Buick has obviously had a long and storied history, having been founded long before any of our regular readers were around and perhaps currently in its twilight years itself, at least as far as its presence on this continent is concerned. Many people have fond memories of one Buick or another, some might bench race Grand Nationals and GNX’s (along with some older iron), some might recall special summer nights in the back seat of a ’57 Buick Special, and others may have carpooled to middle school in a Buick Terazza. I won’t mention the Terazza again though, I promise.
While there are surely some (or a lot of) great cars to wear the Buick badge over the last century and almost a quarter, this here, the mostly mild-mannered H-Body, may be the best Buick ever made. And this particular one may be one of the best-preserved examples of the breed still above ground at this point. Not restored, just taken care of, the same way it apparently took care of its owner and hundreds of thousands of others took care of their owners as well. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the 1989 Buick LeSabre Limited pretty much exactly as it appeared in a 1989 Buick showroom to (perhaps) razzle and dazzle Bob and Mary, a midwestern couple in the prime of their lives, on one fine day in the late fall of 1988.
The Limited was the top dog in the lineup, if you consider the coupe-only and kinda sorta racy-ish T-Type a bit of a specialty item. I owned one in the early 90s (a T-Type I mean), and may have been one of the youngest to do so at the time. I think I was all of 24 or 25 years old, had seen my VW GTI wrecked and wanted something larger, which the T-Type certainly was. It eventually went away in favor of another VW as yet another spike in the odd and highly irregular EKG representing my car ownership choices.
There I am in my V-neck sweater at Stanford Cadillac taking delivery of my creampuff 1988 model, likely the only 20-something constantly falling into The Gap and living a few miles from Tesla’s future birthplace, never mind the tech center of the free world, and still choosing a Buick circa 1993. Time and place…time and place, it just wasn’t done, dude!
However, maybe that’s why I stopped to look at this 1989 sedan, just one example of 144,183 LeSabres built that year of the 723,297 total that comprised the 1986-1991 Buick H-body production run. I have no idea many how of those were “Limited” versions, especially as in American Automotive English (a subgenre of the English language) the word is loosely defined as meaning there are no limits as to how many there will be and if buyers don’t want them now, they’ll just go in the sales bank and be heavily discounted later.
Where to start…and my perspective may well be different than others. Buick to me was a solid marque. Very red, white, and blue. A little stuffy perhaps, but not really snooty. But not bottom of the barrel. Respectable. Mature? Perhaps mostly boring. Even if Buick-badged engines did power lots of race cars. Certainly by 1989 though much if any excitement was mostly gone as far as the general public was concerned which doesn’t mean it wasn’t a solid choice or absolutely worthy of consideration as a car for lots of folks. And generally not a decision to be faulted.
Just like Buick itself in the overall GM lineup and the overall market, the LeSabre model wasn’t the top car in the Buick lineup, the Electra and fancier Electra Park Avenue (also H-bodies) were above it as was the Reatta and the Riviera as well although those had fewer doors. And below it were the Skyhawk, Skylark, Century, and the Regal. Maybe I’ve mispositioned one or two, but that’s how I rank them in my mind and really, most of America probably wasn’t aware there were nine model names in the 1989 Buick showroom.
Some of those that may have wandered in were perhaps also starting to eyeball the two-door GMC S-15 Jimmy or three-row GMC Suburban on the other side of the joint space as well depending on how fertile they were or conversely how empty the nest was getting lately.
In any case, a solid mid-level ranking amongst the lineup. And sized representatively as well, inside and out, to fit the new paradigm of the entire 1980s where slimming down was in and it was all about getting physical as Olivia Newton-John so clearly reminded us earlier in the decade.
Slimmer, more toned, power through the front wheels for better grip and traction in poor conditions, and the inside cleaned out too for maximum space in the smaller exterior with everything lined up just so. You bought a Buick, you were probably a solid guy at your mid-management banking or corporate sales job and there were approving nods all around. Except in San Francisco – where everyone I knew did a double-take and wondered why did Jim the printing sales guy buy himself a Buick? Eff ’em, it was my car and I liked it, and my future wife didn’t seem to mind it. Boo-ya!
This one was just sitting below the azure skies as I sauntered past engrossed in my own Rocky Mountain High, nestled between a Freestar and a Cirrus. Besides a fair amount of dust and a little booboo right in the grille, this looked as good as anything sitting on the lot at Putnam Buick on the SF Peninsula back in ’89 so I had to take a closer look.
I’d always liked the front end of these, even the four-eyed sealed beam visage of the first year 1985 H-body Buicks; it looked clean, modern, and ready for some action as from here at least it’s as cleanly styled as anything else while still presenting a strongly American jawline. Claret red is quite a perfect color too, soak in too much of it and you might get a little tipsy without it being as bold as a deeper red, good thing it’s not as big as the ’75 which was a far worse wine year than the ’89 vintage.
Still, the styling works for me and has held up as clearly 1980s, but with the more modern touches such as fairly integrated and body colored bumpers without going full plastic fantastic as the successor 90s Buicks went toward and that now look cheap and bulbous more than anything else.
The back too, clean, and as I recall from my own, the license plate slotted into the lighting assembly, you had to open the trunk and the plate would just drop into a little slot from above and was then held in and framed by the plastic surround inside of the backup lights. Large tail lights were often a hallmark of Buicks and one of the things I recall vividly as a child in regard to American cars, usually the tail lights were far larger and wider than those of anything else on the road. Bulbs were cheap I guess and if they burned out at least there was another or another dozen in the same assembly to keep the party going.
This trunk is marred by the most useless accessory ever, how would you even tie something down on this? But that’s where Buick was in the day, and it doesn’t take away from the car itself, clearly added by a marketer of some sort rather than an engineer. Trunk racks were fading fast by this time though and have since disappeared entirely, only to be replaced by monster baskets and giant aerodynamic caskets on roofs that can at least hold something and have stuff strapped down either on or in them.
