In 1938, Buick unveiled the Y-Job, a one off Harley Earl custom, which foreshadowed Buick’s post war styling. The Y-Job was built on a stretched Buick chassis, but only provided two seats in an enormous convertible body. It also featured unique luxury touches such as hideaway headlights, power windows and a powered convertible top. Considered the first concept car in the modern idiom, the Y-Job pushed the envelope in every way.
Just over two decades later, Buick released a new Y-Job, their version of the GM Y-Body. The Y-body was GM’s first swing at the compact market, with variations offered by four GM divisions: Chevy Corvair, Pontiac Tempest, Oldsmobile F-85, and Buick Special. Unlike the Y-Job, this Y-body represented an entry level model, priced to pull in a Chevy or Ford buyer looking for a more prestigious nameplate, or for Buick buyers looking for something smaller than the big cars.
If the Y-Job represented the original Dream Car, this particular Y-body represented the original plain Jane sedan, at least on the outside. All of the y-Bodies were quite innovative; Chevy’s Corvair came with an air-cooled pancake six with a rear engine layout; Pontiac chopped a V-8 into a four cylinder, and connected it to a rear transaxle driven by a flexible driveshaft, and swing-axle independent rear suspension. Oldsmobile mostly just came along for the ride, using the Buick aluminum V8 with a few minor changes, but it did offer a “Jetfire” turbocharged version of it.
Buick developed no less than two innovative new engines for the Special. The 1961 aluminum 215 cubic inch (3.5 L) V8 was unprecedented in a mass-production car. And for 1962, Buick created a cast-iron V6 engine, using the V8’s basic architecture. The V8 turned out to be a bit too innovative, inasmuch as issues with its cooling system made it somewhat problematic, and it was soon sold off to Rover in Great Britain after only three years of use. But the V6 went on to have one of the longest lives ever, evolving over the decades into the 3.8 and 3800 series of GM engines.
Americans had not been exposed to a compact V6 engine before, and these early ones ran a bit rough due to their uneven firing. The Buick V6 was also sold off, in 1967, to Kaiser Jeep, which built it for use in their Jeeps. In 1973, when GM was again desperate for smaller engines, the V6 line was bought back, and the rest is history. But it all started with the 1962 Special.
This little Buick is a very special Special, a time capsule taking us back to 1962. I was fortunate to catch this side shot, since most parking spaces here are full throughout the day. As you can see, this Special DeLuxe is very original, right down to the full wheel covers on each corner. Although some might consider this a plain looking car, for the time it’s quite fancy, featuring chrome side trim, bright window trim, and reverse lights tucked under the rear bumper, unlike the base Special. Since this is the DeLuxe model, it’s packing the standard 155 hp aluminum 215 Cubic inch V-8, and not the Fireball “odd-fire” V-6, which came only on the base Special.
Even though this DeLuxe has the V8, the V6 engine, the first in a modern American car, represents a significant achievement: Motor Trend magazine’s Car of the Year for 1962. Okay, that may be open to debate, but remarkably, this was the third year in a row that the Y-body won COTY- the Corvair received it in it’s first year (1960), and since other Y-bodies came out a year later, all that new technology in the Pontiac Tempest gave it the ’61 award. In 1962, the Buick Special was no longer a “new” model, but the new V-6 engine gave it a second swing at the prize, and it gathered up a third trophy for the GM trifecta.
I don’t know anything about the owner of this car, but I picture them sliding onto that lumpy blanket covering the seat, firing up that sweet little aluminum Buick V8, and as their elbow slides down the door panel searching for the missing arm rest, consoling themselves with this simple thought- “She might not be all that sexy today, but back in ’62 she was the car of the year!”
A much deeper look at the Special: Curbside Classic: 1962 Buick Special – A Truly Special Buick
A historical look at the Corvair: Automotive History: How The 1960 Corvair Started A Global Design Revolution
How Pontiac Tempest came to be: Curbside Classic: 1963 Pontiac Tempest LeMans – Pontiac Tries To Build A BMW Before BMW Built Theirs, And Almost Succeeds
Last, but not least: Repair Shop Classic: 1962 Oldsmobile F-85 Cutlass Club Coupe – I’ll Try Anything
I’ve always found the 1962 and 63 Buick Special and Skylark attractive.
