Mine was the same, except I had rallye wheels
With the Jetta gone from memory, I spent the summer riding around on my Yamaha XJ750RL, which was an excellent sport-tour bike. However, I was still in the car business, so we were always looking around for cars to convert into taxis. This was never very hard at this time (circa 1988) since I was in Victoria, British Columbia, home of the Newlywed and Nearly Dead. Victoria is at the end of Vancouver Island, so cars tend to get very little driving. The climate is very mild and the number of salt on road days was almost none per year. Thus, there was a really big supply of great sleds around, most notably B body GM stuff.
People who have seen my posts may think I beat on poor GM too much, but I really only beat them where they deserve it (see my earlier love song to the B-Body here). The B body was, in my opinion, emblematic of what GM really did best: big, front engine, V-8, rear wheel drive cars with three speed automatics. They were, for the most part, very durable cars, especially in the upmarket iterations like Oldsmobile and Buick. People are very funny when it comes to gasoline prices. At this time, gas in Victoria ran at something like $0.45 a litre and people were ditching their sleds all over the place for more economical stuff, like those fine vehicles such as the Tempo and Celebrity. The old sleds were heads and above better cars, drove well, had nice power and loads of room. If you had one and it was paid for, you’d be a fool to sell it.
When a car is paid for and runs well, there is absolutely no economic argument for paying for a new car to “save on gas.” Unless you are driving something outrageously heavy on fuel, you’ll never get back what you put into a new car. Anyway, it was absurd to trade off a nice B body that got 15 mpg for a Celebrity at 22 mpg, especially when gas was $0.45 a litre. You’d never make it back, your Celebrity would blow up and GM would lose a customer. It is a much repeated story but good for anyone looking for good cabs on the cheap. A clean Impala from about 1978 could be had for $1000 in 1985 and run three years as a cab, easy. They were so cheap it wasn’t worth doing much to them so when an engine went, we simply sold the car for scrap.
On morning at Mom and Dad’s place, while drinking copious amounts of coffee and contributing to the blue haze of cigarette smoke, I spied an ad for a 1978 Buick LeSabre Custom. The ad said one owner, no accidents and 72,000 km. The price was $4500 which was top dollar; however my experience in buying used cars is go for the best one you can find and pay top dollar if it is worth it. I called the number and made an appointment to see the car.
I arrived in a nice neighbourhood to meet a very nice man in his early 80s. He was sharp, witty and very well dressed. Unfortunately he had been diagnosed with advanced glaucoma and could no longer drive. He then showed me the car: it was flawless, and I mean absolutely perfect. It had every factory option except sunroof, which he correctly said were prone to leaks in GM cars. It even had rallye wheels. The interior was white vinyl, with 60/40 seats. It had the big GM AM/FM cassette that never broke no matter how old they were. The engine was a Buick 350 and the transmission was a Turbo 350. It even had the original window sticker, showing a 3.08 axle and heavy duty suspension. The owner was proud of his factory order, and justifiably so.
All the specs, mine was 350/3.08 rear end
Well, this gentleman may have been elderly but he was not about to let me slash the price. I got him down to $4200 and that was as far as he would go. This was not cheap for a ten year old car but I reasoned that it was worth it because of the condition. The deal was done and I took the car to the shop and put it up in the air. The car was perfect, not even a bad ball joint. The brakes were all new and the body impeccable; it shone like the stars, it was so well waxed by its first owner. Even better was how it drove; it was like new.
This is a Turbo, but mine had the red dash
This was the era of torque; smooth, velveteen torque, just a rush of pull right off the line. No electronics to get in the way, no shuddering lock-up torque converter, just a big V-8 and tons ‘o torque. The power train was really excellent; the Buick motor didn’t have the top end of a nice, Canadian spec Chevy 350 but the around town torque was way better. It was really the end of an era; these cars had no electronics and by this time GM had the emission control thing quite under control. The 350 was whisper quiet and pulled like a train off of idle. In the city I doubt it would ever go over 1000 rpm. Around town they were good for about 15 miles per Imperial gallon and driven reasonably they could do 23 on the highway. Even today this is not all that bad for a car of this size. I had planned to turn it into a taxi but I decided to keep it and drive it for a while.
Really wasn’t a Buick after they stopped making this motor
The first thing we did was convert it to LPG. We did it ourselves, and we did loads of them. The stock tank was replaced by three cylinders in tandem, with a usable capacity of 110 L. We re-curved the distributor and cut out the catcon and the car ran even better, and used LPG that cost $0.235 a litre. Now I had a big car that cost peanuts to run. Actually, it cost nothing to run because we had our own LPG filling station, to which I would sneak up at night and fill ‘er up!
