We’re rapidly approaching the end of Convertible Season here in the Bay Area. Just about a year ago, I profiled a Mercury Monterey Convertible and now, to commemorate the end of this year’s ragtop ragtime jazz, here’s the brand you (and I) would really rather have.
I’m going to lead off by saying it’s a heart-crushing shame that Buick–one of the few bright spots in the today’s U.S. automotive marketplace–doesn’t offer a halo model, a role frequently filled in the past by one of their many glorious convertibles. Few other American cars can evoke such a subtly powerful image as a Big Buick Convertible in the collective memory.
Maybe it was that unique color pallette. Or the quiet presence and massive size of most of them. Or that more often than not there was a Buick Convertible, from Special to Roadmaster, for every pocket and purpose, priced just slightly above the low-priced three. No matter how ridiculous other Buicks might become, you could always count on the convertibles to maintain their remarkable charm.
Of all the ridiculous Buick convertibles, the 1958 models are the elusive unicorns, which, unlike their Oldsmobile cousins, never returned from Buick Brigadoon. The reason is unclear, but might have to do with the fact that so many toasted their Triple Turbine Dynaflows.
In contrast, no surviving 1959 seems to be able to stay in the closet. There’s one at a nearby body shop awaiting its day in the sun (or more likely, its air conditioned garage). Most people point to the 1959 Cadillac as representing the zeitgeist of the 1950s, but these bold Buicks have a special place in my heart.
With that in mind, you can imagine my bemused smile upon encountering this handsome, bulked up 1960 LeSabre convertible. Something about being the most basic 1960 Buick Convertible actually does it a lot of favors. I find that the softening of all of the diagonal finnage, unburdened by all the extra trim on the costlier Invicta and Electra/Electra 225, simply works better than on the upscale models.
Although its interior lacks the beautiful fabrics of the closed models, or the genuine leather of the more expensive Buick ragtops, the most basic ’60 Buick leaves nothing to complain about in terms of fit and finish. One of its most delightful details is the Mirrormagic gauge cluster whose mirror allowed adjustment of the instrument cluster to your desired height.
The Triple Turbine Drive Dynaflow was gone by 1960, but still present were a lot of other Buick goodies. To power the boulevard ride that for decades had been Buick’s calling card, LeSabre buyers could choose their smaller, 364 cube version of the Nailhead V8 in various states of tune, from a gas-saving 235 hp version (perhaps too sleepy to push the 4,300 lb beast), to one that delivered a healthy 300 horsepower.
A LeSabre with the 300 hp engine probably wouldn’t have been too much sleepier than an Invicta, which could dash to 60 in under nine seconds. And with such ample power masking the slow, syrupy tendencies of the last iteration of the Dynaflow concept, a Buick was no longer a shrinking violet versus the Olds Super Eighty Eight or the Pontiac Catalina. In fact, it could confidently dust any Mercury Monterey of that year.
Underneath was possibly the second most-solid chassis in GM’s arsenal, now stiffened with a K-Brace like all ’60 Buicks, and aluminum brake drums that offered improved fade protection over the previous drums. While not the true future of braking, they gave this fighting face a bit more protection against overrunning the capabilities of the rest of the package.
But as we all know, the true spirit of any Buick is not to tackle a road-racing course; indeed, before the 1963 Riviera came along, the central intention of any Buick was for the driver to drive with one left finger on the power-assisted wheel and a right arm draped across the front bench seat…hopefully, around the attractive person sitting next to them, all at extralegal speeds on ever-expanding interstate highways.
Unfortunately, the dawn of the 1960s would prove sobering. A seemingly nonstop bevy of Big Three compacts shifted the market’s focus toward practicality. At the same time, Volkswagen was increasing its foothold in the United States, and the first wave of Japanese Toyopets came crashing into the L.A. Basin. One effect of all this was to push Buick all the way down to ninth place in the industry, with fewer than 254,000 units sold–their worst sales performance since 1905.
By 1962, the Buick renaissance was well underway, and it was cars like this brave, bold bargain beauty that had paved its way. Through some seriously dark days they carried forth the message, of quiet confidence and bodacious size enhanced abundantly with high quality, would always be the Buick trademark.
Dare I say it: We could use a little bit of the Camelot-era charisma this Buick oozes. So whaddya say, General Motors? We want to believe again.
Don Draper’s car, 1st season. Enexplicably traded for a 1961 Dodge sedan later.
I agree with you and Alex. Someone in props made a bad call on the Dodge. In 1960-61, Buicks were for successful salesmen. Mopars were for engineers with crewcuts and pocket protectors.
Actually in the season 1 pilot, he had a 1959 Olds sedan.
Also, in about the 3rd episode, there is a scene of him pulling away from his home escaping his kids birthday party. It powers away with no shift of any kind,just a stream of engine sound, for you young-uns who’ve never heard one.
