The Buick LeSabre. Everyone knows what it is. Or at least was. It was the car that Buick brought forth to replace the price-leader Special when it gave all-new names to its all-new cars in 1959. The LeSabre plodded on for decades as Buick’s big-car bargain. But for a few years Buick injected a wholly different personality into the vanilla LeSabre. This piece will compare this Bi-polar Buick in all of its (their?) glory.
1986 was the year that General Motors moved the LeSabre out of the classic B body that had dated from 1977. The ’86 model was known as the H body and was an entirely new car, most notably different in its first use of front wheel drive for the bread-and-butter LeSabre. The 1986 H body was a smaller variation on the 1985 C body which had first brought this general package to buyers as the Buick Electra.
The coupe model was particularly attractive, a successful updating of the attractive roof treatment found on 2-door LeSabres from 1977-79. Unfortunately, the car came along just as sales of larger 2-door cars began their slow descent into showroom irrelevance. By 1991 the body style generated a measly 1181 units of production. There would be no 2-door LeSabre from that point on.
Even early in the run, a two-door LeSabre was not a common animal. Attractive though it may have been, most Buick buyers by then were four door sedan people and so were their LeSabres. How could we describe the typical LeSabre of this generation? Vanilla? White-bread? Ordinary? Any of these terms might fit, but then we could also add Competent, Decent and Solid. There was, however, another LeSabre that sort of played Mr. Hyde to the regular car’s Dr. Jekyll.
I like to think that everyone here is familiar with the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde was first published in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story was a morality play about good and evil, and involved an upstanding, mild-mannered doctor. Unfortunately, he started down the slippery slope of self experimentation, which led to his periodic transformation into an evil alter-ego who would commit the kinds of unspeakable acts which Dr. Jekyll would never have considered. I count at least one film adaptation of the story during each of twelve straight decades from the 1900s right up to the current one.
Anyhow, to the plain Dr. Jekyll version of the LeSabre was added its darker alter-ego, the T-Type.
A performance Buick was nothing new. It could be argued that Buick had been building performance cars since the 1936 Century, which was a relatively small vehicle with the big Roadmaster engine. Performance was clearly the goal of the Gran Sports of the late 1960s, which reached their apex with the GSX Stage I of 1970 and the experimental Stage II version that followed it. Only two Stage II cars were built, each estimated to churn out over 500 bhp. But one thing led to another as the industry transitioned from muscle to malaise and the Stage II failed to survive its gestation.
Buick wasn’t finished with performance, as it began toying with a series of Centurys powered by some ever-stronger turbocharged versions of its V6 engine, two of which paced the Indianapolis 500 (1976 and 1981). And as the A body became the G body, the Buick Grand National hit the streets ready to kick ass and take names.
One curious offshoot of the well-known Grand National program was the LeSabre Grand National of 1986. Buick built a total of either 112 or 117 of them (depending on the source), all black with gray interiors, in order to qualify the model for NASCAR competition. Was this the last LeSabre to compete on superspeedways? Quite likely.
And a bigger question, was it worth it? LeSabres were campaigned in NASCAR for only 1986 (3 cars) and 1987 (4 cars) before being replaced by the Regal for the 1988 season. A more complete treatment of these LeSabres at NASCAR (which was the source for this photo) can be found here.
Why the Grand National instead of a normal LeSabre coupe? The GN incorporated a special smaller rear quarter window to improve the car’s aerodynamics at high speed – a feature that was more functional than attractive. While the LeSabre Grand National was generally well equipped, the only style of seating offered was a cloth 60/40 bench seat. Yawn.
With the NASCAR approval in the bag, Buick deep-sixed the GN. In its place was the more showroom-friendly T-Type. The LeSabre was the next-to-last Buick to get a T-Type model, lagging the Riviera, Skyhawk, Skylark, Century and Regal. While some might have guessed that the T-Type stood for “turbocharged”, those guessers would be wrong in most cases, and certainly in the case of the LeSabre. Although the car got no more than the 150 bhp 3.8 V6 to power it, it did at least come with the FE-1 handling suspension and sticky Goodyear Eagle GTs mounted to its polished aluminum wheels.