The car then went on a road trip to eastern Canada, where we used a guide book to find the LPG stations on the way. Top end was typical B body; it really wasn’t comfortable above 120 km/h but it would hold that on cruise control up the steepest grades in British Columbia, such was the prodigious torque of that Buick V-8. I remember going through Alberta at like 35’C (95 degrees Fahrenheit for you non-metric folks) with the air ice cold, listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall on what was the best car stereo I had experienced up to that time (it would still be considered quite good today). We drove all the way to the family ancestral village of Venosta, Quebec on that trip, almost 5,000 km each way, and that Buick never missed a beat.
The further east we went, the more people raved about it. Clean, ten year old cars, didn’t exist in the Manitoba of 1988. The really great part was the huge trunk easily swallowed all of our camping gear. On that trip, more than 10,000 km, the car averaged 11 litres per 100 km, not bad considering it was LPG, I was driving at 120 km/h (or a little more) and had the a/c blasting the whole time. No overdrive, either.
In my opinion, LPG is better than gasoline
When we got back to Victoria, fall had fallen so I needed a car for winter so I kept the Buick. Everybody who rode in it just raved about the experience. The dash, for example, was just so well finished and the big clock in front of the passenger was just so cool. The Buick was supremely comfortable and handled surprisingly well for such a large car. The HD suspension was really good and the car was so sure footed and pleasant to drive. Since it was such a beautiful car, I had to start talking myself out of it. Even today it would be an excellent driver, especially on LPG, which locally costs less than half of gasoline even now. With absolutely zippola for electronics, chokes, fast idles or even a catcon, these things were about as reliable as bricks and would last as long as Methuselah. A million km was easy on such a car on LPG and never once did I see a bottom end failure on a B body on LPG.
Lots of two doors left, not many four doors.
You see, this is my perennial problem; I can’t stand automotive success. The Buick would have lasted me ten years easily, since in Victoria you really don’t drive a lot, maybe 10,000 km a year. The Buick was the Ultimate Sled in many ways and actually cost less on fuel than my Jetta. Spring came and, well, it was motorcycle time again, so I went looking and found a nice rider for summer, as I had sold the XJ750RL at the end of the previous season to avoid tires and service on it. Lo and behold, I found a mint Seca 650 with, get this, only 6,000 km on it. Of course I had to have it; a taxi needed to be retired and the Buick went off to the paint shop. I didn’t bat an eye at the time, correctly reasoning that there were plenty of sleds around for the next winter.
Although it doesn’t look like much, a great bike
I was partly correct on that one, except I never found a sled as a good as the Buick ever again. The 1977-1979 B bodies were by far the best examples they ever made, but by 1988 there weren’t that many around. Many went to demo derbies, popular at the time, and mostly we found 1980 and on models. By 1993 or so the writing was definitely on the wall for B bodies, we simply couldn’t find really good ones anymore. They were good cars in the Oldsmobile version but the Buick V-8 was gone, taking all the reason away for having a LeSabre. Thus, the Buick was the one what got away. I still kick myself for giving it up, but that is the folly of youth. I hope I learned something from that one, but I really have not, since I still to this day talk myself out of excellent cars.
This car actually sticks out in my mind as one of the worst cars my family has ever had. In the late 80s, my dad took ownership of his mom’s ’78 LeSabre, a skin-tone, fake-vinyl-top abomination with rust everywhere, missing pieces from the grill, leaky windows, missing upholstery on the benches, and an orchestra of squeaks and rattles. It generally “ran,” but would leave you stranded in the rain when it absolutely refused to turn over. None of the buttons worked. Everything in the dashboard was broken. It was the car that ruined Buick for me at a young age: I will simply NEVER consider owning one unless paid to. What an utter piece of complete garbage that thing was. It was a used car from an era where “used” meant “awful” preceded by a string of creative expletives.
I was actually hoping for someone to write about this particular year of this particular car because ours at ten years old was an absolute POS. I am completely amazed at how well yours turned out to be at ten, and makes me wonder how many outliers there were on both ends of the spectrum. Also, my dad followed up that ’78 POS with an early-80s Delta 88 wagon and a few years later with an ’85 Caprice Classic wagon (which were both fairly decent vehicles) before seeing the light and purchasing a used ’90 Accord that showed him how embarrassing those old b-bodies were.
It is too bad your family got a bad Buick but as you way, in your case, “used meant awful.” There is the issue of buying used cars. If you are very careful you can get a good one. I know because I have had many excellent used cars and I have never really had a bad one. On the other hand, I have and a couple of bad new cars!