> no shift of any kind, just a stream of engine sound
Amen.
Make that a Buick straight-8 with Dynaflow, as God intended.
They gave him the Dodge so he could crash it, I’m sure. It was the perfect setup for the Caddy he eventually bought. But every autophile out there wondered why the heck he would have traded his Buick for that much more boring Dodge.
“Mad Men” skipped past 1961 to the 2nd season set in ’62. So maybe Don had another accident/DUI, and in those days people just got slapped on the wrist.
Exactly Jim… I saw it that way. His rewarding his behavior with a Cadillac was a classic Man Men Statement.
I agree – that trade made no sense at all. And the Dodge was a lowly Dart Seneca sedan – not even a top-of-the-line Polara hardtop, which still would have been out of character for Don Draper.
I Just saw Leave It To Beaver on… a 61 Dodge sedan – Man Yelled At Beaver… Mr. Cleaver Drivin a 4 Door Sport? Fury Top Of The Line 4 door. nice driveway shot lingering. Must Have been taped for the fall 1960 TV Season .
Certainly Helped Chrysler To keep their cars in our view if not in our neighborhoods. I Wonder How Many Cars Got Them Exposure that grand.
Didn’t Chrysler supply the cars for the Mr. Ed show too?
Not Chrysler, Studebaker. There are some “Mr. Ed”/Studebaker commercials on Youtube.
Challenger got it.
I always though the same, they were going to wreck an old car, but didn’t want to spend big bucks wrecking a nice convertible, so in comes the Dodge. When I first saw Don driving the Dodge in the show I coudn’t understand it, “I thought, maybe it’s a company car?” but no, it was his. Perhaps in the unseen 1961 year Sterling Cooper courted Dodge as a client and Don bought one or got one for free?
Don did drive a 1959 Oldsmobile in the pilot, and has since graduated to a grey with red interior 1965 Coupe de Ville in season 5.
I thought he wrecked a Buick at some point (with the wife of the comedian who was endorsing UTZ potato chips), and there was an interim car that made way for the first Caddy he bought. (Someone consult the Mad Men wiki!)
Matthew Weiner seldom puts anything in the plot or production design that doesn’t have a point, so the car choices can’t be an accident (so to speak).
I never understood why Don went from one of these (it was an Invicta hardtop, no?) to the Polara. Thankfully, he later stepped up his game and bought a Cadillac. I’m told the car action gets better, but I’ve only watched to the end of season 2.
It was a LeSabre convert.
In season 3 IIRC, he visits Cali and rents a stunning ’64 Imperial convertible.
Need to watch that episode. The ’64 Imperial two-doors (hardtops and convertibles both) are high up on my list of lust objects.
Theres some serious Jag action this season when the agency courts Jaguar Cars NA and Pete Cambell drives a Buick Wildcat…a sedan.
…And perhaps the darkest unreliable-Jag joke ever, featuring Lane Pryce.
Yes, so wrong, but so right.
Yes never thought I could laugh at someone trying to off himself.
Very nice writeup on an absolutely delicious car. With the possible exception of the 1960 Pontiac, he 1960 Buick is my very favorite of GM’s 1959-60 generation. This car manages at once to be both voluptuous and clean. Ever the sucker for a red interior, this color combo is perfect for the car.
One of my favorite useless features is the speedometer that reflects into the mirror that can be adjusted for viewing angle. I believe that this feature went away after 1961, and I do not believe that it was ever used on any other car.
I believe that 1960 also marked the first use of the now-famous Buick tri-shield emblem. This has to go down as one of the most iconic emblems ever, and one of the best to come out of its era. Hats off to GM for not messing with it over the years.
Was the reflecting speedometer an early attempt by GM at a “heads up display” like they introduced in the 90s?
Not that elaborate. It simply reflected onto a mirror that pivoted up and down so that it could adjust for visibility of tall or short drivers. Driver stares at the mirror, with a thumbwheel on one end. The actual speedo was backwards and faced the cowl. Strange, and not really that useful.
Interesting. Never heard of this feature until now, but I have seen the speedometer that had the color display that would change as the speed increased.
The current Prius speedometer is reflected by a mirror, non-adjustable, which has normally-invisible indicators embedded in it. They call it the “Touch Tracer Display”. Just touching a steering wheel button lights up the indicators to show you which button you’re touching, so your eyes stay closer to the road.
In fact I didn’t realize it’s done with a mirror until a card on the dash slipped across and covered up the speedo.
wonderful car and great pics to match ! I’ve once saw a green 1959 hardtop 4-door at a big car show here in Italy, one of the most amazing cars I’ve ever seen, maybe I like the softer ’60 even better, mainly for the front end
What a beautiful car. Nothing made today can compare. The other day, as I was sitting at a stop light in my 78 Eldo, a new white CTS-V coupe pulled up along side. (500 hp or something like that) I really was not impressed with $ 65,000+ car. Aside from the fact that the CTS was new and valuable, I’d rather have my old car.