The LeSabre T-Type was a better car for the retail buyer than the LeSabre GN, if for no other reason than the bucket seat interior with a floor shift in the console. Unique wheels, spoilers and badging completed the appearance package. Which came off quite well to the eyes of this observer. OK, a Buick with buckets and a handling package – I will admit that this was not really a full-on Mr. Hyde. That would have been the Regal-derived Grand National which was discontinued after 1987. But work with me here. Mr. Hyde Lite?
I took pictures of the black car in March of 2012 and immediately thought “Mr. Hyde.” This black T-Type looked so menacing (even if it really wasn’t) and all I needed was a plain, ordinary LeSabre coupe to serve as the contrasting Dr. Jekyll. So I waited. And waited. And waited. I was finally rescued a few weeks ago when, during an exchange in some comments to another post here, the commenter known as The Professor shared a shot of the white car. He generously offered the use of his pictures from sunny southern California after I sent him an inquiry by email.
Let that sink in for a moment – I found the rare T-Type in central Indiana while I needed to go to California for a “regular” LeSabre coupe from this time period. Our Dr. Jekyll Buick may be more of a unicorn in SoCal than the Mr. Hyde version is anywhere else.
Let us return to our literary analogy. As Hyde took over Jekyll’s personality because of a flaw in the formula for his serum, Jekyll killed himself to protect the world from his evil other self. The story with these Buicks is less dramatic. The T-Type hardly took over, having generated original registrations of 4,123 (1987) 6,426 (1988) and 5,389 (1989). And instead of suicide the T-Type was more of a homicide with Buick Division pulling the trigger following disappointing 1989 sales. And in case you think that a T-Type Electra had a better chance at success, Buick got 478 of them out the door in 1990 before ending the T-type era altogether.
Buick would sell a lot of LeSabres over the next several years. The two final generations of the LeSabre (1992-99 and 2000-05) were popular cars within a rapidly shrinking demographic. But there would be no more two-door models and certainly nothing even hinting at any kind of performance. So, just like in the story, we finish with no more Mr. Hyde . . .
. . . as well as no more Dr. Jekyll. Don’t you just hate the stories where everyone dies in the end?
Thanks to The Professor who generously offered me the use of his shots, which were originally posted at his site roadsiderambler.com.
Further Reading:
1988 Buick LeSabre T-Type – A Young Man Buys An Old Man’s Car (COAL by Jim Klein)
1986 Buick LeSabre Custom – Heavenly Hash (Perry Shoar)
Shockingly Low Volume Cars – The Buick Edition (Jason Shafer)
More information on the LeSabre Grand National can be found here at the 1986 LeSabre Grand National Registry: http://www.zamiska.net/bltregistry/1986GN.html
Great piece of writing. Compliment to the idea for this Jekyll and Hyde story. Fascinating that even the colors of the cars fit. Or were they the only ones available?
Thank you!
The T-type came in only black, white, red or silver and I suspect that black may have been the most common based on my limited exposure to them. I can’t imagine it looking better in one of the other colors. I laughed at the plain version that just happened to be white, making it perfect for my intended theme.
I actually like this car in silver too. Though today I view silver cars as exceedingly boring, in the 1980s it looked sophisticated on certain designs:
A four-door T-Type might’ve been a decent seller and done wonders for the car’s image, especially in a wider range of colors.
Even as a kid in my early teens I recognized the H-body LeSabre as a better-looking basic car than the deeply uncool vinyl tops, fake-wire wheel covers and whitewalls too many of them were slathered with, but thought the coupe that nobody bought was a bit pointless.
Hot take (not really since I’ve had it since they were new); they should’ve scotched the coupe and spent that money, or a fraction of it, on door handles that hadn’t been in the parts bin since the ’60s. .
Those door handles were actually only available on the Olds, Buick and Cadillacs of this generation. They were an “expected” throwback, kept in place for continuity, as they lent an upscale air to the cars in many people’s minds. A lot of those customers likely felt that the more solid feeling old school hardware gave the first impression of getting into a “premium” automobile, at least moreso than the lightly weighted pulls on the lesser GM cars.
Pontiac used them on this generation too (starting in 1987), at least on lower-trimmed models, for the first time on a Bonneville since 1970. The SSEi and “touring” versions of the Olds and Caddy got a smoother version of the pushbutton door handle.