The faster backlight is preferable here too relative to the more formal Park Avenue variant, making the LeSabre a more “approachable” car and not as high-falutin’ wanna-be but not quite a Cadillac. That Caddy is reserved for Mr. Puff’N’Stuff, the bank president. Can’t go treadin’ on them toes now, y’hear? So Buick with a proletariat roofline it is.
Red, White, and Buick. No explanation needed.
It’s a little odd that a forward opening hood still requires a hood latch in the front of the car as this one did, but the hood itself is as vast as the plains, and tilts up like the steepest of the Rockies. This is one of the things I really like about Buick’s H-Body, but most owners probably never had to figure out how to open it.
They never opened it as below it sits one of America’s great engines, the Buick 3800! This V6 is a “pre-Series I” engine, the real star of the 3800 show is probably the later Series II from 1995 on after ’91’s Series I, but they are generally considered bulletproof (except for lower intake manifolds on the normally aspirated ones) and are extremely economical, never mind the 17/26 EPA rating, they seem to generally do better than that for many owners, I certainly don’t recall worrying about fuel economy.
In 1989 this engine produced 165 horsepower @ 5,200rpm and 210lb-ft of torque at a more impressive 2000rpm. In this car and mated to the 4-Speed Turbo Hydramatic (4T-60) , this engine was a very strong and willing performer. Of course the later supercharged versions (but not in a LeSabre) were even better, I fondly recall that engine in my own Regal GS from when I went back to the Buick well yet again a few years later.
Apparently a mechanic at least opened the hood if the notation on the air cleaner is any indication. It stated that the tranny was serviced at 40,000 miles in April of 2000. Hmmm. 40,000 miles in April of 2000. That’s only about 3,600 a year to that point.
I teased the interior a little earlier and no, this junkyard does not do a full interior detail before they set the cars out in the yard, it came in like this. Actually maybe a little better than this if that’s even possible, perhaps the owner spent time in Tokyo. This though is what it must have felt like to be car shopping in 1989 and slip into the back seat and look over into the front.
Not that you’d have any reason to not be comfortable in the back. Plenty of legroom, and enough pillow topped velour to feel close enough to George Costanza’s dream of being able to drape himself in velvet and eat a block of cheese. I suppose decadence is the feeling he was wanting to experience with that and this brings it even without leather. And being a Buick in the 1980s, it brings it to the masses.
Just like some people are leery of power doors in minivans to this day, others were still leery of power windows and locks in the 1980s. But Buick (and GM, and most everyone else on this continent) had that pretty much figured out by then, it was VW and Audi that did their shameful best to rob people of confidence in those by then simple electronics and assemblies.
Sure, the locks here made a very alarmingly loud clunking sound both when locking and unlocking them via the little touch plate but that was just positive affirmation that something mechanical was happening behind the scenes while everything else inside the car was virtually mausoleum silent. Well, the stalk (you know, the one that did EVERYthing!) on the GM columns were loud too when you finally forced it far enough up, down, forward, or back to get it to thunk into the desired position just prior to feeling like it was about to snap off. But that didn’t really matter, the other GM both up and down the ladder cars mostly had the same stalk.
Here’s my almost-brochure-worthy shot of the craftsman-like if not exactly bespoke woodwork in the LeSabre, if only the sun were a little higher and highlit the whole badge. Sure the wood is of the petroleum tree variety, but fake wood doesn’t bother many people, just when it lasts more than four hours or whatever that warning is can it cause problems.
Anyway, the upshot is this stuff also gets the job done, it doesn’t crack, it doesn’t peel, it doesn’t warp, you save a bundle on Lemon Pledge, it’s consistent in color and pattern from piece to piece and panel to panel and car to car and while it does not look really real, that’s okay, since by making 48 low(ish) monthly payments, the total starting price of $16,730 of this car before options doesn’t seem as real either. That’s $38,730 in today’s playmoney though so yeah, take the payment plan, it hurts less. Oh yeah, no chance of splinters either.
While the lot boy left the wheel turned and took the keys with him, many buyers likely settled in to these 60/40 split bench seats for the long haul of an afternoon while the salesperson supposedly went and chatted with the manager about the trade-in but probably just snuck a smoke or three in the detailing area of the dealership.
A few Newports later, the salesperson would have come back and invited the lucky couple (always a couple) to participate in that favorite American pastime, the four-square dance at the little Formica-topped table next to the watercooler and brochure stand, where they would all Do-Si-Do past each other about prices and trade-ins and get absolutely nowhere for a too-long while.
There you’d also discuss which Delco radio option you’d prefer, in this case the auto-reverse cassette one and if you wanted the manual or automatic climate control. You’d want the fancy and hopefully Y2K compatible one because you’re a forward thinker and GM owned Hughes so no problems there, so yep, the Limited trim level was the one to get, and the bordello red velour was great too since America’s Dirty Little Princess, Madame Heidi Fleiss, wasn’t in the news yet. How far we’ve come.
Which Buick dealer? Who knows but there are still just under 2,000 Buick dealers in the United States today selling a combined 200,000 vehicles in this country. One car every three days does not bode well for Buick dealers’ future, other manufacturers with that volume (usually premium marques) have about 300 dealers total across the 50 states doing the same volume. (Where you want to be a Buick dealer is in China where they sold over 800,000 last year among parts shortages, lockdowns, and a burgeoning economic crisis. But peeps gotta have their Buicks!)
I suppose the usual GMC pairing over here helps tremendously, my own local Buick dealer takes up a little bit of a building and lot, is overshadowed by GMC in the same shared space, but seemingly derives the majority of their income from their neighboring Honda store which sits on a lot about three times as large and is the one showroom that isn’t shared and got remodeled a few years back. Where is D&H GM by the way, the dealership from which this one stems? There are about a dozen towns and cities names Sheldon in the U.S. but none seem larger than a few thousand souls so I could not figure it out prior to publication.