Oh, I absolutely know that “used” no longer means “awful”, and have had a couple of winners myself. I think that buying a used car today no longer requires many of the sacrifices it once did. I bought an ’03 Impreza (itself rapidly approaching 10 years old) late last year and it is simply fabulous: all the buttons work, it starts and runs perfectly every day, the A/C blows strong (important here in Japan), and it has no squeaks or rattles to speak of. The ’02 Outback I drove briefly back in the States a couple years ago appeared to be a well-maintained winner, too (and had circumstances been different I am certain I’d be driving it for years to come). I actually do not anticipate ever buying a brand new car, but I do buy the occasional lottery ticket, so you never know.
On a related side note, I love reading about cars on this website because it gives me a view of things far different from what I’ve come to believe. This write up (write-up? writeup?) on the ’78 LeSabre is a perfect example. It never would have occurred to me that these were great vehicles without it. In fact, the same generation of Caprice being declare a “GM’s Greatest Hit” struck me as a surprise, too, but I no longer consider them to be whale-sized detritus from the awful ’80s. I’ll go take a look from now and see what other people have said and gain some more perspective!
Japanese cars are really durable and a good ten year old one is not hard to find, especially in Japan, where the Shaken inspection system keeps them right up to snuff. Must have been very cheap in Japan, too, where used cars are not very sought after.
Whereabouts in Japan are you? I spent several years there myself.
I’m currently in Izu and my car was especially cheap, considering what you would pay for a similar version in the US, ringing up about about JPY380,000. I’ve been here for more than a year now, and before that spent two and a half depressing, car-less years in Saitama and a few months in Osaka before that. Osaka was really fun, but with kids, we’re not excited to move back there. Izu is very beautiful, but it gets quite crowded on holidays and weekends. We’re gonna be here for a while longer it seems. Where did you spend your time here? How did you like it?
I don’t believe your story is a fair assessment of a Buick of this vintage as it sounds the car you Dad received was beat to crap, abused and poorly maintained. My experience with Buicks (’85 LeSabre Olds Powered and a ’78 Skylark 231 V-6) were excellent.
My grandparents owned an almost identical ’78 with the 350 (Buick engine I assume). I remember riding around Clemson, SC as a kid with my under 5 feet tall grandma driving and my legally blind grandfather up front riding shotgun. My grandmother scared the sh!t out of everyone who had the misfortune of riding with her. And I can personally vouch for the torque of the 350 as she would always seem to punch the accelerator from a stop and then back off suddenly as she realized she gave it too much. Then she would step on the gas again and let off, with these repeated oscillations giving me and everyone else whiplash and making us car sick. That poor car! She would “park” it by slowly pulling into a space and stopping when she bumped into something, while trying her best to peer over the dash while sitting on pillows. If my driving skills ever deteriorate to that point, somebody please shoot me! Anyway, after about 8 years of abuse, they put that Buick out of it’s misery and bought a Lincoln Town Car (of course).
I recall in 1979, a local Buick dealer advertising new LeSabres for $ 9,995. I visited the dealer one day and looked at a gray 2 door with a maroon corduroy interior, nicely equiped with A/C, etc. I wasn’t really interested in the car, however.
A year later I test drove a new 80 Cadillac Coupe Deville. It was advertised as a price leader. It was a true Cadillac, but lacked a vinyl roof and had very cheap hubcaps. Negotiations ended up at a no trade drive out price of $ 12,004. The salesman told me that prices were going to double in a few years. Of course, I didn’t believe him and didn’t buy the car. Prices did go through the roof after that. A few weeks later I bought a 1966 Cadillac Deville convertible for $ 2,000. It always seemed to need frequent repair. I kept that car for four years selling it for what I paid for it. That Caddy was the one car I should have kept.
Why I sold that car I’ll never know. Bought a mint white 75 Eldorado Coupe with 33K a year or so later for $ 3,000. (elderly owned) Since then I’ve always owned a Cadillac of some sort.
Sounds like a nice old sled. I agree that Buick wasn’t really Buick once thier excellent V-8 went away. I had not realized you could get them in this generation of B-body, all the Buicks I remember seeing had Pontiac or Olds engines in them.
From the mid ’80s to mid ’90s I did lots of LPG conversions, mostly on GM and Ford pickups. In northeastern BC where I lived at the time LPG would sometimes be sold for less than 0.10 per litre if the producers had a surplus they didn’t want to ship or store.