Same with the Buick. I’d rather have the 60 rather than any new one. America needs a bit of Camelot again.
Agreed. The CTS does nothing for me. Zero panache.
While I prefer the 1959 Buick with its canted headlights, I certainly wouldn’t kick this 1960 out of my garage!
Cruisin’ season is pretty much over here, although I saw some nice cars driving around last weekend. Our summer cars are put away. All the local car shows are done, and now it’s fall swapmeet season.
Funny how so many of the comments so far on this topic are about Mad Men. One of these days, I need to pick this series up on DVD and watch it.
Agreed on all three points.
For me it comes down to the roofline. Certain rooflines (notably the 4 window “Vista” flat roof hardtop roof) work better on the ’59, while others, notably the convertible, work better as the ’60. The “Vista” roof notably doesn’t go as well with the chunkier 1960 lower body.
Also of odd note, is that the Buick was the only one to really girth up for the reskin. The Pontiac pretty much had the same visual weight, but the rest of the GM cars pointed closer to what came later than before (Especially the Oldsmobile). But out of all the 1959-60 GM cars I have to give the tip of the hat to the 1959 Oldsmobiles, with their overgrown Corvair looks….
Well done, Laurence. If they bring out a Camelot-esque “halo” Buick, you should coach the Draper wanna-bes tasked with writing the ad copy.
The feature car is great, but something about the California sun on that butter-yellow ’48…the “Monkey King” fades from the background, and we’re cruising the boulevard under the palms…forgive me, it’s a dull gray day here in the rust belt.
That car bring me back, our neighbor had a brand new burgundy Electra 225
convertible. He had a nice car and nice house with a stay at home wife. to raise the kids.
Occupation: Milkman
Great article! The photos do a great job of showing where a fair amount of the money went in 1960 – the headlights, grille and taillights of this car boast more styling details than entire modern cars.
In 1960, Buick was still reeling from a combination of the serious quality problems with its 1955-56 cars and the bottom dropping out of the medium-price market during the 1958 recession. Its amazing that a company that had knocked Plymouth out of third place for 1954 was now hanging on for dear life in ninth place just six years later.
From what I’ve read, these cars were real gas guzzlers. I remember reading a story of someone who bought one of these convertibles brand new, and attempted to trade it within a year because the gas mileage made his commute too expensive. He tried to trade it for a 1961 Buick Special, but owed more on the 1960 Buick than it was worth (apparently, high depreciation and being upside-down on a loan aren’t purely a 21st century phenomenon). He parked the Buick in his garage and drove it rarely….which resulted in a very clean, all-original collectible car about 40 years later.
Great read. Since I don’t seem to have time to write properly anymore, I’m mighty glad to be able to enjoy others’ fine writing.
The front end of the ’60 is fascinating, because it clearly predicts the ’61-’62 front ends, except for the upturned eyebrows. The work on all the GM 60′s must have been challenging, knowing that they were stylistic dead ends. Or at least I assume they knew that.
I’ve read a number of interviews with Bill Mitchell and Chuck Jordan in which they acknowledged that they realized even at the time that the ’59s were a bridge too far and made a conscious effort to start backing off almost immediately.
Perhaps the most telling detail (though not from those interviews) is that some Cadillac stylists wanted to completely ditch the fins on the 1960 Eldorado Brougham (whose greenhouse already presaged the ’61-’63 cars) as a prelude to eliminating them across the line. That obviously didn’t happen, but it was considered.
I’m cruising through too quickly to look it up, but weren’t the 1959 GM cars developed during a designers’ strike, so staff ranks were depleted? If my memory is correct, perhaps “bridge too far” has a bureaucratic side to it, i.e., such expressive designs would not normally see the light of day at GM.
Another factor was how the market had evolved between 1957, when Chrysler’s forward look threw GM into a panic, and 1959. By the end of the decade it was clear that the public was shifting to more practical cars. A metaphor for the times was how the 1959 Ford outsold Chevy. While that was partly because of a strike, it also arguably reflected Ford’s more mainstream design approach.
One might even go as far as arguing that what really finished off the sci-fi look was the 1961 Continental. Its remarkably clean lines made the Cadillac and Imperial look ridiculously excessive.
“the central intention of any Buick was for the driver to drive with one left finger on the power-assisted wheel and a right arm draped across the front bench seat…hopefully, around the attractive person sitting next to them, all at extralegal speeds on ever-expanding interstate highways.”
Amen, brother.
I always liked the way Chevrolet Models handled the styling segway of 1959.1960.1961 mOdels .