Where are those dudes complaining about newfangled touchscreens when SOMEBODY was out there spec’ing touch panel HVAC systems placed below the main dashboard in line with where the ignition key goes over 30 years ago? Those are not actually buttons, just graphics to target with a finger, there is no tactile tell-tale that I could discern. How did anyone live to tell the tale? Here, let me adjust the fan speed, honey, lemme take a look, oh no, big truck, oncoming traffic, what’s that blaring horn, is it too hot in here and why am I going toward the lights…
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…and so on. I had NO idea these were a thing. At least today’s touch screens are more or less at eye level and can usually be controlled by voice command instead if you need one hand for the wheel and the second for the ciggy and the third one for the Big Gulp, oh, wait a minute. This seems absurd but the future was a big thing back in the day – I’ll take a touchscreen at eye level any day over this. J.H.C. on a popsicle stick, I tell ya!
A Buick is a family car. (Usually anyway, the Reatta was for me-time I guess). But here we have a picture of Michael, or William, or Robert, but definitely not Connor or Jayden or Jax’n as it’s dated 1985 on the back, who’s been on permanent ride-along duty for the last 33 years. Little Mikey or Billy or Bobby is now himself at the age where he’d normally maybe consider a Buick just like Grandma drove.
Perhaps he’d like that but all he can find in his local Buick showroom are a total of three nameplates instead of nine of which one (the Envision) is made in China and looks like a CUV, another (the Encore GX) in Korea (shameless plug for my positive review of it right here) that also looks like a smaller CUV sort of, and the last (the Enclave) is pretty much a badge engineered Chevy CUV stuffed with fluff assembled in Michigan. Michigan yes, but not Flint, the holy land of Buick whose loins this LeSabre was born of and where one uses bottled water instead of municipal water in a first world country with sometimes seemingly the infrastructure of Somalia.
54,313 miles. In 33 years. So it slowed down considerably after the already lengthy time it took to cover the first 40k. Since April 2000, there have been 22 more Aprils and each one saw an average of 651 miles added since the last or just under two miles a day on average. Perhaps it’s here because the battery died, who really knows, but if it was the battery, it earned it.
But I’ll bet this Buick started without fail every day it needed to, slotted into gear every time it was asked to, narrowly avoided the mailbox at the curb every time it backed out of the driveway (especially as of lately), and simply got its occupant where they wanted to go in comfort, the style they had became accustomed to and comfortable with, and did so unassumingly yet respectably. Because it’s a Buick and in 1989 the LeSabre was one of the best assembled cars with one of the highest levels of customer satisfaction in North America. According to J.D. Power and Associates anyway. And people bought them and liked what they bought. The proof is sitting on four welded rim stands in Denver. When better automobiles are built, Buick will build them. Indeed.
Now that is a well-preserved cabin! Velour-tastic, a forest ‘s worth of plastiwood, everything red all over, and all looking just as nice as if it had been exported to Japan.
That photo you found leaves me pensive. It really makes that Buick, otherwise an inanimate
and now immobile object, come alive. You should rescue that car, Jim. Its time hasn’t come yet!
“You should rescue that car, Jim. Its time hasn’t come yet!”
I would but I fear I am still too young.
In the US as far as I know, once at this stage there is no turning back : (
Looks like another example of an elderly couple passing away. And during an estate sale the family just says “get rid of it”. Nobody wants it. Eww.
This is hardly my kind of car, but I would have driven it.
That looks too good to be broken up, assuming it hasn’t had terminal engine or gearbox woes. Were I closer, I’d take it.
It hurts my heart to see this beauty end up like this.
I was never a fan of that tufted cushion upholstery (how exactly does one clean that stuff???) or the silly trunk-mounted rack, but other wise, I’d happily drive that car home and take it most anywhere I need to go.
My 1971 LeSabre lasted only about 12 years before it was a floor-less rust bucket with a disintegrating interior. It made it maybe 40K more miles than your find. This one is 33 years old and looks brand new. +1 for grandma ownership, but still I think Buick just did a much better job by the time it came time to make this 1989 version.
Love the color too. I had an uncle who had a 73 Centurion convertible in that color. Sharp car,,,that also lasted no where near as long as this one.
Nice find, and great write-up!
There is one of these I walk past most days, owned by a security guard who works in the downtown area I live. Same color, also a Limited but with a silver leather interior. It has lots of stickers on it from the different affiliations of the various owners. Two factory hubcaps on one side, none on the other. I was worried about it a while ago, with a always half down window whatever the weather. Then that was fixed, and I was cheered up. Yesterday I saw the car clamped for excessive parking tickets. Depressing for me, as a former Buick owner the last real one I regularly see. Mine was fake, a Verano a chromed up Opel rebadge. Doubly depressing for the hard working, underpaid guy who now has to scramble for other transportation.
Did you meet the British couple?
https://www.theautopian.com/two-brits-visit-a-u-s-junkyard-and-fall-into-sadness-seeing-a-minty-but-boring-buick-destined-for-the-crusher/
Amazing how long this car went with NOBODY noticing it only to have its Last Ride documented so perfectly.
“Just like some people are leery of power doors in minivans to this day,” – Hey! Who are you talking about? And Best Buick Ever would be a great subject for a QOTD.
I am sure I won’t be the last to bemoan a gorgeously kept, ultra-low-mile old Buick sedan that sits in the junkyard. If cars can suffer from a wrongful conviction, this one is certainly such a victim. Where is the Automotive Innocence Project when you need them? Seriously, I would daily drive this car. I have always wondered if I would like an H body Buick. What is the world coming too when 16-year-old Cody or Brianna is too good for Grandma’s Buick.
I briefly owned a 1985 LeSabre Limited (to be the subject of a future COAL). The interior was probably my favorite thing about the car.