Once you did a few it wasn’t a difficult conversion and at the time not that expensive. The only problem I remember was getting the oxides of nitrate emission level down to an acceptable level, which required severe leaning. The EFI equipped Fords in particular didn’t like this and would backfire in a spectacular fashion on startup if you leaned just a little too far. Eventually the governments plan to extend emissions testing outside the lower mainland went away and we set them up to run properly.
Today everbody seems to think diesel is the only way to go in a work truck (mistake, but…) and I don’t remember the last big city cab I saw that wasn’t a Prius, but I still think LPG is worth developing further.
We found a few things about LPG in those days. First, it was hard to do on EFI vehicles, to the point it really wasn’t worth it. Second it was hard to do well on Fords, since they always produced too much NOx emissions and leaning them caused them to be gutless. The GM stuff had lower combustion temperatures so the NOx was not a problem. Solution: don’t convert Fords to LPG.
I agree on diesel for trucks, waste of money.
The Prius is the best taxi vehicle I have ever seen, ideal for an urban setting, good room, comfortable, reliable as a rock and very cheap to run.
Lots of LPG cars out here, and has been for at least 25 years. I’ve driven a couple of straight LPG Fords and 11L/100 is pretty good from the LeSabre! Haven’t yet had a chance to try one of the new liquid-phase injection models though, but they make more power than on petrol!
Most taxis here are LPG Fords, but up in Queensland you are more likely to find Prius’ as LPG is not as popular & more expensive there. In a 6 year run a taxi would typically see 500k+ miles and often on the original engine & trans.
I can relate to the continuous car swapping, but its something I’ve managed not to do as I owned my first car for 10 years, albeit it was my daily driver for only 3 or 4 of those. I had some pretty interesting near misses (purchases) in that time but stayed sensible. It was easy once I got company cars & had classics to play with – they don’t count right?
Nice story, nice car, I wish one like that had been my first car instead of a first year of production A-body Celebrity.
A great story and a great car. I also had not realized that the Buick V8 was still around by then. Every LeSabre I recall seeing around that time had that miserable rough-running V6. It may have been good for Jeeps, but a V6 LeSabre was slooooooow.
Your habits from that era mirror my own. For awhile, every 6 months would find me falling in love with a new car, so that I had to buy it and dump whatever I had. I ditched two of them that I should not have. The 67 Galaxie 500 convertible that I had sunk a lot of money and time into and was stunningly beautiful for a 12 year old car in a northern climate, and the 68 Mustang that was also very nice looking. Either one of those cars would have been keepers. Oh well, youth.
The one thing I really loved about that generation of Buick was the dash. The silver-faced dials and the big round clock on the passenger side reminded me of those elegant symmetrical dashes of the 1940s.
Everyone I ever knew with one of that generation of B body had a good experience with it. Also, those cars were remarkably rust-resistant even in salt country. It sounds like the only way yours could possibly have been better is if the old guy would have sprung for the big Electra! Oh well.
The Buick V-8 was gone after MY1978. After that, Olds 307, Chevy 305’s/350’s and the Pontiac 301 (not in California and Pontiac V-8’s didn’t survive very long into the 1980s anyway).
Well Len, I have never owned a B booty but i can see why you did. I have come close many times to getting one and enjoyed my friend’s Catalina. But somehow, even after your write up, I just could not force myself into a giant sofa of the road.
Good point, Micheal, although in the past I loved B bodies and still have a strong emotional attachment, they are still really old cars. The driving dynamics are nowhere near my Acura TL and I am not going to go back to one!
That said, if I had a place to park a nice B Body, a 1977-79, I would buy one for the weekends.
I bought a used ’79 Caprice for my wife. First thing I did was slap on a set of Koni shocks, big, fat Quickor sway bars front and rear, and topped it off with a 13″ Momo leather steering wheel. The thing was actually fun to drive after that.
There were loads of aftermarket parts for these cars and they were so simple, it was easy to bolt them on. Adding 50hp to a Chevy 350 was absurdly easy; new cam and dual exhaust were all it took.
I’ve been looking for a car with the Buick 4.1L to add another piece to my informal “own every iteration of the Buick v6 you can” collection.
They are pretty thin on the ground though.
The 4.1 didn’t last long and was just as much of a dog as the 3.8 at the time was at the time. These cars were designed for V-8 motors and I really don’t enjoy driving one that doesn’t have a nice, torquey V-8.
I have no delusions of speed, reliability, or greatness when it comes to the 4.1L but I still would like to have one.
Wasn’t this engine available in the mid 80’s RWD Regal a year or two? If so, a 2-door or even 4-door Regal Limited would be a nice wrapper for the 4.1L engine.