Good God have I always wanted a LeSabre coupe of this generation.
I find myself wanting that T-Type myself. You are a young man – go for it!
I have yet to drive an H body GM car. My youngest brother had one when he was in college, one with the more typical vinyl roof and wire wheelcovers. I never got the chance to drive it.
I have driven W body cars – and don’t like them. I like to think that I would prefer the H bodies and that my problem is more W-Body-Specific than about GM in general. Maybe someday I will find out.
A friend of my Father had a ’86 LeSabre 2 door coupe equipped with the F-41 suspension package. The exterior color was GM’s version of teal green/turquoise, with light brown cloth bench seat with a fold down arm rest.
My 6-1, 240 pound, 48-Long suit weight lifter body felt quite comfortable in the front and back seats of this stylish, graceful coupe.
The times I drove it (mid/late 1980’s); I found it to be a most competent, pleasant “driver’s car” for this time period.
Although not a ” high rpm revver”, the FI Buick V6 had all the bottom end torque needed for normal street/highway driving, the 4 speed automatic transmission transaxle deftly gave “on point” up and down shifts, the typically excellent HVAC coped well with the drenching heat & humidity that permeates New Orleans too much of the year.
The factory struts were gone by 30K, the aftermarket replacements (Boge or Billstein?) firmed the car’s by then flaccid suspension up well and stopped all typical American bouncing.
Tom (the owner) traded it off on a Benz. More than once, when bouncing thru the potholed streets of NOLA, he ruefully commented “Shudda kept that Buick!”.
Both are quite gorgeous, Mr Hyde would be the perfect Chevrolet Opala Diplomat in the 80’s in Brazil.
The Jekyll and Hyde nature is a big part of what I liked about the LeSabre T-Type. It was somewhat unexpected, and unlike some of the other T-Types (Skyhawk, Skylark, Riviera), the LeSabre pulled of the transformation very well.
To me, the T-Type is more fitting for this design than the “regular” Custom or Limited LeSabres — like it’s hard to figure out which one is Jekyll and which one is Hyde.
I saw a black T-Type like this featured car recently in Richmond, Va., but otherwise haven’t seen a LeSabre coupe in eons… so it’s great to see two of them here.
Thinking about it, the LeSabre may have been the T-type that made the least sense of any of them, but it may have carried off the look best of all.
Buick may have been living in 1967 with this car and found no real niche, but at the same time I find it really appealing.
Good point. I suppose the concept of the Century T-Type made the most “sense” in terms of where the market was going. However it was the most poorly done in execution… the translation of the squishy, old-fogey Century into a blacked-out sports sedan was sort of a curiosity, but the story ends there. The LeSabre somehow comes off as being more genuine.
I think you’re on to something here. My 67 LeSabre Coupé restoration was originally built with some individual options (340 -4bbl, Super Turbine trans) and minimum shiny trim that reminds me a little of a T-type. I’m adding Strato-bucket seats that were only available on the decked out Wildcat and a rear stabilizer bar to complete the package.
Jim, you’ve triggered a memory….I sat in one of these at the St. Louis Auto Show eons ago. My take on it was positive as it was the LeSabre I could see an adult me driving.
Since I haven’t driven one, can it be argued I haven’t yet grown up?
You picked a terrific theme here as these two are quite the contrast. As alluded to in the rare Buick piece you so graciously linked, what might have happened had Buick taken some of these bits and made them standard fare across the board? A deemphasizing of the vinyl roofs and wire wheel covers so many of these had (in both two and four door versions) could have done wonders for broadening their appeal. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
My love affair with an ’88 lesabre four door. I learned how to drive on an 88 lesabre custom (base model) with interior that looked like corduroy. Learned how to work on it, repainted it, did brakes/exhaust, alternator, ECM, Rad, EGR from scrap yard parts between university classes, stripped emblems, and painted the grill to match the t-type. Got almost 300,000 miles out of it before trading in for a 1989 Bonneville, since i loved the C code 3800 so much. Beautiful smooth running engine could suck up the miles, and with dealer applied rust protection it never rusted, even in Toronto. That car was fantastic at just being a loyal car.
