabre to ordinary fountain soda with a dash of flavoring because if you get down to brass tacks this was primarily an Impala with more pizzaz. It certainly seemed like a good idea as I noted how soda is nothing but empty calories and how a diet consisting of too many downsized General Motors B-bodies makes for poor reading nutrition.
The ideas just kept pouring like a soda fountain, with my even going so far as to compare the available 110 horsepower 3.8 and 125 horsepower 4.1 liter V6 engines to diet soda. You know, for those concerned about their consumption.
I had almost found the definitive way to compare the still available Oldsmobile 350 diesel to some noxious brew created by mixing too many unharmonious flavors. Having done it once myself, I got a nasty greaseball…which is not unlike how most of those diesels would leave this world.
But soon the ideas all fizzled out. What a bummer. I just didn’t know what to say beyond that point.
Life is full of situations in which knowing what to say can be rather elusive. There was a time at work several years ago in which an employee was successful in doing something new and original. It was a drive-by resignation.
The employee was not at work but had been talking to his supervisor and didn’t appreciate being reminded of the precarious situation he’d made for himself due to some poor choices in behavior. As luck would have it the human resources manager, who also knew about the employee’s behavior, was outside when the employee drove up, threw their keys and identification card out the window, yelled an obscenity, and drove off.
The human resources manager wasn’t quite sure what to say other than “thank you”.
Let me rephrase that; she had a lot to say but she couldn’t quite determine what would be best for the situation.
Similar was likely the case at Buick showrooms in 1985. The rear-drive Electra had gone away in favor of a new front-drive model. The traditional rear-drive LeSabre, a car typically a notch just below the Electra, remained. The rub was the LeSabre was physically larger, with a not insignificant portion of the customer base still likely subscribing to the age-old perception of larger size equating to being more upmarket.
Many a Buick salesman certainly had to navigate some strange currents throughout 1985. No doubt there was a lot of searching for the right words to use with customers.
Buick propagandists appear to have had similar challenges. In the 1985 Buick brochure at oldcarbrochures.com the LeSabre is shoved in the back, between the X-Car Skylark and the wagons. You know somebody is having trouble with what to say when you come after an X-car.
There have certainly been times when interactions with others have rendered me speechless. It happened one weekend this past summer when a manager who reports to me called. Admitting to being in Central Oregon at the time, I knew if he was calling while on vacation something big was up. The big item was, predictably, a routine thing. What took my words away was an afterthought when he said “Oh, by the way, Hank is in the hospital. His dog bit his finger off.”
Crafting a response to that was a fun endeavor. But I knew Hank was now down a digit. The same concept applied to some automatic transmissions available on the LeSabre.
One could purchase a new LeSabre with the standard three-speed automatic or an optional four-speed automatic overdrive. The only caveat was anybody purchasing a LeSabre with the 3.8 V6 did not have the option of overdrive. Buick likely figured that 3.8 would be in third gear the bulk of the time anyway, so why bother. A 3,700 pound Buick with 110 horsepower was more lead weight than street racer.
Another potential angle for this LeSabre was talking about the same year LeSabre that my mother’s younger brother Ron bought new.
Incidentally, Ron would have been twenty-five years old when he purchased his LeSabre.
Ron’s red LeSabre was quite talented for handling three cars seats in the back as Ron and his wife had three kids in three years. As those kids got older, I do know there was a lot of activity in the back seat as the two older boys were perpetually tormenting their younger sister who was forced to sit between them. She held her own quite well. Little did anyone know she would grow to be taller than her eldest brother who now treats her with great respect.
Those boys tormented their sister in startlingly creative ways. There was a period of time in which my aunt thought the girl had profuse bed wetting problems. However, when it was found out the boys were gorging water and later sneaking into their sister’s room to whiz in her bed while she slept, there was a day of reckoning.
There was also a sad day of reckoning for Ron’s Buick. While I’ve never heard the complete story, at some point later in the Buick’s life with them, he had to pull out its 307 cubic inch (5.0 liter) V8 and perform some work on its innards. After repairs, it ferried everyone around for another year or two before going away for a Chevrolet Suburban.
But saying anything about Ron’s LeSabre was a false hope. I never rode in the car and there wasn’t much to say. Like the soda analogy, and that 307, the ideas crapped out prematurely.
So perhaps we should discuss our featured LeSabre. All this talk about not knowing what to say goes pretty deep because I photographed this car in 2012. Seriously, what the hell can a person say about a 1984 LeSabre? It’s like discussing tapioca pudding; it’s flavorful and all, but is there anything at all unique about it?