AFAIK, the 4.1L was offered on certain B-bodies and G-bodies as an “upgrade” over the 3.8L, as the standard engine on the Ninety Eight and Electra, and as a credit option on the Cadillacs/Riv/and Toro.
The only one I’ve seen in person was in a Toronado, but that was back in 2005.
Agreed. The 4.1 V-6 seemed like a “stopgap” – with four-barrel carb. Only ones I saw in the flesh were on a few 1981 and 1982 Cadillacs. Those I believe were “N/A in CA.”
Dad had a ’78 (I think, I never drove this one) LeSabre wagon with the diesel. Which ran perfectly, thank you very much. And gave very good gas mileage. And started everytime, and never rattled, and quite frankly was exactly the kind of car that most auto blogs would have you thinking GM was incapable of building at the time.
Admittedly, he only kept it two years – hearing the reports about the diesels, he got a case of cold feet and traded it in on something else.
Skye, have a look at the spec sheet I posted on my piece here. No diesels were available in 1978, I think that was in 1980.
The 1978 Buick Park Avenue I had was the dealerships show car. I think it had every option but a sun roof. Other than the leaky rear end that was easily repaired, never had a problem with it. Point it to where you wanted to go and it delivered you to it in silence and comfort. Other than my current 08 STS it was the best GM car I have owned
The family car from 1982 to 1991 was a ’77 LeSabre Custom, bought when I was 11. Brown with cream vinyl top. Super nice car, actually, even with the Pontiac 301. Still had plenty of torque to chirp the tires from a standing start. I got my driver’s license in that car. Only problem with it was its aluminum brakes – we kept having problems with them overheating and going out of round.
Car was still running perfectly, if getting a little rusty, when my brother totaled it. Too bad.
I’ve recounted numerous times about my wife’s Olds Delta 88 Holiday Coupe on this blog, but you are right. If you get the top end options on a GM car, it’s worth the money.
Upon seeing that dash photo, I had forgotten about a girlfriend in HS who’s grandmother had a then-new (1978) silver LeSabre Turbo. It had a gray or silver interior with the same wood grain panels and the huge clock on the passenger side. The clock was memorable all by itself, as I thought it to be a throwback to cars of previous decades. We’d sneak her grandmother’s car out while she was resting and do things that curious teenagers do (the grandmother had terminal cancer at that time, we were awful children, yes, I know). Leave it at that.
I really remember that steering wheel, as it felt just right. It was the right diameter, the right thickness and had the right input when aiming the car. The V6 shook a bit, but when the boost came on, wow. I don’t know if it was the times, or the fact that I like boost, but I’ve remained a fan of turbos for all of these years.
Like others, I’d wish to have back our Holiday Coupe, though. The 403 provided tons of endless torque, we had posi and the FE3 (or F41, I can’t remember) so the beast could take corners far better than ever imagined. On the freeway we got an honest 23 MPG at 1980’s freeway speeds (which is to say a lot of 55 MPH driving) and there was plenty of room for us to do whatever we needed to do with the car. I traded it in on POS Mercury Capri
Ahhh, youth…
I have only driven one Turbo Coupe, with the 4bbl engine. It was really gutless until the turbo spooled up. At like 1500 rpm something would start happen and t that at about 2500, wow-wee! The problems was that there was no hole-shotability (?) on them at all. The Turbo wasn’t worth the bother in my opinion as it used even more (and premium) gas then the 350 did if you gunned it a fair bit, which you need to if you were going to get any performance out of it.
I still hold the same opinion about turbo gas engines, diesels are good for turbos.
An Olds would be FE3 and the Holiday 88 with 403 was about as good as a B body got. However, my experience with the 403 is it was not much better than the 350 and used loads more fuel, so no worth it.
All this time later, I don’t recall a great deal about that car anymore. However, I did own (11 years) a Dodge Lancer ES Turbo, from which I got good service. The motor had a bit of a lag, but once on boost, watch out!
I’d be curious to drive one of the newer turbo cars, particularly a turbo Cruze Eco. I’ve driven the regular 1.8L car and found it to be adequate. I’d like to think the turbo 1.4 would be a little more lively than the 1.8, especially the version with the 6 speed stick. I understand the newer motors have less lag than the old ones, but I’d like to be the judge of that myself.
The other turbo car I want to drive is the Buick Regal, as I think that 2.0 is a beast. Maybe I can con my old Pontiac sales guy into letting me try one…
Oddly enough my daily driver is the Cruze Eco 6 speed. The lag isn’t too bad, and quite honestly, it has great low end torque. Unless you are in a real hurry you never really have to downshift to accelerate, just ride the wave of torque available from abouty 1800 rpm on up.