And it had a flat piece of chrome at the top of the door, so my arm sat perfectly on it for summer driving. Designers love the high belt line now, and the place to rest your arm is lost.
Another couple years of paying down the mortgage and I’ll be shopping for a T-Type….
I really liked the clean look of the cars and especially a roof line befitting a coupe. I never liked the upright “formal’ roof line used on virtually every GM product in the 80’s. The updated B-body coupes from 1980 looked so dis jointed with the raked windshielkd and upright rear light….Seeing the 1986 coupe when it came out just looked so right.
Great article that sums up my very mixed feelings about this car.
My first car was a 1984 Buick Regal, so I’ve always had a soft spot for Buicks. That said, I absolutely hated the design direction that GM took from the mid-1980s onward, but this LeSabre coupe was perhaps an exception. The overall proportions are generally pleasing and it lacks the bolt upright backlite found on so many GM products of the time. The black Grand National shown above, though fitted with that awkward rear window, omitted the details I found most offensive on LeSabres, including the chrome rocker panel strips (almost always misaligned) and the fake wire wheel covers and looks good in its Q-ship guise.
But then, upon opening the door, you slide in behind the hideous dashboard, flat as the Great Plains and stretching all the way to Montana. And the velour bench seat just screams, “Grandpa”. The leather buckets shown in the black car are much nicer, but I bet few LeSabres were equipped that way and finding one on a dealer’s lot was probably nearly impossible.
This car presents a nice contrast to the fourth-generation Honda Accord published here earlier this week and illustrates GM’s loss of its grip on the upper-middle class market. Though I realize the LeSabre is at least two sizes larger than that Accord, if I had been in the market for a coupe in, say 1988, there is no doubt which car I would have bought. A co-worker’s top-of-the-line Accord imparted a feeling of quality and cohesive design that this LeSabre so desperately lacks and proved to be extremely reliable over the 12 years he had the car.
The velour bench was just in the 86 Grand National, of which just enough were made to qualify for NASCAR. Perhaps Buick hoped that they would be popular enough among racers that the interiors would all get ripped out anyway. Every T-Type came with the buckets, so far as I am aware.
I am with you – this car gets me 85% of the way there. A better dash/interior trim, a manual transmission option, or perhaps a higher output engine (whether via turbo or otherwise) each might have inched this car closer to the finish line. But where the Thunderbird Turbo Coupe appealed to the kind of driver Buick was probably hoping for, this one fell short.
I have made peace with what it is – A comfy Buick that is fast enough. A cruiser that looks good.
If the LeSabre T comes off as the most genuine of the sport models, I think it’s because the bones of the car were the most honest and well-engineered of all the models.
Count me in with the folks that would snatch up a nice coupe if any are still around.
Good grief, I just noticed the ancient hard-wired mobile phone mounted on the console (and its attendant antenna on the rear glass). Wow, that takes me back.
Let’s not forget that CC’s own Jim Klein bought a T-Type, bucking the California stereotype of young guys not touching Buicks with a ten foot pole. Here’s his COAL:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1988-buick-lesabre-t-type-a-young-man-buys-an-old-mans-car/
Gaaa, I checked the normal CC index but not the COALs. I thought I remembered something about Jim Klein owning one of these, but then he has owned one of almost everything. I have added that COAL piece to the “Further Reading”.
That was my first thought too: Yeah, but Jim has owned one of everything so does that even count?
Yes it does Jim, yes it does 🙂
It was a wonderful car, up to the point of owning one I very much liked the shape of the 4doors but had never noticed the coupes. Once I owned one, I noticed the regular coupes as well. I felt it’s biggest competitor was the T-Bird, and while the T-Type certainly had the exterior look, the interior was a bit more drab. Seats were comfortable but as far as calling them “buckets”, well, very shallow tub might be a better descriptor, as there was virtually zero side bolstering etc. Remember, I came out of a 1986 VW GTI into this.
That being said, the power felt like much more than what it actually was, and while a bit floaty at speed due to the weight, it handled well enough for higher speed interstate and highway driving with much more emphasis on touring than carving.
I’d buy another one and I would drive a sedan as well. But the regular coupe version? I’d probably go for a T-bird instead, it just has more style.
I thought when you used the search window on CC it searched the whole site. How would you do a search through the COAL index if not in that search window?