“What is the world coming too when 16-year-old Cody or Brianna is too good for Grandma’s Buick”
I’m proud to say that my 18 year old step daughter would drive it, but she’s already loving her 1997 Ford Taurus we bought (and rehabed) for her. She’s definitely not “too good” for an older car. In fact, she’s happier in it than she was in the much newer BMW her mom bought her. Doesn’t hurt that the BMW has since become a lawn ornament. She drove it maybe twice. Said it was too much car, too fancy and too pretentious. This coming from a 17 year old at the time! There is hope. I could actually see her owning and loving a classic when she gets out of college and gets her life on track.
(Her sister has her eye on my 2000 Mustang. If she gets her seizures under control, which we are working on, I’ll give it to her when she gets her license.)
From the comfortable distance of three decades, I can appreciate the clean ’80s lines of this car and the whore’s drawers interior, but back in the day these were S-Q-U-A-R-E.
It was bad enough that all the GM H-bodies looked the same, but they were all stylistically out of step with the late ’80s and early ’90s. Compared to the Ford Taurus or the Chrysler LH cars, this Buick looks like the box those other cars came in.
That said, this Buick was undoubtedly better built than either the Taurus or the LH. My Dad owned a period Taurus with a clock that quit working shortly after we left the dealership and a Chrysler Concorde that was clearly built on a Monday (it had three leather door panels, and one cloth).
The LeSabre regularly finished at the top of the JD Power lists, which undoubtedly help sell more than a few units.
As for Buick ownership, you are in surprisingly good company here, Jim. A site search for “Buick COAL” yields over three pages of results, far more than I was expecting. I myself owned a first-generation LaCrosse that I would put right up there with the 80’s LeSabre as one of the best cars Buick has made.
This bodystyle had been updated by the time the LH came out in 1993. Still not as advanced underneath, but not the blocky/square 1985 throwback this one is (not that I mean that in a negative way, it’s just the truth). Compared to 1989 Chrysler products, this was a futuristic super car.
The H body’s transverse engine chassis was different from the LHs longitudinal engine, but not less advanced. Both designs were the legacy of mid 80s cars, including the Renault based Eagle Premier.
The extra length of the 93 LH was the style leader over the 91 Le Sabre, but the Le Sabre still was a looker; buyers had to step up to the Park Avenue to get the full effect instead of the truncated Le Sabre. In fact, the Renee Zellweger movie “Nurse Betty” uses the Le Sabre’s styling as a story point; Betty wants to borrow a Le Sabre from her husband’s car lot because it looks so much like a Jaguar.
I stand corrected. It was silly of me to think that a car with OHC engines, a modern interior, modern safety equipment, better handling and overall a fresher design and appearance was “advanced”. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.
The 93 LH was a step ahead of the 86 generation Le Sabre, but was merely catching up to the 91 Le Sabre and the Park Avenue.
The 93 LHs had half-assed OHC engines that weren’t a patch on the magnificent 3800, which hit its stride in the 90s with roller rockers and port fuel injection.
Yes, in 1989, many Chrysler cars equivalent to the Buick were based on the square Dodge Dynasty whose roots dated back to the Aries/Reliant K cars.
I bet the owner(s) passed away, and their children just called someone to haul away the “old clunker”.
I keep seeing this, and it really irritates me. I’ve related the story before of my aunt’s perfectly good running cars hauled to the scrap yard upon her death. I. Don’t. Get. It. Why not donate the car? Give it to someone who needs it? Offer it to family members who might enjoy it because they loved the previous owner, love the car, or a combination of both. Nahh, just crush it. Who would want something besides a new Kia anyway?
I’m sure that’s exactly what happened. I’d bet money on it.
But I’ll just add that having been in the position of needing to settle the affairs of various relatives who passed unexpectedly (or in some cases declined rapidly and unexpectedly before passing) and who were not all properly prepared in so far as having made all of the legal and personal decisions and advance directives, dealing with these situations is a large burden upon surviving family. There are just so many things to deal with such that something like a car you don’t need is maybe more than the survivors can manage…and a quick disposal where you can “check that off the list” is just the best thing for the family. I personally would have gone with a different solution (I’ve donated cars before, and I’ve done quick sales of reasonably desirable cars like a late model Prius), but that’s because I care specifically about cars. Nevertheless, to each their own and each person is going to do what’s necessary given their abilities to manage a difficult situation. IMO.
I think it’s more about convenience than necessity, more often than not.
It’s a 35 year old car with essentially zero cash value. The person who would be grateful to have it would be almost too poor to own *any* car. As a daily driver, this car is a series of niggling failures waiting to happen.
say this as a long time GM sedan owner who recently bought a 2005 Le Sabre for old times’ sake and has a power window that goes down but doesn’t want to come back up. I haven’t spent much total money compared to the selling price of a brand new car, but I’ve spent as much on repairs as I paid for it.
Almost every “perfectly good car” in the junkyard needs several repairs that add up to more than the price of a running car without those problems.
I stand corrected. Having owned more cars 10+ years old than not, I had no idea that old cars need repairs. A power window? Crusher time, and not Dr. Beverly.
I also enjoy seeing all the free older cars on craigslist, etc since they have 0 value.
I have no doubt that the majority of your vehicles have been at least ten years old, and that you don’t have anywhere important to be.
Hmm, and my 1991 626 definitely has zero cash value then. Yet I just did a bunch of repairs that ANY car would happen to need even if 5-10 years old. Some things need to be done on a routine basis no matter the age of the car. One will have to wait for the story on that work that is in the works now.
When dealing with repairs on an old car, the mindset of “the car isn’t worth it” is almost universal out there. I have had that kind of discussion many times in my house. I suspect that most of us here understand that a sound, operable car has a value that is often in excess of what the market sees, so normal repairs and maintenance make perfect sense if you can get outside of the retail value thing.