Perhaps someone in CCLand can clear this up. Was the Corvair always considered the Z-body or just the ’65-’69s? I was always under the impression that the ’61 compacts (Y-body) were only loosely based on the Corvair (Z-body).
Strictly speaking, the 1960-1969 Corvairs were all called Z-Body. But the actual body shells of the Y-Bodies and Corvair were deeply interrelated. The Y-Bodies were longer, stretched at the rear. But key aspects of the basic body inner structure, and more, in some cases, were fully shared. It was a way to amortize the considerable investment GM made in developing these unibodies, their first ones in the US.
According to my Buick history book the BOP compacts were updated (or re-engineered) bodies based on the Corvair’s. They did use the same tooling. The big difference is rear engine vs front engine (with bigger engines).
When GM started with body designations in the 1930s, they lettered each of the bodies they used for their car lines (all “standard-sized” in those days) from A through D, smallest to largest. The A-body was dropped in the late 1950s when the increasing size of the lower-end fullsize cars that were built off of it made any distinction between the A- and B-body unnecessary.
When GM began building compacts in the early ’60s, they worked backwards from the end of the alphabet. The Corvair was the Z-body, the B-O-P senior compacts the Y-body, and the Chevy II the X-body.
When GM introduced intermediates in 1964, they revived the A-body designation for them. The intermediates were similar in size to the A-bodies of a decade or so earlier, and would be the smallest car built by the three B-O-P divisions, so there was some logic to calling them A-bodies.
For about a decade after the early ’60s, as new designs were introduced, they followed along after D:
E-body: fullsize personal luxury coupes. I don’t know if the E-body designation was used from the time the Riviera was introduced in 1963, or if it was only added when the Toronado and Eldorado came along in 1966-67.
F-body: 1967 ponycars. Camaro and Firebird.
G-body: 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix. The Grand Prix was closely related to the A-body, and would eventually be folded into the A-body designation. I’m not sure how long it kept the G-body designation, or if the 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo (similar in concept to the Grand Prix, but even more closely related to the mainstream A-bodies than the Grand Prix was) was considered to be a G-body as well. By the time of the 1973 restyle both were definitely considered to be variations of the A-body (“A-specials”). When a new FWD A-body was introduced in 1982, the G-body designation was revived for those RWD ex-A-bodies remaining in production, so the Grand Prix got to be a G-body once again.
H-body: 1971 subcompacts. Vega, etc.
After that, the system breaks down, and new letter designations seem to be assigned at random.
One thing I am unclear on: did the pre-1984 Corvette ever have a letter designation, or was it treated as a special case that existed outside the letter system?
It’s really amazing that GM put such huge effort in bringing out so much innovation in such a short period. Especially in a segment that they felt was not a big profit center. Well,these were marketed as premium compacts with fancy interior and trim. Maybe GM was just flexing their engineering muscle which they could afford to do at the time. Look at all that tortured drawn metal work, can you imagine something like that today? And to top it off, Ford brings out the hum drum Falcon and sets sales records! No wonder GM became so conservative in the later 60s. My Dad bought a couple year old Corvair Greenbrier passenger van which we took on vacation to Mexico city. A little underpowered in the mountains but it handled the trip pretty good. In the 70s my Dad bought a 64 Corvair Monza coupe with floor shifted 4 speed and bucket seats. It was in great shape and a lot of fun to drive, sounded great too. One of my uncles bought an old ramp side truck. Those things were really easy to load. I guess the public was a little more open minded than I thought.
The problem was that the Volkswagen and other compact cars were becoming a significant percentage of the market.
It’s always important when talking about this era to draw a line between “GM” and the specific division or divisions. The divisions had a lot more autonomy during this era; the corporation held the purse strings, sometimes pushed for specific collaborations (which didn’t always work out), and had shared bodies corporate engineering projects the divisions could essentially tap into, but the individual divisions were closer to being distinct, rival companies than they later became.
With the Y-bodies, the corporation actually wanted them to be a lot more similar than they ended up because some senior people were already getting uneasy about how much the divisional autonomy was costing. That didn’t actually work out so much because other than the aluminum V-8 and the Y-body shell, the BOP compacts ended up being quite different, including three totally unrelated automatic transmissions! After these cars debuted, corporate management started tightening the screws more, although the divisions still had their own engines and engineering projects until the Roger Smith reorganization.