Love the 59 Look more than the 60 Buick, then the 61 Was TOO Reeled in… Why Did Taillight look like a Cherry Ludens Cough lozenge on its ribbed side ? and 62s were like a silver plated butter dish…. sleepy lids… good cars iirc. almost a cadillac, just without inherent status, or baggage of such.
Still Id Take any Conv In CA in the Fall. Finally clear air returns to LA. Temperatures that don’t swell past 100.
“the central intention of any Buick was for the driver to drive with one left finger on the power-assisted wheel and a right arm draped across the front bench seat…hopefully, around the attractive person sitting next to them, all at extralegal speeds on ever-expanding interstate highways.”
Anytime I think of that situation, my mind plays the song “IGY” from Donald Fagen’s 1981 “The Nightfly” album…
Exactly! Donald Fagen nailed it.
Those wires weren’t optional equipment, were they? I’m usually not a fan of after-market stuff, but those wheels look fantastic on that car!
I know they were available on earlier big Buicks, through ’55 or ’56 or so. And the center hubs say “Buick” in the mid 1950s font. So I would say they were from an older Buick, but they add a bit of dash to this LeSabre.
I know you’re in the Bay Area – are the pictures at Oakland’s Jack London Square, by chance?
Yup. There was a miniature show there this past weekend. Most of the cars were pretty familiar, but there was this Buick that I hadn’t seen before.
I much prefer the 1960 Buicks to their ’59 counterparts. The canted headlamps of the ’59 are dramatic, but I find the 1960 treatment more elegant, even if it busier. The surface development on the later car’s sides seem to lighten the overall effect as well. All in all, it is the handsomest Buick of the postwar era to that point.
Behind the wheel of the red ’59, is that Thelma or Louise? I think it’s Louise.
The vent window is definitely not a 1959 or even 1960 GM model, which still had the wraparound windshield.
Given the triangular vent window and convertible top down, the car probably is the signature 1966 or 1965 T-Bird that T & L are driving through most of the film.
Yes, Laurence, they do need a halo Buick. After reading this piece I saw a new Jaguar XK this morning and it struck me as very much what a halo Buick should be. It even has some Buick in its styling to my eye, especially up front. Why couldn’t they build a car like this on the Corvette platform?
Hell, I’d settle for a chopped down LaCrosse. Call it a Skylark and offer it as an alternative to the CTS Coupe. It’s not too hard. Just don’t expect more than 10,000 to be sold a year though….
BMW just reported sales of 237,056 in China in the first 9 months of 2012. Jaguar Land Rover sales in China are about to overtake US sales. GM sells more Buicks in China than in the USA. A Buick halo car that was truly comparable to BMW or Jaguar in performance and quality could go after a piece of that luxury coupe market.
GM trademarked “Riviera” for cars again this year. (Trademark law is ‘use it or lose it’.) Some think they could be developing a sports coupe on the new Cadillac ATS platform. They did a Riviera concept in ’07.
(end of TTAC mode)
A really interesting and beautiful car, I,too, much prefer the toned-down ’60 to the spaceship ’59. Used to see a lot of these in L.A. back when I was growing up. Nicely done writeup, Laurence.
There is a really excellent website about the 1960 Buick which you guys may know about, http://www.the1960Buick.com, which features the owner’s white with red interior LeSabre convertible. Lots of facts and figures and trivia. He mentions the ultimate 1960 Buick movie, “The Facts of LIfe,” starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball. I saw it in recent times on TCM, it’s a lot of fun. Features a LeSabre convertible and an Electra 225 Riviera sedan. Also a cameo of Bob Hope’s personal Electra convertible, about which there is also an interesting story. The website is a fascinating read.
Summer of ’62 I was hitch-hiking to the Worlds Fair, when outside of Denver I was picked up in a light blue, white top, ’60 LeSabre convertible. It was driven by a friendly young guy and a cute blonde was seated beside him. The next thing I knew the speedometer was indicating 100. The road to Cheyenne was almost all two lane at the time but traffic was light and he kept that speed up almost continuously until we arrived at a motel in Cheyenne. At some point he told me that they just been married, and he was in a hurry to get to the motel. it was a very nice car.
I completely fail to understand why so many people want to put wire wheels on 1950′s and 1960′s cars. They’re heavy, fragile, and a pain in the rear to keep clean, and they don’t go with the styles of the time. This is particularly true for the 1960 Buick, which had the best-looking stock wheel covers of any 1960 car.
Maybe Buick will at least get a variant of the new Opel/Vauxhall Cascada soon.
Hey, nice! Could be.
The 1960 Lesarbe Convertible is The Car of the 60,s great lines and finish and motor to match, a quiet achiever, we have one and just love it with the top down driving around Down Under in OZ