But tapioca is somewhat more interesting than chocolate pudding given the little nodules spread throughout. So I will say the LeSabre is the tapioca of the post-1980 B-bodies based upon it having the most interesting frontal appearance.
For that matter it looked the best from the rear, also. The LeSabre also has the exceedingly rare talent of successfully rocking wire wheel covers with raised white letter tires. This is premium tapioca, ladies and gentlemen.
And to think I started off comparing the LeSabre to fountain soda only to end up talking about tapioca pudding. It’s simply reinforces how one should consume each in careful moderation, just like with a B-body.
While there were no obvious physical differences between the 1984 and 1985 LeSabre, I’ve been saying 1984 based upon this sticker. By 1985 the Los Angeles Olympics were so last year and I cannot imagine there being any mileage in continuing to tout Buick’s being a sponsor of the games.
Sorry to have enlivened the hopes of all the B-body fans, but I’ve been at a painfully awkward loss of what to say about this LeSabre. Perhaps when I can come up with something we shall reconvene.
Found August 2012, Hannibal, Missouri
I can say that the 4 door sedan like better than the 2 door sedan.
In the past the two door hardtop models were the lookers and you settled for the four door sedan for practicality
I get it , these 2 doors were not hardtop models , but it gives the illusion that they are all good and trunk with little interior room
This was very entertaining and made my morning.
I think I remember that Olympics sticker from my ’84 Regal.
Not only does it have white lettered tires, they are truck tires!
If you want something really sad back in the roughly 2007-2008 timeframe there was a Cadillac sedan from the late 50s/Early 60s parked in a driveway in my neighborhood. It appeared to be a “driver” needing a restoration. A little patina and one day when I was walking the dog it was obvious the trans had decided to start puking its fluid all over the driveway.
One day it had 4 new tires – PepBoys “scrambler” truck tires mounted white letters out.
I wept a little.
This just “was” GM in the 80’s, sometimes a little fancier, sometimes a little less so, but absolutely everywhere. Then everybody kind of figured it out, that they were all the same more or less, and the wheels started coming off the bus for good. Definitely a rare-ish sight nowadays…
Your “absolutely everywhere” statement prompted a realization about how true this is. At a get-together of my grandfather’s family, I can still remember the sheer number of B-bodies that were present. This was perhaps the day I rode there in the Coupe Deville, as recalled previously in these pages.
To wit:
My Uncle Ron and his LeSabre; my great-aunt Theda and her husband in an ’80 or up Impala; my cousin Don and his wife in their ’83 LeSabre; my cousin Velma and her husband in their Olds Delta 88 diesel; my uncle Lyle and his wife, also in a Delta 88 diesel; another cousin a ’77 to ’79 Delta 88; a different cousin and his wife in an ’81 to ’85 Caprice; and, until 1985, my grandparents would have been in their ’77 Impala. I think there was another one or two in the parking lot, but things are getting fuzzy.
At any rate, your statement nails it.
My Aunt Rosemary went thru a slew of these B-body cars growing up. Granted, I was young, but when Mom let me go with my cousins on Halloween, we packed into some sort of B-body. I distinctly remember her white LeSabre. Always rusty but trusty. A jovial lady for sure, she has the equivalent Impala of today, not rusty of course. I recall a blue Delta 88, a beige Impala, and a burgundy LeSabre prior. Single Mom for a lot of years until she met my now uncle Greg. “Best used car buy”, my Grandfather said. That’s questionable, yet Rosemary took heed and followed. They were roomy with 4 nearly equal age cousins, lol.
What really accelerated the “wheels coming off the bus” was the order in which GM downsized its cars, as Jason noted in the article.
The premium DeVille/Electra/Ninety-Eight were downsized before the cheaper LeSabre/Delta 88.
The people who bought Buicks, Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles were those most likely to subscribe to the “bigger is better” philosophy when buying a new car. At least GM downsized the C-bodies and B-bodies concurrently in 1977, and gave both a heavy facelift in 1980.
By the late 1980s, GM was in a position where its mass-market division – Chevrolet – was offering the traditional family sedan (Caprice) that had the presence and size expected by the GM faithful. Meanwhile, the “premium” divisions were offering smaller big sedans that offered better performance, but not the style, ride or feeling of solidity that traditional buyers had come to expect. But the styling of those front-wheel-drive family sedans was not appealing to younger buyers entering the market in larger numbers during those years.
It’s no wonder GM’s market share went into a nosedive during the 1980s.
The FWD C bodies sold just fine against the RWD B bodies. Buick and Olds set their all time sales records in 1985. The problem was that the ONLY people who bought the C and H FWDs were traditional GM customers.
The front-wheel-drive 1985 C-bodies debuted in April 1984, so their sales tally benefitted from an extended model year.