My mom’s aunt died and it was my job to dispose of her 80’s FWD LeSabre, not a fancy model (it had crank up windows), but the 25-year-old car had <60K miles. It lasted for one day on Craig's List, sold to a 40-something guy enamored with Buicks. He was tickled pink to buy it and I added ~$2500 to her estate. Fortunately we had all hands on deck liquidating her estate with my brother and sister taking on their tasks too. I can easily imagine one person being overwhelmed with getting rid of grandma’s copious ‘stuff’ and simply calling a scrapper to haul the Buick away .
I agree that the owner had passed and since it had sat undriven for so long it wouldn’t start when they tried. With all the other things that were going on and likely w/o automotive knoledge the easiest thing to do was to donate it. So they called up 1-877-Kars 4 Kids or some other charity and when the operator on the other end entered the info the computer said this one goes to the wrecking yard and that was that.
That’s a good point Scoutdude. I think I’ve written before here about seeing so many cars at the U-pick that I sometimes go to that look like they were driven into the yard…and that they are in fact the “charity donation” cars. The yard I go to actually has stickers on those donated cars designating them as such (it also has stickers that indicate which insurance company totaled a car and sent it there…so it’s not just a charity thing). Anyway, I guess that sometimes the best value/economic decision for the charity is scrap value.
Many years ago there was a local auction yard that worked with a couple of charities and also took cars on consignment. They would do the towing and storage and handle the paper work. Not sure how they split the proceeds. Many of those donated cars were purchased by local wrecking yards but some went home with private owners. I bought a (Colonnade) 442, that my brother still has, that had been donated and I drove it home. I was also really tempted by a last of the big Eldo’s that had the Fuel Injected 500, but chickened out since it wasn’t in that good of shape and service info on that short lived system wasn’t easy to find and I feared much of that system was made of unobtainium.
When an engine problem popped up in the wife’s 98 Sable wagon, 2017, she said to send it to Pick ‘n Pull. I actually called and they said I needed to pay them $100 to come and tow it away. Well that answer ended that idea. The car is in the garage waiting on me rebuilding the short block as I’ll be damned if I’ll give them $100 bucks to come and get it. Thatis coming up after the Parklane work and maybe the LeSabre struts and intake.
You are putting a whole lot of faith into this Buick being a perfectly good running car(s) hauled to the scrap yard. After 30+ years, low miles like this almost becomes more of a demerit because things that normally would be addressed in normal use gradually over time aren’t when the car starts to be driven regularly again. The major internals are fine, but the “minor” things like rubber and plastic bits are brittle and start giving up the ghost one after another. You put a new battery in only to have a radiator hose fail on week two. You discover the handbrake is long gone week four. Week six the seatback adjustment snaps, the signal stalk goes crunch, or a gauge cluster goes dark and you begin to question getting around to replacing the 12 year old tires before winter and the wisdom behind that when all these ancillary things are very much apposed to being touched and used outside of the scope of the weekly 3mi round trip to the grocery store and church the car has only ever known for 15 years. You have a conscience, so the car is disposed of versus becoming someone else’s problem.
Point of reference: Grandma’s “pristine” 31,000mi ‘82 Pontiac 6000 LE coupe
A 35 year old vehicle essentially is worn out and used up at a molecular level. Volatile chemicals evaporate from rubber and plastic, soldered joints crack, corrosion settles into metal joints and cracks, etc.
+1
This was for John Taurus’ original comment.
Yeah, I always liked this generation of Buicks and Oldsmobiles. The Electras, LeSabres, 98s and 88s of this vintage were good cars. We had an 88 and it was very reliable. Shame this car is sitting in the salvage yard. I wonder what put it there?
My aunt had a Delta 88 on this platform, very reliable. Virtually trouble free until it blew a head gasket at exactly 200k miles. He replaced that and the harmonic balancer and the car went several more years before they sold it, running/driving.
The 2000s LeSabre that replaced it had much worse quality throughout. But that 3800 was still golden.
Obviously by “he”, I meant my uncle.
Navin R. Johnson: These hoodlums are dangerous. I think we oughta get out of here before she sees us.
Marie: She?
Navin R. Johnson: What?
Marie: You said she.
Navin R. Johnson: No! No! I always call a gang “she”. It’s like when you call a boat “she”, or a hurricane “she”.
Marie: Or a girl?
Navin R. Johnson: A girl, you can call a girl she, that’s just one of the many things you can call she.
What a great find. I am sad to see this one nearing its end! Gosh – I look at one of these and I still feel the immense pride we felt in Flint for these cars, many of which were built at the Buick City complex on the north end. The J.D. Power & Associates quality award these cars won was no small thing, especially given the state and quality perception of GM products of that era.
Its styling was a bit anodyne for me, but I came to appreciate that about them, as comparable Bonnevilles and Delta 88s seemed to age more quickly. I took drivers’ ed in one of these. I think I’ll always smile when I see one, even in a junkyard.
I’ve said for years the H-body was likely the best car GM ever built. I still see one from time to time with 200+k miles that purr like a kitten and with hardly a stitch out of the interior.
Outstanding writeup, and it’s tough to read this, and look through the pictures, and not get a little bit sad.
Anyway, I think the dealership you’re looking for was D&H Motors in Sheldon, Iowa. It was a full-line GM dealership in a small town about 60 mi. northeast of Sioux City, and D&H was still operating in the late 1980s. As far as I can tell, the dealership was renamed Hamill Motors shortly after this LeSabre was sold, and continued to operate in downtown Sheldon until about 10 years ago when GM revoked the franchises of a lot of small-volume dealerships.
Seconding The Sheldon Iowa connection. Used to see a fair number of D&H-stickered Buicks as a kid in 70s & 80s Sioux City.
