This shot of a 1963 Buick Special in repose reminds me that we have never addressed the mystery that I see in its styling. We’ve had a CC on a ’63 Skylark, but it did not address it.
The mystery is: since the ’63 Special/Skylark had a major restyle, with completely new front and rear ends, why did they choose to make it look so much like the out-going 1962 big Buick?
And not make it look like the refreshed ’63 big Buick, whose front end looks and feels quite different? There’s no logical explanation, eh? Especially since the ’61 Special/Skylark had such decidedly similar-looking front ends, with the same bladed fenders and all.
Oddly enough, although the ’63 Special/Skylark’s front end harkened back to 1962, its new rear end in ’63 (top) predicted the ’64 Special/Skylark’s rear end, and had no similarity to the big Buicks.
A bit odd, eh?
As to its greenhouse, the four door sedan with its six-window style was looking more than a bit out of date. Yes, the big C-Bodies still offered that style, but the movement away from that was very strong, and it hadn’t been offered on the LeSabre/Invicta since 1960. Compared to cars like the ’62 Fairlane and such, it looks years older. In fact, it looks all-too much like a 1962 Electra (bottom), except that the actual greenhouse on the Special looks even older, due to the curvature of the C-Pillar and rear side window.
Why didn’t the 1961 B-O-P compacts get a sedan version of the much more forward-looking 1961 B-Body four-door hardtops?
Or at least share the “flying wing” sedan roof as used on the ’61 LeSabre and of course the ’60 Corvair?
We shall never know. But coming out with a state-of-the art new compact in 1961 wearing a roof style from the late ’50s seems odd, as does the ’62 style front end on the restyled ’63.
Buick often played the Janus role at GM, looking forward and backward at the same time. In the ’30s Buick was slow to pick up the rather clumsy B body with filled-in top, then fast to blend in the front fenders. In ’48 Buick was slow to use the new sleek C body, then in mid ’50 Buick was first to pick up the new pleasantly plump B.
The white Special at top looks about the same size as the LeSabre on the bottom.
The Electra looks a lot smaller than the ’59s (and contemporary Cadillacs), even if it isn’t.
It wasn’t just Buick–that same greenhouse was shared with the Pontiac & Oldsmobile versions.
The stylists were probably trying to insure that each version had a familiar, brand-specific identity: hence, the Tempest has a split grille, the F-85 has a plain horizontal grille, and the Special has a grille that buyers would recognize as distinctly “Buick”. In fact, the F-85’s first slogan was, “It’s Every Inch an Oldsmobile”, which of course it wasn’t, but that’s OK.
These cars are of “the-public-now-hates-our-50s-Bulgemobile-stuff-but-we-don’t-know- what-to-do-next” generation. The Olds version is especially dull. Few people want to collect these. The ’63 full-size Pontiacs, the Buick Riviera, and the Corvette were the bright spots of inspired creativity in the 1963 GM line.
I find the ’63 full-size Buick front end to be ugly and displeasing–good thing they didn’t copy it on the new Special!
All good questions. As to the roofline, GM sure loved that 6-window style – The B and C bodies were heavily invested in that look when the Y cars came out, so maybe that was another end-of-Harley-Earl-era things. And who but GM brought it back from exile in 1973.
As for the 63 restyle, it looks to me that the 61-62 Y body cars began as Buicks in much the way the 1959-60 B Body cars did. The Olds and Pontiac had to work around the deep sculpting on the sides that only really looked right on the Buicks. For 63 I wonder if the other divisions griped. The front doors are totally plain, so the LeSabre’s side sculpting was apparently a no-go. Everyone else did their own rear door skins and quarters as well as front fenders, and the 63 LeSabre rear quarters look a lot like what Pontiac did.
As for the taillights, the 63 big Buick design was a dead end, with the 64 and later Buicks following the lead of the 63 Special. As for the grille, I have no idea. Though the Special grille looks more like a traditional Buick treatment than the big cars did.
I have always found the 63 versions of these cars sort of odd – from all 3 BOP Divisions. They are dulled down from 61-62 but none of them is really attractive. It is almost as though the designers knew it was a stopgap design that wouldn’t really matter.