A whole three months of extra sales!
They sold just fine. So did everything else but the J body at Buick and Olds dealers. FWD C bodies were red hot when introduced. I was there.
With three extra months on the market, the 1985 front-wheel-drive Ninety-Eight scored 122,421 sales, compared to 109,419 for 1984. This was despite the 1984 model having a shortened model year, and the market for new vehicles being strong in 1984. That’s not a huge increase in sales.
More telling is what happened by 1987. Ninety-Eight sales were down to 72,001 units. This was below the figure for 1980 – 73,464. And we were in the midst of a severe recession in 1980.
The Delta 88, meanwhile, with a body style that had been on the market since the 1980 model year, increased to 258,293 sales for 1984. That would decrease to 188,128 for 1985, and bounce back up to 261,260 units for 1986 (the year that the Delta 88 went to the front-wheel-drive format). Sales would be down to 168,853 for 1987.
I’d say that their record was mixed, at best.
Just about every GM product lost sales in that period. It wasn’t the traditionalists who abandoned GM. They didn’t buy Accord Broughams.
The sad part is that with more focused attention on refinement, build quality and overall quality control, many of the new 1980s GM cars could have been quite competitive. The basics were often there. The problem was with the execution.
Holy cow, does that rear 3/4 perspective shot look like an R-body Chrysler. It’s one of those strange situations where the Chrysler only lasted a few years but the Buick kept right on soldiering on instead of the more typical GM car being revamped and the Chrysler being a copy.
And what’s with the manual window winders? Damn, this is a Buick! It shows typical GM greed that you had to pay extra for power windows on a car just one rung lower than Cadillac.
A lot of folks still did not want power windows then. Close friends of my parents ordered a Jade ’82-ish Delta 88 Royale Diesel with manual windows. I remember it being very luxurious but was surprised at the manual windows. While riding in the back seat one day, my ten-year-old self asked them why this nice car has crank windows. One of the few quotes that stuck with me all these years was Aunt Dottie’s response, “Your Uncle Bob and I both figured we could roll up our own windows”.
GM offered the buyer something called “a choice” when ordering cars back then. Quite a concept.
GM packaged power windows separately because it was more profitable to charge a big premium to people who really wanted them. As demand increased, power windows became expected and the game became to deliver at the lowest transaction price. It’s silly to suggest thar GM was enabling some idea of “choice.” When the business office said “there’s no point bothering with crank windows,” crank windows were gone.
Power windows were expensive and not all that reliable back then. junqueboi is right that a lot of people simply didn’t want them, including my dad. “Just more to go wrong” is what he’d always say. Same with power seats. He didn’t have either until the late ’90s.
As long as people actually bought the cars with power windows GM wouldn’t give a damn wahat they “wanted.’ When buyers go somewhere else to get a car with crank windows, then GM cares what buyers want.
It’s not dissimiliar to the situation with electric rear window defoggers which, for decades, were an expensive option on domestic vehicles. The inclusion of features that people really wanted as standard equipment while making others optional is something that I’ve noticed Toyota did very well (at least in the past). The inclusion of the electric rear window defogger is a terrific example; even the most stripped Tercel had one, while you had to pony up the extra money for one on virtually any domestic vehicle (maybe even on Lincolns and Cadillacs).
And GM wasn’t alone in trying to claim these sorts of greedy shenanigans were ‘good’ for auto consumers. One of my favorites was in the late seventies when Ford decided to eliminate the steering wheel horn switch and put it on the turn signal stalk, trying to claim it was more European and, thus, ‘better’. It was really a thinly-disguised, cost-cutting move to save a few cents with the excuse of the impending legislation to install airbags. Needless to say, everyone hated the turn-signal horn and the horn switch was quickly returned to the center of the steering wheel.
In some countries (eg. Australia) the rear window defogger is required by law. It would be easier for Toyota to include it on all cars rather than have a special spec for the US without it.
Calling horn button on the turn signal stalk a “European design feature” is at best a tenuous claim. While there were European models that offered this feature, they were typically econoboxes rather than “premium luxury automobiles”
It would be interesting to see a list of the cars that made it to the US (or were built in the US) that had the turn signal horn switch. The first one I can think of might be the 1978 Ford Fiesta. Then, the new-for-1979 Fox Mustang had it, too. I’m pretty sure the rest of the Ford line-up of the late seventies/early eightis all had it, too, up to and including the Lincolns.
But that’s just Ford. I sure don’t recall Chrysler or GM having any models with the turn signal horn switch. If no other domestics besides Ford had it, which imports did?