Nice find, and nice write up, but the picture of you, Jim, at Stanford Cadillac is priceless. I’m at least a decade older than you and when I lived there, all I did with that dealership was drive by without a glance. Until it became the first Tesla store. Not a criticism … I’ve always admired the T Types and even more, people who flout automotive conventions. I wish I had a photo of me with my similarly-colored new 1981 TransAm (which replaced my Scirocco) in the parking area at the natural hot springs five miles off the pavement outside Mammoth, California, surrounded by old VW vans, Datsun 510 wagons and perhaps a Volvo or two with Grateful Dead stickers.
“Until it became the first Tesla store”
Did it really? What a perfect metaphor for both the upward trajectory of that area area as well as the downward one of General Motors and Cadillac.
I was the youngest person in that dealership by at least three decades. I will also say the service and respect I received as a definite demographic outlier was outstanding.
If the Cadillac store was where I remember it was, on the “bay” side of El Camino just north of the Palo Alto/MPk line, adjacent to a Chevy dealership, yes, that became the first Tesla showroom. Roadsters only then. When we moved to Mountain View in 1989, there were Chevy and a BOP/GMC dealership in town, plus Ford just to the north in Palo Alto. Within a few years all the domestics were gone in both cities, only BMW/Mini in MTV and Toyota, Porsche/Audi, Volvo/Subaru and later McLaren in PA.
The Cadillac dealership in Menlo Park used to be called Penske, and before that, Shepard. Menlo Park used to have an Auto Row which included a Buick, Lincoln-Mercury, Ford and Chevrolet dealerships – now all gone. Palo Alto has 2 major car dealership locations – on El Camino Real, where there’s McLaren, Volvo and Tesla shops next to each other, with a Toyota one not too far away (on San Antonio & Middlefield Road), and just off the 101 on Embarcadero – the Honda and the Audi shop.
I think the Chevy and BOP/GMC dealerships near Mt View were actually in Sunnyvale (they’re all gone now)
A lot of goodness in this Buick, but door mounted seat belts are a deal breaker for me, and these existed in way too many GM cars, and were a deadly sin in models that purported to be premium.
Those belts are among the reasons I turned away from GM in the ’80s, and I’ve never been back.
You beat me to it. Those door-mounted belts really are an actually-deadly sin, not just a hyperbolic one, and their presence is a very sturdy reason to reject a car. They were (and remain) a cynical mockery of the principle of a seatbelt—and of a safety standard. NHTSA, faced with a belt design that was obviously and demonstrably somewhere between inferior and useless, stared at the sky and went “Tut tut…looks like it might rain today…oh, seatbelts? Whatever; we’re sure whatever you do will be just fine”. In actual(1) fact(2), they did not work fine; they let people fly out of the car in a crash that popped the door open. That is: the door-mount belt went away at exactly the moment the occupant urgently needed it.
GM used them to meet the passive-restraint requirement, but they aren’t passive restraints in any real sense of the term. They’re just regular 3-point belts, only in the door so they can be left buckled while the door is open. Perhaps one or two people did that once or twice. They were unbuckled in the showrooms (a violation of Federal law), and mostly people unbuckled them every time they left the car—despite the warning never ever to unbuckle the belt except in an emergency (it was somewhere or other in the owner’s manual nobody ever read). This was another craven, cynical GM compliance job, but GM did (does) have a way of getting what they wanted (want), regulatorily speaking, whether or not it was (is) in accord with the letter or spirit of whatever which reg was (is) in question.
It’s scarcely conceivable (oh, wait, that’s not true: some Ferengi ghoul on the 14th floor said “do it or you’ll be replaced”) how any legitimate engineer could possibly sleep at night after designing or approving the GM door-mounted belts—but then we’re talking about the company which for decades installed seatbelts with RCF-67 buckles that unfasten all by themselves.
My second-ever foray into the traffic safety realm was in high school; I wrote about passive and door-mounted seatbelts for a CP Writing “current public issue” research-and-report assignment. I still remember two of the money quotes I dug up. There was a perfectly garish one from someone at NHTSA: “We decided we were willing to degrade the protection, possibly degrade the protection, to get more people using belts”.
And there was a staggeringly unreal one from someone at GM, in response to (valid) criticism that door-mounted belts mean zero protection when the door flies open in a crash: “[The door mounted belt system] provides excellent occupant protection. We don’t think doors really tend to open very often in crashes”. Perhaps he had crossies when he said it, or maybe it was Opposite Day, because that’s not part of consensus reality.
Any comments on the headlights, Mr. Stern?
The transition to the door-mounted non-restraints happened partway through the 1987 model year…which means that IF I were to own one of these cars, it would need to be an early ’87 model with the T-type package (which came with amber turn signals from the factory). I’m not even sure if that unicorn even exists.
The headlamps were neither great nor awful. They were better than any of the ones from Ford or Chrysler around that time except the Eagle Premier/Dodge Monaco, which had unusually advanced and effective headlamps. Oh, and the Chrysler’s TC by Maserati had rather good lamps, too.
Amber turn signals used as styling gimmicks in a dress-up package: feh. I mean, better than none at all, but still. Feh.
Daniel: I was selling GM at this time you speak of (1988 to 1995 and again 2007 to 2011). We had the Buick, GMC and Cadillac along with Honda. So the Cadillac didn’t have this system and kept the belts on the B pillar. Honda for a while used the motorized belt system which was worse yet. Buick had the door mounted system.
Although I tend to agree that it was not the best thing going on, I don’t think I’d agree totally with you on your take. Yes, the belt was supposed to stay connected and nobody did. Yes it was difficult to get in/out with it still connected (we had to demostrate that, so I know). I can’t tell you how many pens I lost from the belt snagging them and flipping them on the floor or out the door. But allow me to suggest a few of the possitive things with them. First, unlike the Honda system, it wasn’t motorized and thus less noise and less things to go wrong. Second, having the belt on the door made it super easy to grab and buckle rather than having to reach back between the seat and the B pillar. Third, those doors/latches were reinforced more with this system and they had extra measures to keep the door from opening in a crash. The person from GM was correct in that seldom would doors come open in a crash. I can confirm this from the period of time I was a police officer and responded to many crashes. In fact, the system reinforcements GM made actually made those same doors more difficult to open after a crash.