That’s a good theory on how the Y-body ended up so different between the divisions being the primary impetus on GM corporate clamping down on autonomy, starting with the Vega (GM’s first ‘corporate’ car) and ultimately culminating with Roger Smith’s cookie-cutter cars. I always thought it was retaliation against Delorean and his shenanigans on circumventing corporate policy to get the GTO into production, but that probably just cemented the deal. Of all the divisions, Pontiac, with the mavericks Knudson, Estes, and Delorean at the helm, likely drove the 14th floor executives nuts. In an ironic twist, Pontiac’s success at doing their own thing in the sixties was probably what would eventually bring them (and Oldsmobile, too, for that matter) down.
I suppose it makes sense. Did the divisions run GM, or did corporate? Frankly, though, if corporate had left well-enough alone and let the divisions keep their autonomy, maybe GM wouldn’t have went on their long downward spiral.
As far as wanting the Y bodies to be more similar than they ended up, didn’t GM give some consideration to making them all rear engined cars, basically restyled Corvairs? I recall having seen photos of some mockups of these and I think actual running prototypes in the case of the Pontiac which would have been called Polaris.
From past discussion here, the Polaris would have essentially been a restyled Corvair (Z-body, same chassis and rear engine layout), while Oldsmobile and Buick were always supposed to get the larger, mechanically different Y-bodies. IIRC, John DeLorean took a dislike to the Corvair and lobbied successfully for Pontiac to instead get a Y-body like Olds and Buick.
A lot of it had to do with corporate attitude. In the late 50’s when these cars were initially being designed, GM very much had an attitude of, “You want a compact car? We’ll give you a compact car!” With the expectations that a good run of superior American compact cars would drive the Volkswagens, Renaults, Austins, etc. back across the Atlantic in one fell swoop.
At which point, GM could get back to selling ‘proper’ automobiles. Large automobiles.
Except it didn’t happen. Starting with the Corvair (and Falcon and Valiant and Lark) the more marginal imports (Renault to an extent and definitely anybody smaller in the market) were staggered, some of the more marginal players (Borgward, etc.) collapsed . . . . but Volkswagen chugged along, Renault still managed to keep going, hurt more by their own rust-bucketness and quality failings than competition, and the small GM cars sold – but not in the numbers GM was hoping for.
Its amazing how quickly a company can lose enthusiasm for a product when it doesn’t kick ass completely in the marketplace. By 1964, all those imaginative ‘American compacts’ had become dull as dishwater intermediates and sold like hotcakes because they went back to the size of the mid-50’s American large car.
And we’re left with “why did they put in that kind of effort for such a short period of time?” 1. Because they could. 2. Because they thought they would sell better. 3. Because they got quickly disillusioned when it didn’t work out exactly like they had planned.
1960 was the beginning of the downfall of Detroit. The first year when the American Big 3 didn’t have everything work out exactly like they planned.
I think the big problem with the big three is that the market changed and the big three really did not have an understanding of what the market was any more.
In fairness to the Big Three, I don’t know that things worked out all that different from how they had planned. With the notable (admittedly very notable) exception of VW, all of the imports who had benefited from the 1958-60 import boom were either marginalized or left the market outright. By 1964, no import brand other than VW was selling any more than 25K cars in the U.S. Renault weathered the transition as well as anyone other than VW, and they went from over 100K in 1959 to 18K in 1964. Domestic market penetration in 1964 was probably over 90%. To the extent that the domestic compacts didn’t sell as well as planned, in particular the premium ones, that was because the economy finally snapped out of the 1958-61 recession, reducing demand for small cars. Later on, domestic intermediates and ponycars would also steal sales away from regular compacts. If you could go back in time to 1964 and ask a Big Three executive how well they had handled the import threat, while they’d probably use some choice words to tell you what they thought of Volkswagen, overall they’d probably tell you they were pretty satisfied with how things had worked out.
Of course, just as the recovering economy made the GM premium compacts unnecessary, it was also part of the reason why sales of imports fell. And many of the imports were also done in partly for the reason Syke noted for Renault, a reputation for poor quality, typically rust issues and/or just not holding up to the way Americans drove and maintained their cars. VW didn’t really have this issue, and that was part of the reason they succeeded. One could argue that the Big Three didn’t so much fight off the imports (except VW) as much as the problem just went away on its own, due to changing economic conditions and deep flaws in most of the (non-VW) imports. And if Volkswagen’s American success was an exception, it was a really big exception.