My sister and her husband were in the same predicament as your Uncle Ron, at almost exactly the same time: Three kids (also two boys and a girl), but in their case they opted for an Olds Delta 88 Royale. Which I seem to recall was replaced by a Ford Aerostar.
It’s hard to get people to believe that we once hauled even one child in sedans, much less two or more; today, an SUV purchase is almost seen as a requirement to producing offspring. But to be fair, I’ve been told that today’s car seats have morphed toward behemothic dimensions, so I can definitely see the attraction of taller vehicles.
EDIT: Oh, and when I see one of these I always want to say, “Now, THAT’S a REAL Buick!”
I had a 2 door 1984 Olds 98 and getting 3 child seats (and their accompanying children) in the back was a real PITA. They fit easily in the 68 Chrysler that preceded it in my driveway, but the post 1976 GM B body was significantly narrower (as was the box Panther). Even a “big” sedan like that was an unpleasant choice for young kids. I never looked back after getting a van.
Yeah, and today’s interiors are narrower still which means 3 rows is pretty much a requirement for 3 kids. I don’t think there’s a true 5 passenger sedan left. It now takes a full size truck to get that old school width, which is one of the reasons they are so popular.
Definitely. We bought our first minivan a few months shortly after our second kid was born. Specifically, it was a few weeks after we took our first long-distance trip with two behemoth car seats in the back of our Crown Victoria.
Despite that car’s size, it was quite a pain. Like BuzzDog mentioned above, car seats have grown to ridiculous dimensions… I bought “compact” car seats supposedly designed for smaller cars, and they were still space hogs.
“a few weeks after we took our first long-distance trip with two behemoth car seats in the back of our Crown Victoria.”
Hahaha, we did exactly the same thing. 2 kids, 2 car seats, 85 Crown Victoria, and a trip from Indianapolis to Dallas and back. We had a Ford Club Wagon 5 months later.
Not only that, but this was a trip through the Midwest in December. It snowed. So I had a crying baby, and screaming toddler, a nervous wife and a slithery RWD car with wide tires.
The snow was light but constant… and neither Illinois or Indiana seemed to feel it was necessary to treat the roads. I took this picture on I-74 during that trip, and travel was very much like this for two days.
I think that trip took about two years off my life.
A different world today I know but back in the fifties/sixties my parents just herded my siblings and I into the back seat of whatever vehicle was the current car and were told to sit down and shut up. On long trips my sisters and my brother would nod off after 30 minutes on the road and then I got to spend the next several hours shoving them off of me as they slumped into my space. I always stayed awake so that I could see what was happening; I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have gone to sleep in a moving motor vehicle. I understand that having children in car seats is safer, just glad that I never had to deal with it.
As an only child I always had the back seat to myself. Plenty of room to spread my stuff. On a country trip, Dad would tie a rope from one door armrest to the other to stop them flying open in a crash; also worked as a lap belt for me.
“I had a 2 door 1984 Olds 98 and getting 3 child seats (and their accompanying children) in the back was a real PITA.”
I can imagine that would have been a huge pain. While these “downsized” B and C-bodies were still big cars, but what everyone forgets is that they did see a significant width reduction compared to the previous cars. From 1959-76, most of GM’s fullsize cars were around the 79-80″ width. But in 1977 they lost a good three inches from the width.
Regardless of the width decrease, fitting car seats in any two door is a huge PITA. I used to volunteer to help install car seats, so I have done many different makes and models. It’s no wonder 2-doors went out of fashion so quickly once the car seat laws tightened up. My dad always had 2-doors as his family cars, but at that time child seats were pretty much reserved for babies, so we never had more than one in the car at a time. With my own kids, I have fitted two car seats in the back of my 2-door Torino (one in the middle, one on the side) and that was a PITA. I can only imagine having three in a coupe like your Olds! A four door would have made it much easier.
We only have two kids, so I never saw the need to step up to a minivan, as I found that two car seats were easy to fit, even when we had a compact car. The problem I found was all the crap er I mean stuff that accompanies a baby and young toddler requires a big cargo hold. FWIW, I have fitted three car seats with ease in my pickup. It has a really wide back seat.
After our daughter was born, we bought a lightly used ’01 Taurus. Fitting one seat in the back was a snap; two would have worked although we never were able to have more offspring.
One day I >attempted< to put three car seats in the back as my wife was babysitting a set of twins. It wasn't going to happen. In fact, I still have a scar on my arm where I scraped the tar out myself trying to fit those seats. Had we had more children I would have likely been in a minivan.
Yes, absolutely. Three seats in a sedan is probably not possible; my original comment was jokingly aimed at those parents I know who have their first (and often only) child, and suddenly an SUV or minivan is an immediate must-have vehicle.