My parents just purchased a Regal T with the 2.0. Its a fun drive. It has absolutely nothing off the line, but once you get it moving it is actually pretty quick and has just about zero turbo lag with the dual scroll turbo. They traded a Northstar Bonneville in on it, my mother loves the Regal, my father misses the off the line torque and sound of the Bonneville’s quad exhaust tips.
I suggest trying to get a drive in the Regal GS. with and extra 50 hp over the Regal T I think that is the ride to try out to see if the 2.0 is the berries or not.
I recall a triple blue 78 LeSabre Sport Coupe in our church parking lot as a kid, it was triple blue with freaking bucket seats, cornering lamps and lamp monitors, we had a 79 LeSabre Limited coupe and I felt jelaous, true our LeSab only had the little Pontiac 301, it did serve us well for like 12 years, we put close to 225K on it with 2 transmissions, it still didn’t look to bad but the “cordory” type cloth interior was fairly thrashed.
LeSabres were popular on our block, there were about 7 of them, one family had 2 sedans, a 77 and a 78, a plain one and a really plain one. This was one of the first cars I learned to identify years by their very slight changes from a 77-78-79 when I was a kid.
Hmmm…
To me the ultimate B-body coupe would be a nice 77 Bonneville Brougham with the Pontiac 400, loaded with Rally Gauges and the swank valencia cloth.
I’ve never seen a bucket/console LeSabre before — WOW. I was beginning to doubt their existence despite the fact that the owner’s manuals I have for these cars state this was an option.
Regarding the Pontiac…mine would have to have the bucket seats/console. Not sure if you could order those in the Brougham or not though. My eyes about popped out when in one of my pointless car-scouting drives I spotted a ’77-9 Bonneville in an Alabama front yard with buckets, console, & factory sunroof (Astroroof?)
I’ve seen one Valencia-equipped car & they are very cool.
The problem with the bucket and console option is that it does not come out until 1979, by then you couldn’t get the 400 in a Bonneville anymore.
Console were rare, being a car geek even as a kid, I remember flipping through our LeSabres owners manual and seing the picture of the console and wishing our Limited had it.
So you had a Holiday…cool! The first one I ever saw was in an Alabama junkyard. It had a power sunroof and a 403. It then became a mission to own one…I ended up stealing a quite-nice ’78 Holiday 88 at the Birmingham Salvation Army used car lot for $350.
This was a clean, running & driving car with ice cold A/C. I was in heaven & could not believe I finally owned one…for next to nothing. It was white with padded blue vinyl roof (yuck) and crumbling light blue interior. Power windows, locks, tilt, cruise, clock, U58 stereo, Super Stock rims were its options.
Too bad it was just a 350/350 car and it didn’t have the gauge package while having that awful top (which caused the roof to rust underneath). The car was super smooth & quiet so I never tested its handling capabilities. Since the top rust was only going to get worse, I sold it to an Oldsmobuddy thankfully who knew what it was.
He then sold it to another Oldsmobuddy who frequents the Olds forums so thankfully the car lives on.
FE3 for Oldsmobile; F41 for Chevy products. RTS (Radial Tuned Suspension) for Pontiac, and GS (Gran Sport) for Buick.
Dave C, I remember going with my dad to see an advertised Cadillac Coupe deVille in either 1977 or 1978. I forget the price, maybe $9995?? I recall it had no vinyl roof, plain jane hubcaps, and no tilt/telespopic wheel. Dad ended up with a loaded 78 Olds Ninety Eight Regency, it was as I recall $10,400 with everything except sunroof. I thought we were the richest folks on the block!
I remember that newspaper ad. Like you said, 77 or 78. Probably 77, because prices started to soar after that. It was advertised for $ 8,995 in the Pittsburgh area. I wish I’d have bought one of them, cause I’d probably still have it. Would have worshipped it.
Every so often, I see a two tone blue Coupe Deville for sale in my town (couple of years), an 80 or 81. I never really looked at it, but it looks good except for looking pretty cheap. Caddys of that era just don’t look good without the vinyl roof and wire caps.
The guy must want a high price for the car, either that or he really doesn’t want to sell it and only puts a for sale sign to see what someone might offer.