On the roof, it occurs to me that the GM compacts got the same two roof treatments that the big cars got in 59-60 – the Corvair got the flying wing roof and the Buick/Olds got the 6 window. The Pontac was supposed to share the Corvair body but switched late in the game. As originally planned, the two lower priced cars would have had the wing and the two more expensive ones the 6 window.
The 1963 versions of the Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac compacts look as though the directive to the stylists was, “Make it look bigger, but don’t spend a bunch of money on a body that will be going away for 1964.”
I don’t believe that Buick and Oldsmobile were ever truly satisfied with their 1961-63 Y-bodies. I’ve read that Oldsmobile management, in particular, was not happy with sales of the F-85 (if I recall correctly, it was initially outsold by the Studebaker Lark!), and really questioned whether Oldsmobile should even be in the compact segment. Once the Chevrolet Chevelle/Malibu was approved for 1964, both divisions immediately wanted to be part of that program. They were happy to exit the compact segment.
Pontiac’s concern was that the engineering used for the Tempest was driving up the cost. Although it appears as though Pontiac may not have realized what it had with the Tempest/LeMans.
In 1963, Popular Mechanics surveyed owners of the Tempest/LeMans. Over 45 percent had purchased the two-door coupe, and most of those were the bucket-seat LeMans version. Only 20.6 percent chose the four-door sedan. Among remaining buyers, 2/3 favored the convertible over the station wagon. And, again, convertible buyers favored the bucket-seat LeMans version. (The breakdown of body styles bought by customers isn’t even mentioned in the survey of 1963 Oldsmobile F-85 owners published a few months later.)
Pontiac had a vehicle that really appealed to younger buyers looking for something compact and sporty.
And a bit ironic then then Oldsmobile returned in the compact segment for the model year 1973 with the Omega.
A bit prophetic, actually, as later in ’73 we had the first gas crisis.
In fact after that Olds expanded its compact offerings….by ’76 they also had the Starfire even smaller than the Omega…which continued up till the 2003 end..Wasn’t the last Oldsmobile a compact (Alero)?
My Father bought a ’73 Ranch Wagon near the start of ’73 though it was appropriate for camping and 6 people in our family, by end of ’73 he wanted my Mother to start driving his compact car (problem was it had manual transmission she didn’t like)…so he traded that in 1974 small car with automatic (even though it actually got a bit worse fuel mileage than the car he already had with the manual)
To your last point, both the 1965 Fairlane and the 1966 Dodge Dart come to mind.
Another Buick styling riddle, one of many over the decades. Buick management did indeed seem to dance to their own drummer when it came to many product detail and feature choices. Why updated versions of Dyna-Flow long after Hydra-Matic was perfected was a major one…
That GM senior compact Y-Body represents one of the major lost opportunities of the 1960’s: Assign the 1963 Lemans chassis and body to Cadillac for further development in all aspects mechanical and styling. Then raise the craftsmanship level to match Mercedes-Benz and introduce it for 1966 as an effective competitor to the rising interest in sporty European luxury imports.
My conservative, Buick-loyal Grandmother disapproved of the growing bloat of post-1958 models so she traded in her 1955 Special for a lean (ish) 1963 Skylark identical to the model in the top photo. I always thought the six-window greenhouse was a bit more more refined and elegant than the pseudo space-age flying wing styling, and I suspect staid Buick buyers agreed.
Sadly, Grandmother flipped over the Skylark on some black ice and the result looked like “a squashed tomato” (in her words). The repairs were poorly done and it developed a dank mushroom smell from all the leaks. So much for elegance…
Princess Leia is a big fan of the 1961 Buick.
Is it me or are the high and low beam headlights on the maroon ’62 full sized Buick pictured above not on the same horizontal plane? If so I’d never noticed that subtle styling fillip before.
That could be an optical illusion because the inners are in front of the outers. I can’t tell from head-on photos.
I hadn’t noticed before the resemblance between the front ends of the ’63 Special/Skylark and the ’62 large Buicks. But it’s definitely there. (Probably an afterthough as you all have stated, given the 1964 model would be all new.)
Overall, I think the ’62 large Buick is the weakest of the 1961-64 models, but I have to agree with Poindexter that the front end of the ’63 is especially unattractive.
My first car was a ’63 Buick Special 2 speed Hydromatic…got 19.5 MPG