And I’m certainly not casting stones at those who desire SUVs or minivans…I have no kids at home, well past the age for having any additional ones, and I have a Ford Flex as my daily driver.
OK, as one who owned a 1985 LeSabre (even if it was for only 3 weeks) I can tell you one difference from the 84 – the hood ornament had a solid center with a white background and said “Collector’s Edition”. I suppose that was better than “Stale Leftover Edition”.
Mine was a 2 door, navy blue paint, landau vinyl roof and velour, with wire wheel covers. It was identical with those in the brochure shots you feature, but for color. I wasn’t in love with it and someone else wanted it, so away it went.
I think these Buicks were far more attractive cars than their Oldsmobile counterparts, and certainly moreso than the Chevrolets of that time period.
Not all ’85 LeSabres were Collector’s Editions; only the top-trim Limiteds were (officially the Limited Collectors Edition); the lower trim was called Custom. More significant than the hood ornament was that the CE interior was upgraded with the pillowy velour or leather seats formerly used in the rear-drive Park Avenue that was replaced by a smaller FWD model in 1985. The Collector’s Edition hood ornaments were recycled for the last Roadmasters in 1996.
The brochure for the 85 LeSabre made it clear Buick was targeting buyers who were repelled by the new smaller Electra.
Wow, I didn’t know what a nice car I had! 🙂
Oldsmobile did the same thing with the 1985 Delta 88. There was a final-year version with the Ninety-Eight’s trimmings for those who didn’t like the front-wheel-drive Ninety-Eight.
Olds went further than Buick did, not only fitting top-of-the-line seats from the 98 Regency Elite but also the 98’s grille and other previously 98-specific exterior trim pieces. Full name for it was (take a deep breath) Delta 88 Royale Brougham LS.
Yep! The had the old Electra seats for sure. P.S. I’m gonna check the “Notify me of….” boxes even though they have not worked in years. I also don’t get this daily anymore (haven’t for years..) I sometimes forget the site exists..
Agree the ‘Notify me..” buttons don’t work. My Google screen has ten buttons to link to most-used sites; CC is #1. Can’t miss it!
It may have been easier to muster up words if this car had been painted in any color other than this Watered-Down-Coffee Brown. It’s not often that I say this, but even white would be a more interesting color than this.
I always think interesting to see how cars were marketed when they became holdouts from a previous era — such as this LeSabre remaining around as the era of full-size family sedans were fading. I like this ad touting “Buick’s Biggest Value,” clearly aimed at that segment of the buying public who, like you said, equated a “larger size equating to being more upmarket.” The brochure pages above have similar phrases (like how the car “measures up”) — amusing to read these in retrospect, but I suspect they were very well targeted at the time.
This is a rather dull car, but as a kid at the time I found the wagon version to be interesting. The differences may have been minor but overall I thought they looked a lot classier than our family’s Caprice wagon.
For having trouble finding something to say, a very well-written and enjoyable article Jason.
1985 indeed must have been an odd year at Buick dealers with the front-wheel drive Electra and old rear-wheel drive LeSabre. Especially for Buick where the LeSabre was still somewhat of an upscale car.
1985 was Buick’s alltime record sales year.
No kidding about Buick salesmen not really knowing what to say about their line-up in the mid-1980s. Confusion reigned, with an odd mix of FWD and RWD models ostensibly competing for the same buyers. My Pop was one of those customers for his company car. In 1984, he got a Regal Limited sedan (replacing a similar ’82), as it was “not too big and not too small.” It still featured traditional American styling (channeling the 1st gen Seville) versus the very boxy and generic FWD A-Bodies. The B- and C-Bodies were too big and too dated for Pop in 1984, while the Regal was “just right.”
Well, then, with New Orleans being true to its flood prone heritage, Pop’s ’84 Regal was caught in some street flooding in 1985, and it was sufficiently deep for the car to be totaled. So, back to the Buick dealer for a replacement, except that Buick no longer offered Regal sedans. So what were the choices in 1985 for a semi-upscale 4-door Buick company car? Shrunken, boxy FWD Electra, shrunken, boxy FWD Century, the cursed X-Body Skylark, or …. the tried and true ancient B-Body LeSabre. So Pop wound up with a white over red leather ’85 LeSabre Limited Collector’s Edition. And he hated it. At that point, the car seemed to big and too squishy (that plus the color combo earned the car’s nickname the “Bloody Marshmallow”). His particular one was also very sloppily built, which was shocking given how long the car had been in production. So, since everyone has to have a car they’ve owned that was their least favorite, this LeSabre counted as Pop’s. GM’s rot was becoming apparent.
“this was primarily an Impala with more pizzaz.”