I remember being stationed in Tidewater, Va. in the early/mid eighties, and looked at a 1984 Coupe de Ville at the Noroflk Caddy dealer. About $14K, had the basic stainless steel wheel covers, without vinyl top (which I liked because it accentuated the ‘crease’ in the ‘c’ pillar); very few options. I was doing the math in my head to see if I could afford payments on it (I could’ve), but got cold feet and cancelled out of it. Car was a metaillic light blue with a slightly darker hue velour interior. Car was sold shortly afterwards. Now in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t do the deal as 1984 Caddies had the now-as-I-know God awful, POS 4.1 V-8. Years later I ended up with a nice (but slight paint faded) 1985 Buick LeSabre Collector’s Edition. Olds 307 – had the rallye wheels. Sold it in 1994 in Honolulu where it ended up as a (you guessed it) taxicab.
Len–
Love the series! How about a BOAL (bikes of a lifetime) edition?
That is definitely in the works at a later date!
I can’t wait to read it. Inspire me, and I might do the same. I’m 40 and have only owned 4 cars, but 9 bikes. The bikes would make better reading for sure.
PS: I’m practically a motorcycling Canucknucklehead myself…grew up a Nodak. Not always easy to squeeze in a respectable amount of riding in the short warm weather window, is it?
Being a huge car clock collector, it’s really nice to see several of you commenting on how nice the big silver passenger’s side clock was. It really stood out, didn’t it? This is one of the reasons I prefer the ’77-’79 models over the later ones (the speedo/gauge/clock faces went black in 1980).
Buick also offered a “digital clock” in these cars..mounted in the same location as the analog unit. Few were so-equipped probably because they were so ugly. The clock was an off-the-shelf rolling dial clock that GM offered in the ’75-’76 big Buicks (& various other cars). The bezel was round with a rectangular cut-out in it for the readout — it had a sort of a “square peg in the round hole” thing going on. The silver plating on the center of the bezel was not covered with a lens so it deteriorated over time & looked really cheap-n-bad.
Len, as for your car, what color was the outside? I love white interior in anything but the white interior in these LeSabres was particularly nice. I slightly prefer the taillights of the ’77-8 to the ’79 but I like all three years better than the ’80-’84 models.
The Buick 350 is a torquey litle sucker — I bet it was ideal for urban usage. I’m a 455 type of guy but the 350 Buick will suprise the unknowing.
It reminds me of a drive in my best friend’s ’70 LeSabre Custom Convertible (she still has it). I was driving it one day in a residential area — we had the top down of course and this punk in a Mustang GT convertible was right on our bumper, blipping his accelerator as if he could intimidate us out of his way.
We were doing about 35mph in a 30mph zone & he finally decides to pass us in a no passing zone. I immediately floor it without regard that this was not my car & the owner was sitting beside me. The Buick lept forward & poor Mr. Mustang had to stay in it hard to get around us. I knew he was faster but he barely did squeak by as he just about ran out of road. I was amazed how strong that 2-barrel 350 was in that car.
Her quote was, “ha-ha, we made him work for it, didn’t we?” which made it one of my favorite car experiences.
Okay, one more.. Sorry for the spamming..but I was wondering what the deal was with the Buick Road Wheels and the green car in the above shot. Notice it has the “Buick Road Wheel” wheelcovers?
Buick made 15″ wheelcovers that mimic the actual Road Wheels. They do a very good job at it & I imagine the tooling to make up the covers was not cheap. Could this have been a dealer-installed option or something? Does anyone know? I’ve always wondered about that.
They were factory, I kick myself for not snagging a nice set that was on a junkyard Century coupe about a year ago in the U-pick yard.
Yeah LPG is good but if used to power some engines ( the Vortec, some Chrysler`s V6`s, the Northstar) may cause damage to a header especially to cam seats.
Always loved the coupe version.
I sure miss seeing these on the road. As much as I enjoyed my 1995 LeSabre, the old B’s were just really great cars for what they were.
Part of me kind of wishes I could have a 1985 Collector’s Edition, now THAT would be Brougham-tastic!!! 🙂
My family had a ’72 Estate Wagon which was getting long in the tooth in 1980, when a coworker of my Mom’s mentioned that her husband was was about to sell their 1977 (first of the downsized) Estate Wagon for $2,500. He traveled a lot for work so it had about 70,000mi, but all highway.
My parents’ bought the car, had to replace a wheel bearing seal and put on a set of tires (incredible Goodyear “Double Eagle” kevlar belted radials, Goodyear’s top of the line passenger car tires) and proceeded to drive the car for 5 years as their primary car until they got their ’86 Maxima wagon. It had a 350, but it was an Oldsmobile 350 and it gave use another 100,000mi of problem free driving. My Dad was real glad not to have Buick engine, with the problems he had had with the 455 in the ’72.