I usually just google Curbside and whatever I’m looking for with as many relevant words as I can think of. This time I failed to go beyond the index. Curbside Klein Coal LeSabre would have turned this right up. I will confess that I never use the full site search tool.
My brother-in-law purchased a lightly-used 2-door LeSabre in the early ’90’s. He and my sister-in-law had small children and subscribed to the theory that 2-door cars were safer. He was really proud of his beautiful LeSabre and on what a great deal he had received by buying used instead of new. It was just out of warranty but looked brand-new.
The LeSabre was plagued by a series of quality issues that stranded my brother-in-law many times over the short time that he owned it. Most of the problems were electrical — it would go completely dead, or endlessly crank without starting. I personally watched it being towed back to the local GM dealer several times. The most embarrassing situation I observed was when he sat down in the LeSabre after a big family party; he pulled hard to close the huge driver’s door, and the entire interior door panel ripped off — with wires dangling everywhere.
Less than 2 years later, he traded the LeSabre on a compact pickup and it became someone else’s problem.
Great comparison!
I always felt these cars were attractive in any form, even if they weren’t anything extraordinary to look at. The regular LeSabre Custom sedan models were were just those cars that ere always kind of “there” in the background, to the extent that I can’t even remember when they started to disappear.
So close and yet so far. Typically GM.
It really shows in the interior pic. They nailed the seat shape and materials to the point that you could see an import-intender at least giving the car a chance. Then you see those dreadful door panels, dash, and joke of a shifter and realize that this would never sell in noticeable numbers to any but GM faithful.
You beat me to it. It was the same with so many of their “sporty versions”. Nice seats, but who wants to look at that dumb dash and the other cheap interior pieces. Which explains perfectly why they were duds. They weren’t fooling folks who wanted a complete package, not just lipstick on a pig.
I have always thought that the “bread and butter” LeSabre, optioned with the F-41 suspension package, was a far better compromise of both of these cars.
Somehow all that flat/satin black trim looked out of place on a Buick LeSabre (to my eyes) and detracted from the 2 door coupe’s body’s overall appeal.
Sadly the same goes for the Regal T-Type/Grand National/GNX. Only difference is they have that potent turbocharged goodness under the hood to make the dreary interior more easy to overlook.
when the turbo spools up and your fighting to keep the car headed in the right direction, you don’t care what the dash looks like
Yeh-You-Rite!
🙂
One of the great crimes of the 20th century: that we got so few H- (and C-) body coupes.
I’m sure GM would have built as many as there was demand for. I’m a bit surprised that they bothered at all, but back in 1985 maybe it wasn’t as obvious where the coupe market was heading. On the other hand though, Ford didn’t bother with a Taurus coupe and no one seemed to notice.
While I really do like like the lines of these coupes, especially the profile of the roof, the dashboards and interior styling is just dismal. GM could build better dashes, my ’94 Seville had a really nice dash and interior. The forward opening hood and very tidy detailing under the hood is worth mentioning as appealing. There is lots of room in the cabin and a useful trunk. As was mentioned in an earlier comment the competition for this car really was the Thunderbird which had a nicer interior and a performance motor available. I particularly like it in black, reminds me of this guy.
What was it they used to say? Race on Sunday and sell on Monday? So much for that idea. Great piece JP!
As the owner of a Regal Grand National, I find the FWD LeSabre ‘Grand National’ offensive.
Buick (and Olds and Caddy) should have been building real RWD BMW fighters and these weren’t it; too bad because they were otherwise decent looking cars for the time.
But still a great article JP
The painted flat black trim on the T-types had a nasty habit of peeling off the metal underneath the paint; looking quite cheap and tacky, after just a few years of weather exposure.
I had a silver `89 T-Type and an `89 Custom Sedan.
The T-Type lives on with a friend and an engine swap.
The Sedan saw 2 more owners with the last guy living in it I heard.
You said the one you took a pic of was in central indiana. I wonder if it was my dads. Lol. He only takes it out a few times a year now, but I love that car.
I didn’t see your comment when it came in. I found the car at the McDonalds at Binford Blvd and Graham Road in the northeast corner of Indianapolis. If it belongs to your father, I can see why he enjoys it.