Then, dear General, why waste money on the Buick division when you can just build better Chevies?
“Wait a minute!”, you might say.
But look at where Ford was heading, allowing its mass-market brand to move upscale in multiple segments, even if it hurt its Mercury sibling…and look again at GM, covering the territory of two brands, Ford and Mercury, with four – Chevy, Buick, Olds and Pontiac.
If you can’t provide enough differentiation between your brands, or when you have to debase your best-selling brand to make space for the other brands, then maybe you have too many brands.
Yet I feel as if there had been enough differentiation in 1977 when the downsized B-bodies started rolling off the assembly lines. What happened in the seven years after that? Decontenting? Styling cues that just made all the B-bodies look too much alike? Using the same drivetrains across four product lines?
Homogenity was taking root at GM. And while it’s easy to point out ChryCo’s obvious homogenity over multiple decades…the fact remains that you kinda expected it from Mother MoPar but not the General.
Considering Mopar’s managemental ups and downs over the years, it seems positively prescient that they got rid of De Soto when they did. If GM had been managing them, De Soto would have struggled on into the nineties.
I’m really enjoying your writing Jason; it’s both thought provoking and a lot of fun to read your work. I am torn, more than bored, by this Buick. I have a confession to make: although I have never (in my 40 years of buying cars) owned an American car, if I had had to buy an American car (and had the money, which I didn’t) in the 80’s it would have been a Buick, and probably this model in a much better color, with snobby power windows, air conditioning and no wire whee, ahem, wire hubcaps. Oh, and FM radio -of course.
Buick retained an air of dignity and presumed quality (for me) in the 80’s at least before the FWD revolution laid blatantly bare the “same cookie, different package” truth that I’d pretended not to see before. In an earlier time, an Oldsmobile would have been my aspirational choice as a young tie-wearing guy with his own “office”. However, Oldsmobile squandered that by selling everyone with a pulse or credit score a Cutlass. So, Oldsmobile lost its snob appeal, ahem, exclusiveness, leaving only Buick as a respectable conservative middle-class guy see-how-well-I’m-succeeding? choice.
Even after the 86 “Consumer, I shrunk all the cars” fiasco, Buick still retained the illusion of being a “better car” to me. That only hung on for a few more years but in 1986, I was still secretly convinced the Buicks were built better from better materials than Chevy’s…
Right? Uh, right? …….right? Damn.
For those who are curious as to what car I actually did buy new in 1986…. An Acura. Only an Integra mind you, but image, baby, image…
I notice a little feature on this particular LeSabre that I’ve seen a lot in the last 10-15 years on these cars: it’s fitted with Goodyear Wrangler truck/SUV tires, at least on the rear. I assume this is due to the difficulties in finding appropriately sized 70 or 75 profile tires in “small” 14” or 15” sizes. Mounting them white letters out was not a good choice though.
As always, Jason leaves me laughing…good article. I look at this LeSabre and think that it was one of the last Buicks to have something a little extra that would appeal to a conservative, well-heeled buyer. I’ll bet most of these were bought by people who had been returning to the same dealer for a new car every few years for decades. In 1984, the LeSabre just happened to be the most familiar thing in the showroom, so that’s what they got. This particular example is handsome in a conservative way, but I certainly understand GN’s father’s view that these were big, outdated and mushy. I was equally frustrated and had a similar view of Buicks in general in 1984, when I bought my first new car, a base model Regal coupe, in order to comply with the rules imposed by my employer, who provided a monthly subsidy to cover car expenses.
The duplicity of Buick vs. Oldsmobile was really showing by this point. So much so that it’s surprising that Olds lasted another 15 years or so.
As I’ve written before, by the mid-70s it was unclear to me (as a budding pre-teen car nut) that Buick was supposed to be *above* Oldsmobile on the Sloanian ladder. As far as I was concerned, they were pretty much the same car in the same status slot.
My great uncle’s last car was one of these… I even think it was that color, although I thought it had a pinkish hue to it. It also had a vinyl top in a complimentary darker shade if memory serves, and better looking wheel covers. Since my great aunt did not drive, my father inherited this car.
It would be my Dad’s first Buick ever, but not his last… he also eventually got a ’98 Regal GS, and a 2000 or so Park Avenue.
IIRC, it had the 307 V8, which was not a real powerhouse, but it performed ok for the times. He had the same engine in an ’80 Bonnie, so he was no stranger to the whole B-Body thing. I liked his Bonneville better, but this car was a comfortable cruiser on trips.