The next time small cars sales would be on the rise, starting in the late ’60s and continuing into the ’70s, the Big Three would be dealing with new breeds of competitors, Japanese brands on one hand and European premium brands on the other. Then, the 1973 energy crisis would change all the rules. This time wouldn’t turn out as well for the domestics as the battles of the late ’50s/early ’60s had. Arguably, nothing about the events of the early ’60s suggested that it would, despite the different result the previous time.
Joe says “Look at all that tortured drawn metal work, can you imagine something like that today? — why yes Joe , I can!
Jose: we have that tortured sheetmetal today: Hyundai Sonata, Accent, Elantra, Ford Focus and Fiesta. there are others but I’ve pretty much turned my eyes away from modern cars.
At least this Buick Special has proportion in it’s favor and a design cohesiveness that modern cars lack.
In a weird twist of fate, the radiator I used when I put a Buick 3.8l in my Vega came out of a 251-powered Tempest…
Oddly, 2-door Buick Specials had different rear styling than 4-door Buick Specials. Check out the wrap-around tail lights on the coupe shown below. And Skylark coupes had different roof lines than Special coupes. Not to mention the aluminum V8 and the cast iron V6. Buick sure offered a lot of variety in its small cars in 1961 and 1962!
A somewhat grittier example of a 2-door Special, but the photo has higher resolution!
Wow, that is really weird. I’ve noticed the headlights before, but the whole rear quarter panel is a different design from the sedan. There’s no side bulges meeting the taillights, the lower character line straightens out at the rear wheel arch, and the taillights themselves are rectangular, not pointed. I think the trunk deck is the same, but it could be flatter. Hard to tell from pictures and illustrations.
I checked out the Olds F-85 and Pontiac Tempest, and both coupes fully followed the sedan styling, so this isn’t the case of having to make due with a common body across divisions.
Why would Buick do this? Of course the rear quarters are unique stampings for all 2- and 4-door cars, so the investment (initial styling, design and production of the unique lights) would have been marginal.
But why would you make any investment to put different brand cues on your two most popular body styles? Like I said, weird.
I agree this car is attractive,Very attractive and modern looking for a 1962 car.The blend of straight and sculpted lines would hold up well against many European British and Asian designs from the late 60s but later models seem to have become larger and more conservative.This car looks like it could have been a winner if the engine had been better developed.Ironic that it took Rover/British Leyland to get the engine right.
I saw a ’62 Special station wagon south of Houston, Texas (near Galveston Bay) just last week. It looked to be in very good condition and had markings on the front door for some surf shop. I don’t know if they were for an actual establishment or just a nostalgic decoration. Ahhh, memories.
Wikipedia says the 215 was jettisoned because difficult-to-detect casting flaws, which caused high scrap rates; it says the cooling system issues were from use of the wrong antifreeze.
If so, then how did Rover solve it? And maybe Brits read their owner’s manuals. It seems like Buick gave up too soon, it would’ve been as useful during the Gas Crisis as the V6.
British Leyland’s only success. The succeeded where the biggest car company in the world couldn’t. They had to change the casting methods because they couldn’t match GM’s technology. I think they went to sand casting, but have to do a bit of research to job my memory.
Pity they couldn’t get too much else right.
I’ve read that GM wanted and tried to buy back or maybe license the 215 but Rover said no way.
I don’t think that was true — my impression was that Rover bought a manufacturing license for the design, but not sole rights.
(I don’t know what conditions GM may have imposed on that license, although John Thornley, former head of MG, said the often-repeated rumor that GM squelched plans to offer U.S.-market British Leyland sports cars with that engine was also untrue. He said the GM people he dealt with in the ’70s regarding the engine were continually surprised that British Leyland was still bothering with a design Buick had long since decided was more costly and troublesome than it was worth.)
In any case, Buick’s subsequent iron 300/340/350 V-8s were architectural derivatives of the 215 (as of course was the V-6). The 300 wasn’t horrendously heavy even in cast iron (it weighed about 65 pounds less than a Chevrolet 327/350), had more power and a lot more torque than the 215, and was a lot cheaper to make. They could have easily enough de-stroked the 300 if they needed smaller displacement, but 4.9 liters was still considered small for American V-8s into the ’70s.