My brother drove the Estate Wagon for a few more years, adding “color back” to the heavily oxidized paint trying to keep the car looking dark brown.
I remember vividly how fun it was to drive compared to the ’72. With it’s F-41 “handling” suspension and those great radial tires, it handled like a sports car. Our family got a lot of use out of it.
i just bought a ’78 lesabre 3.8lt turbo it is in showroom shape with only 131000kms on it!im lovin it drives nice not a thing wrong with it!
:'( Sniff
Reading this makes me tearful for my ’85 B- Body LeSabre 2 door. Everything you said here could have been my experience circa 2004. Pretty much a portal back in time as mine was a 53k mile car with the original window sticker and ice-cold AC.
Dead nuts reliable car for an 18 year kid from CT. Started every morning with nothing more than a tap on the gas pedal and a bump of the key.
It was my first car and in my mind, the last of the truly great GM cars. In comparison, my mom’s 2002 Buick that she drove right around the time I bought my LeSabre was likened to a grenade on wheels; which pretty much sums up everything GM made after 1990.
I just moved the LeSabre (yes I still have it) to a new location until i can get it back on the road. Unfortunately for me nowadays time is money, so it will be a while before the LeSabre hits the road again.
Interesting to see this sites. Here in Europe and in Finland back 1978 people were driving Datsun (Cherry), Toyota Corollas, European Ford Taunus cars and Ladas (russian car), few had a Saab 99, or Volvo 242, but American cars…? Only Dodge Aspen was popular, few Caprices.
I have had Chevy II, Caminos, Caprices, (now ’66 Mercury and ’87 stw Electra and old Mercedes besides this) and during years the raw horsepower and light weight of the car have been changing to noise absorbtion and some other things. So I searched exactly ’77 – ’79 LeSabre Coupe this time.
It weights lots less, than any “boattail”-Riviera or any MK IV Lincoln or such, and the noise level is less than for example of XJS Jaguar, or Mercedes 450SLC of the ’70’s and the performance for 3600 lbs car with 350-400 cid engine – one can live with it, I thought!
But almost did not found any during few months search. So finding an example of 29’000 miles driven LeSabre coupe and imported from Pennsylvania to Nehterlands was quite a surprise!
I did not exept a lot interest for the car, but just bought it to myself, but even there are now tens, hundreds of Mustangs, Challengers and Camaros and other such stuff in Finland in normal car happenings, the LeSabre coupe has got some very positive attention and of course I am happy about that.
Driving German Autobahn at some 80 mph speed was not a problem at all , but I really always have enjoyed the German traffic and this was a very good car, even with “slow” 350 engine. I am going to convert it later to 403 with some performance parts, or maybe not. Not sure yet. Here in Finland they really do give you the highest speeding tickets in the world and having some comoftable feelgood-car is the way to try to live with the matter.
Only the suspension will be some “F41” later and the Buick 5 spoke wheels there will be too.
The cars pictured are actually 77’s…and many of the loaded LeSabres were equipped with the Oldsmobile 403, which in my opinion, was better than the Buick 350..
2016 – A divorced middle-aged British Soldier raised on a diet of 70’s and 80’s American road movies and TV shows such as Knightrider arrives in Canada on orders for 7 months.
The remoteness of the Albertan base demanded transportation in order to keep your sanity and save you from ‘Base-fever’.
Most of the rest of the Squaddies opted for the ubiquitous ‘BATUS-Banger’, a poor, abused mini-van handed off to generations of temporarily assigned Soldiers with no intention of looking after them.
Not this Guy…. I wanted some classic iron, something you couldn’t get in the UK. I scoured the personal ads and Lo…. A gold brown 1978 Buick LeSabre in excellent condition.
A quick visit and test drive and I was sold!
This thing was a real head Turner, not only on a base full of Brit Squaddies, but around town too.
Compared to the UK, Gas was cheap, I was getting paid in Pound sterling, the exchange rate was excellent and so I cruised as often as work allowed.
6 full grown Blokes fitted comfortably inside, and I dare say I could’ve fitted 2 in the capacious trunk. This car was the thing of my boyhood dreams and I loved every minute of the 7 months I owned it.
It never missed a beat, and was a pleasure to own and drive. The guys raved about it, and the ones I lent it too were as enamoured as I was.
I even researched how I could get it back to the UK, and believe me, if I’d had somewhere to store it back here, I would’ve brought it home.
I sold it at the end of my time in Canada, and thanks to the complexities of currency exchange rates, I only lost 50 Dollars on the deal. Excellent value for 7 months of trouble free motoring.
I would have dearly loved to have kept her, but sadly, it wasn’t to be.