What finally did it in was climbing the tallest mountain on the eastern side of the country, Mount Washington in New Hampshire, on one of these road trips. He said the transmission never shifted right after this, and so it was traded away on… I forget now. My Dad has had so many cars. I think he suffers from JKAADHD. (Jim Klein ‘Auto’ Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) – LOL… Sorry Jim.
Great piece, Jason. I’m speechless… Ok, not really. ;o)
Did Olds 307s really make into 1980 Bonnevilles? The (sometimes clandestine) swap of the SBC into Delta 88s around that time is famous, but I’d thought that all 77-81 Bonnevilles with gasoline engines had Pontiac V8s.
No, there were no 307s in the 1980 Pontiacs. American market cars had the 3.8L Buick, 265 Pontiac, 301 Pontiac, 350 Olds and 350 Olds diesel. Canadian Pontiacs used the same engines as the Chevys.
For 1981 the 350 gas was dropped, and the 301 Pontiac was replaced by the 307 Olds.
It must’ve been a 301 then. I Googled 1980 & 1981 Bonneville images and Dad’s was definitely a 1980. I remembered this much because I liked the ‘81’s taillights better than the ‘80, because they reminded me of the ‘78’s taillights, which I liked the best up to that point.
Thanks for the corrections guys! 😀
Great piece, Jason. I liked where you were going with your original premise!!
I remember being a bit confused when I first saw the ’84s. They had the full-width taillamps similar to the Electra / Park Avenue (with a few, small, obvious detail changes, like the horizontal bar that dissected the lenses, etc.), but didn’t have the same (more) formal roofline of the C-Bodies. I wasn’t entirely sure I liked the restyle (front or rear) better than what preceded it.
Unrelated to this, I think the taillamps in the sixth photo down (of the brown coupe) look suspiciously retouched in some way. Something just looks every so slightly off! Could be just all this darkness outside and lack of light playing tricks on my eyes.
Hi Joseph.
I see it, too. The lenses aren’t reflecting anything. New lenses should be almost like mirrors. The bumper looks like it’s reflecting some green grass (or else there’s moss growing on the bottom corner 😁), so maybe that’s why it looks off to us, because the reflection has been airbrushed away. The light pattern doesn’t match the rest of the car.
If not, then I just shoveled some good bull-puckie.
This sounds like a job for the resident CC auto lighting (and phonetic French accent) specialist Dr. Mr. Professor Sir Daniel Stern.
Good eye. The retouch involves modifying the tail lamp lenses to look a bit taller and airbrushing out the little body color filler panel between the trunk lid lip and the light assembly. It appears they used the 1980 trunk lid for the entire run instead of modifying the lid to close just above the chrome trim line, which would have tidied up things nicely. See the orange box on the subject car for what was airbrushed out of the marketing photo.
That picture bothered me the entire time I was writing this up. Didn’t the ’80 to ’83 LeSabre have taller tail lights? It seems like that may have been the basis for the brochure picture. It looks way too much like an ’88 to ’91 Grand Marquis as shown.
Totally looks like an ’88 – ’91 Grand Marquis. Yes, the 1980 – ’83 taillights were taller and blockier, versus the later horizontal units.
Nice car, I always liked the 1984-85 Buick LeSabre’s over the 1980-83 LeSabre’s due to the Electra style front end (didn’t like the front end styling of the 1980-83 LeSabre’s), it’s nice to see a non Chevrolet B-body car in good shape as they’re getting rarer.
The last photo: The 1980 face lift that thinned the 4-door’s C-pillar did the car no favors.
The main problem I have with these cars is that the five divisions’ products all looked so similar. Not like the early seventies when each division had enough distinct sheetmetal to make for a distinct divisional identity – like, “That’s a Buick; wonder which Buick?”
Here it’s more a case of “Another B-body; do I care which one this is?”
I once put my foot in it when my kids and I saw a big shiny eighties American B-body in the early nineties. Of course I was asked “What car is that, daddy?” by two little children who just knew their wonderful dad knew everything about cars. “That’s a Chevrolet” I replied, somewhat confidently. The owner replied “It’s a Cadillac” in a voice that would cut glass…
Oh come on! I could tell the difference between an 80’s Cadillac Deville/Fleetwood and a Caprice from a mile away when I was 10 in the dark. There was far more differentiation between these two cars than the Chrysler R-bodies which really did all look the same and the panthers where the Lincoln just looked like a glitzier Crown Vic.
Now the Delta 88 and LeSabre were far more similar when you took the taillights and grilles out of the equation
Pete is also a life-long resident of Australia so his seeing a B-body was not a frequent occurrence by any stretch. I would also imagine Pete could tell us the differences in each generation of Falcon, something you and I wouldn’t be as quick to notice.