Excuse me, it was Dan Wall of Rover who debunked the latter rumor, not John Thornley. Wall was the head of engine development in the ’70s.
Chrysler had an aluminum Slant-6 in the same time frame. Wiki says it was 80lb lighter than the iron one, but describes several durability issues.
I think the aluminum slant six (and the aluminum Rambler six offered around the same time) was just the block, not the block and head. Some more awake Mopar fan can probably set that straight.
Thanks for clarifying; in hindsight it seems hardly worth it to take the trouble to lighten an engine intended for low-margin, basic models.
The 215 had issues. Grandfather had a 61 Tempest with the engine, head gasket done while in warranty and soon it was out of warranty no matter what the dealership tried it still used coolent and had overheating problems until the day he got rid of it. He was told it had a cracked block and needed to replace the engine at his expense, he just drove it a while and then traded it in, may have been casting issues. He always used GM recommended factory everything.
There were significant casting issues with the 215, with a very high QC rejection rate.
Very attractive for a sedan, and the coupe looks even better. Much different from the style-less slab sided cars of today. I would say that car manufacturers need to start hiring stylists again, but considering what today’s idea of style seems to be, it might be truly terrifying to see what they came up with. We don’t need more Nissan Jukes and Cubes.
I dont know what Rover did but the Buick engine has a good reputation in the UK unlike the homegrown small V8 that Triumph had designed for the Stag.Maybe GM should have persevered with these cars and got them right.Later ones seem to have shied away from engineering innovation and looked much like their full sized cars.The 62 model looks better than a BMW and makes the FoMoco offerings especially the awful Edsel/Mercury Comet with its tacked on fins look really amateur.
When I see one of these, I automatically hear Marisa Tomei’s tutorial on the variations of the Y-body.
Dese Yoots haven’t held up very well, though. Around Spokane I see LOTS of early 60’s Chevy pickups carrying lawn mowers and ladders, and I see a fair number of early 60’s big GM cars with original-equipment drivers. Absolutely none of these ‘senior compacts’. Extinct.
Regarding the Y-body, Z-body, etc terminology … did anyone outside the industry know about that? I was pretty young, but a pretty serious car freak and could easily read entire issues of Road & Track, Car and Driver and Motor Trend at the magazine stand while my Mom shopped for groceries, and I first remember that being commonly used when the 2nd gen Camaro/Firebird F-body was in production. On the other hand, the technical feature of these cars – “rope” driveshaft and IRS, turbo, V6 and aluminum V8 were well-known even to us 3rd graders.
First car I restored, A 1962 Skylark Hardtop. 215 V* and brocade interior. Lousy 2 speed transmission. She really wanted that 3rd gear. I drifted away form Buick after her replacement a 1970 Skylark Custom hardtop emulated itself. After a number of Blue oval Products, mostly the Children of Wixom, I have come back to Buick and now possess in my fleet an inherited 91 LeSabre 4dr Sedan and an 87 LeSabre T-type coupe. Both possessed of the descendent of that cast iron V6, the 3800, and it is a fine dependable engine.
All these comments about the reliability of the 215 crack me up. We had a 62 Special wagon from 66 to 80 and the only thing it needed was u-joints. Just wonder how “inflated” some of these tales might have gotten from being passed around all these years by people who never actually owned one. I still think about the 62 Special convertible I saw at Broodmoor golf course a few years back, with factory 4 speed. If anybody would like see the pics, I could post them. Maybe the only one with a 4 speed you may ever see.
My uncle had a ’61 and I remember him (an engineer) commenting about cooling issues. His theory was that copper radiator and heater core were having issues with the aluminum alloy used in the heads and block. Once he switched to Prestone glycol antifreeze and distilled water, his cooling problems went away. Back then, cheap antifreeze was common and GM Assembly Division did not use 50/50 in cars destined for warm climates, like Los Angeles.
I always liked these small Buicks more than their relatives. Back then, I was hoping that my Grandmother would buy a new one and then pass it down to me, but she stuck with her ’55 Century (that Century would be quite a catch now, but back then it was just another old car to me). Later, in high school, around 1969, a friend’s Grandmother had a ’62 Special Deluxe like in the brochure pic. White with a lipstick red interior, I loved that car too, but it caught fire in the engine compartment when parked one day and was totaled. Replaced by a totally bland beige ’68 slant six Valiant – a good car but no match for the Buick.