Anyhow, just putting an alternative thought to this subject with a more positive spin.
Thanks for your thoughts. Those motorised belts were just about equally the wrong way to do it, and VW’s door-mount belts were different to GM’s, but not better.
I don’t mean to scorn what you saw as a police officer. I do have a hard time seeing no 2-second-long seatbelt motor noise at the start and end of each trip and slightly less of a reach to grab the buckle as balancing the scale against the door-mount belts’ shoddy protection as described and quantified in those links I provided.
As for whether doors do or don’t fly open in a crash: here again those links, especially the first two, seem to answer the question more truthfully than GM’s assurances.
I have gobs of respect for these. Their space (and fuel) efficiency was world class. The drive train was solid and effective. And it really worked best as the LeSabre as it seemed better screwed together than the Olds version. The Electra was appealing too. But it just didn’t work as a Cadillac, as they looked too severely shrunken, lacking the proper gravitas the brand needed.
This is quite the time capsule; sorry to see that nobody decided to rescue it.
I had an ’89 Ninety-Eight which my grandparents had bought new. I know that it was built in Wentzville, MO at the plant which still builds Express/Savana vans. I know that the Buicks and Oldsmobiles weren’t separated by division for assembly as the car they test drove (not the one bought) had a Buick badge instead of Olds on the inside of one of the rear doors.
It was a good but not perfect car, but I have no reason to think that anything other than perception differed in the quality of the assembly between them. Unless LeSabres and Eighty-Eights were separated, I don’t see how they’d be different.
In the ultimate Pre CC effect when I saw this car on another site yesterday and that it was located in a JY in Jim’s neck of the woods I immediately thought is that JY one of Jim’s haunts and if it is how long will it take before it shows up here, especially knowing Jim’s soft spots for Buicks of this era and whorehouse red interiors.
My buddy’s mom has one in the same color but slightly older. Unfortunately she drives a lot, when she is in her local home so it is far from the condition of this one with 3x the miles. I did a water pump on it a few weeks ago.
I was hoping to schedule it earlier in the week but the schedule was full…but yes, a self-cleaning red interior like this always gets a car on the shortlist!
You buddy’s mom’s car has a lot of miles left in it, perhaps one of GM’s greatest (unsung) hits?
Unfortunately I’m afraid her Buick won’t see a lot more miles. She is 92 and I doubt any of the family will want it. IF it looked like this one I’d probably take it but alas it is far from mint, so it will be sold as a cheap beater to someone who is probably just looking for the cheapest car they can find and they will likely treat it as disposable.
Like watching a puppy get euthanized.
Excellent find. Glad you documented it. I suspect it was garaged for years. I look for small telltale signs like UV damage making taillight lens start to fade, and lose that ‘brand new plastic’ appearance. And/or the tops of rear seats. These look nearly new.
I think I’ve been to that particular junk yard and as I recall they have a few cars lined up at the entrance being sold complete, not being parted out. Since that low-mile Buick isn’t there may indicate that it has some sort of serious mechanical problem.
It has the lid off the master cylinder, which automatically means it’d need to go.
Having had more or less the same car, I’d say there’s some chance the speedometer doesn’t work (it died on my car, though the odometer continued working properly) or some other aged electrical weirdness. I’ll also say that the 440T4 in my car needed extensive work twice within the 200k miles that the car was in my family.
We had the Olds 88 version and that car was pretty darn well put together. Smooth, quiet, quality and reliability.
A very nice article Jim. I appreciate this one. And boy do I agree about those luggage racks. I’ve never liked them from the factory and liked them less when added at the dealership.
Like many others have said, I find this car a little out of place where you found it. It looks way too nice to be there. Maybe I missed it in your article, but do we know why it ended up there?
You can almost feel the static from that velour!
That interior, low mileage, the clear demand from an adulating public – any clues why it’s in the yard?
I was just thinking, are there ANY modern vehicles with a forward hinged hood? Corvette used to have it but the C8 switch ended that. That was such a unique touch on a car like this, and with modern cars(I consider anything with sequential EFI modern) with the most need to have the hood up being changing fluids it doesn’t even pose much of an inconvenience.
What a shame, I too like these the most of the H bodies, especially the coupes, and especially the T type like yours, these across the board seemed like they justified GM GM’s otherwise tumultuous downsizing/FWD transition. These did everything the change promised without giving up identity(which modern Buicks suck at, and not just because I don’t like crossovers, the badge engineered Opel sedans and that short lived convertible included). And preach on the Plastiwood! to me its all about execution and if its glossy it doesn’t really matter much if its synthetic or actual wood veneer anyway.
See? I too have tasted from the chalice of American PLC! 🙂
Here’s a LeSabre T-Type I found in Flint at a car show this year. I don’t have too much personal experience with these LeSabres, but a LOT of people drove them in Mid-Michigan, and one of my fondest memories was touring Buick City in ’87 or ’88 with my dad. What a great time! It wasn’t the sanitized factory tour of today, but a full-fledged floor of the plant tour where LeSabres were being welded together on one end and driven off the line on the other. We got to see most of the process, at least if my 10-year-old viewpoint is to be trusted. GM’s closure of Buick City, especially considering it was such a highly-rated plant, is still a sore spot around here.
It’s a shame this one ended up in the junkyard, for whatever reason.
Interior picture of the car above…
That’s the same interior mine had except I had the black velour instead of leather. Very comfortable but even back then the design and material quality of the interior componentry was a little on the dated-feeling side. Now, 25-30 yrs later I can appreciate the interior more as a period piece.
A very comfortable and capable high speed cruiser though on my frequent 220 mile trips each way from SF to San Luis Obispo and back to visit the future wife…
Great feature, Jim. Another one of those cars that makes me ask “What are you doing here?”. Incredible condition. It looks like it just needs a wash (and a new grille) and it’s ready for your local Great Brougham Show. I can only think there’s something majorly wrong in the engine or transmission department. Surely there must be an American somewhere to love this car?