I’ve driven every iteration of the B and C bodies of the 1970’s-1980’s, at length. While it is common to say they were all basically the same car, each one had its own distinct feel to it. I had a 1978 Buick with HD suspension and Buick 350 and it went and handled great.The base ones, however, would bound and porpoise over and kind of rough road.
All of them drove well. I recall taking a stripper 1977 Impala 305 on a long trip and it was everything a Chevy of the era should have been: it drove down the road straight and was not excessively soft. It was as big as house, had a huge trunk and was good on fuel for the era-this being relative.
The best engine for any of them was the Oldsmobile 350 4bbl, which had loads of low end torque.The worst were any the V-6’s. They all sucked. It was silly to put such a small motor in a big car. Most of the ones I drove were Oldsmobile 88’s with the 307. The 307 was perfectly adequate for its day, making useful torque and reasonable fuel economy.
I’ll take a boring Buick B body any day.
I can see why you had a hard time writing up about this Lesabre. Even me, as a GM B-Body fan have little enthusiasm for this car. Not that there is anything wrong with these Buicks. They were competent cars for their time, just a little too conservative for my tastes. I also found the styling was not nearly as good as the Chevrolet or the Pontiacs (sans skirts). Despite their similarities, the Chevrolet and Pontiacs used a entirely different exterior sheet metal than the Buick and Olds versions. The whole area where the C-pillar and quarters meets is awkward on these Buicks and Olds’. Like Canucknucklehead mentions above, the many variations of these cars had very different driving characteristics. These Buicks were big soft lumbering beasts, that weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere quickly. Definitely not my style. Give me a light basic Chevrolet with a Chevy V8 and F41 suspension, much more agile and competent.
Around here, the V6 B-bodies were basically non existent. Other than the odd stripper Chevy, they were pretty much all V8s, especially the Buicks. The 307’s in these cars were adequate, barely, for the times, but they did return very good fuel mileage with the OD transmissions in comparison to the 350 cars with three speeds. Seeing as Canadians were traditionally more frugal, finding a LeSabre or a Delta 88 with roll up windows was also not uncommon.
An interesting contrast to the states during the 80’s. TheDelta 88’s were basically 90% 307 equipped with the odd diesel turning up now and then.
The Caprice Classics were 305 by a vast majority but a 229 did creep out every so often. The LeSabres in contrast seemed to have a far greater number of Buick V6’s evenly split between 3.8’s and 4.1’s, especially around 1981-83. The Pontiac B-bodies were all over the place. 1980’s were almost always 301 equipped. 1981 saw an even split of 265’s and Olds 307’s. When they came back during 1983, the Parisienne was mainly 305 Chevy equipped until 1985. For 1986 they started off with 305’s then switched to Olds 307’s.
The sticker on the rear window did indeed indicate a 1984 model. I remember how all the 84 Buicks had the sticker ( and maybe some 83’s, I’m not sure), but 85’s didn’t.
I admit becoming blase ’bout B-Bodies myself, likely because I was literally swimming in a sea of them in roughly the ’77-’87 time period, and personally owned a 1982 Olds’ version. The ’77-’79 cars were best-of-breed, the ’80 and up were compromised in terms of build quality, materials and drive trains, which caught us post ’79 buyers by surprise due to how good the early cars were.
After being all GM all the time, I left GM after my experience with my ’82 and have never been back. GM was killing loyalists with damn near every car they sold in the 1980s.
If Jason hadn’t identified this as a Buick, I wouldn’t have known. It so much has the air of being the entry level, get-you-in-showroom, bargain-on-a- pedestal, if-you-buy-this-you’ll-need-the-options-list version that Buick seemed to hard to accept.
Loads of experience with these cars and we sold literally thousands of them at our two dealership locations all during the 90’s and 00’s. For some reason the 1980 versions were the worst of the bunch with indifferent paint quality on some of the Caprices and Delta’s. The best drivetrains were the 305 LG4 and 4 speed AOD seconded by the 307/AOD combo which thankfully were in most every car we sold.
I wouldn’t mind a nice clean 2 door Collector’s edition in white with blue interior and the Buick chrome wheels. That wouldn’t bore me at all!
I could guess what some owners might know to say if loaning out their LeSabre:
Pull easy on the door handle – don’t snap it off!
Help the window lower so the guide doesn’t derail – again.
Help the window raise, so the tape-drive doesn’t strip – again!
Try not to pull on the steering wheel, the column’s fragile.
Drive it in neutral, the indicator is off a notch.
Run the blower in 3rd, high doesn’t work.
Smack the hood hard at its center if you need to open it.
After experiencing automotive lust over many, many Buicks since the 1940; I can truthfully say that there is nothing in a Buick new car showroom to entice me.