“This trunk is marred by the most useless accessory ever,…”
– Think of it as a chrome spoiler. If a Buick of this era has to have a spoiler, surely it would be chrome. With little strips of shininess leading up to it to grab the attention of the passing air molecules and say “Hey, you! This way!”. See – not really a trunk rack at all. 🙂
I liked the Pontiac Bonneville version of this car best. More tasteful and up-to-date styling in and out, tauter handling, but with all the H-body goodness.
My family owned three of them, then my dad’s ’89 SE got stolen and he replaced it with a ’93 Park Avenue Ultra with the supercharger. Not as tight in handling, but boy, did it go! My mom cracked that up, so they went with a 2000 Chrysler 300M and that was still going when he passed on a year and a half ago.
One brother owned an ’87 Bonneville, my other brother had an ’87 Electra and a ’93 LeSabre. I do like the next-gen Buicks over these because they looked sleeker and yes, a little more Buick in character. But I also like the Saab hood of this generation. Peter Egan of Road & Track also had an Electra of this vintage, and mentioned it frequently in his columns.
Given all that, I would take this car right off the yard. Now it is possible that the tranny failed and was given up on, so some kind of test drive would be necessary, but consider anything minor that might go wrong with these cars can be fixed very cheaply. And the only things that ever did were the ignition coils and front wheel bearings. They did tend to eat front brake pads, too.
Unlike, I might add, things on European cars like switches, relays, plastic parts and other goofy and expensive stuff that you don’t even think about on other cars.
These were excellent cars.
They were very comfortable, smooth driving, and well built. Much space and great visibility.
It was my kind of modern, with clean, angular, functional lines. I respected the Taurus, but didnt care for that lozenge-shaped futuristic look.
Just a good mix of the old and new. Fuel-injection, auto-tensioned serpentine belt, decent stereo, and forward-opening hood combined with red velour seats, fake wood and large chrome door handles with the big thumb-button.
Just nice and as a bonus it was American.
I don’t like the luggage carrier thingy, but nothing is perfect.
I was 21 when the Taurus debuted and was a big fan, after over five years of anticiption from reading the car magazines, but in retrospect the H bodies were the ideal family cars of that time. Too bad GM didn’t give Chevrolet an H body and saved the $7 billion spent on the W body
Kind of sad to see such a nice car, despite it’s age, go before it really has to go. Kind of like putting down one’s dog because of age. Unless there was something catastrophic this car was worth keeping alive especially at those low miles.
Love those wheels. Much nicer than the fake wires on my ’86. Had similar grille damage, covered it up with a badge mounted on a tire patch. Looked great. Someone should buy this car thinking it would need serious mechanical work and then know they’d wind up with a stunning beauty. Mine had issues with the brakes. Master cylinder, front calipers, hoses. Ignition switch had an occasional intermittent (stumped the dealer) and then finally threw the timing chain. Have a parts car. Thing is on these FWDs for a lot of jobs you’ll want a lift. That means $$$.
Looks like those tires have those old GM O/E style treads from the last century. Haven’t seen tires like that in a very long time.
My 1998 Mercedes-Benz C230 was destined to end up like this had I not purchased it.
Back in early 2020, my service manager at the MB dealership where I was working approached me, and asked me if I was interested. Claimed it had 40k miles. I already had an identical make, model, and year, only mine was black, the ‘new’ one is silver. Just finished getting mine dialed in, with 233k miles, and no intentions of getting rid of it. My response was, “Damn it, now I *have* to go look at it.”
It was seven miles away in an affluent subdivision, the elderly owner went into assisted living, an attorney that lived up the road was handling the sale of the house, and it was basically in the way. A buddy and I went there with some tools and a new battery. Car doesn’t have 40k miles, has 30k miles. Started and ran. Attorney said first offer over $500 gets it. I bid $600.
Pumped up three of the flat tires, had to mount the spare on the fourth. Interior was quite dirty, mold on a lot of the surfaces, drove back to the shop with all of the windows down, wearing a face mask (this was pre-peak pandemic, mind you.)
Put around $2000 in new tires, fluids, rubber parts, and miscellaneous items to make it driveable. Transferred my stereo from the old vehicle to new, sold the black one to a coworker. Today, has 50,600 miles.
On another note, last weekend I saw a 1983 Buick Electra (Park Avenue?) that would compare well with this. It is that early 80’s tan exterior, dark brown vinyl top and velour interior. Exterior a little worse for wear, but the interior was in about the same condition as this LeSabre. Would have loved the opportunity to pick this car up instead of having it end up in the yard. Anyone remember the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics brand specific window stickers?
I have a 1995 Buick LeSabre I want to sell it if you’re interested let me know my number is 562-712-7887 I live in the city of bellflower
I would purchase that car if they sold cars at the wrecking yard
1989 Buick LeSabre Ltd; True Mileage 58 K; Always garaged, and runs like the day it was bought new. Hubs show some minor damage, plan to refinish those this Fall. Have many more pics but can only upload one it seems. Top speed was amazing: I chickened out on the German Autobahn before it did… :-))
1989 Buick LeSabre Custom, same color outside, but with a buckskin interior. It was my wife’s Grandmothers car for the first 90,000 miles. We acquired it from her when my Daughter turned sixteen. She drove it all through high school, you know all those weekend nights with a kid hanging out of every window. At the beginning of her second year of college, she walked in one day, pitched me the keys and said “thanks Dad, but I just bought a new (used) car”. It has been our spare ever since, doesn’t look so good anymore, with the dents in every corner, but it never leaves you stranded. I’m actually in the shop today putting a fuel pump in it. The original finally quit after 133,000. It still rides better than my wifes Hyundai. I love the sound of that V6.