John K. sent me this ad, and it’s a gem. Just in time for warm spring weather, here’s a Roadmaster Roadster. And with a full four doors and plenty of room for five of your friends to travel in style. See and be seen.
All it needs is a rumble seat.
CC For Sale: 1996 Buick Roadmaster “Roadster” – Seats Six In Open Air Comfort
– Posted on April 23, 2021
Cool set of wheels! A landau or landaulet style perhaps?
Yes! Just needs a landau iron. The driver must wear a top hat!
I could use my shower doors for T-tops.
I wonder if it has a detachable roof…..Otherwise it has to stay in a garage in bad weather.
Even with a top of some sort, it would probably have to stay indoors in bad weather.
There are no longer any frames around the windows, the B-pillar has been removed, and the fixed glass in the rear doors has been removed. So even with the windows up there will be a large gap around them. I’m doubtful that the builder of this went to the expense of having custom hardtop-style glass made.
My thoughts. All the crash resistance of a McDonalds food paper bag. How do these turkys pass inspection?. Shame it was as good looking car before the hack saw.
What is this “inspection” you speak of? 🙂 But in the few states that actually do have an inspection are they looking at the roof?
Yep. Body on frame construction so would not be so much of a problem .
Interesting that some states have stopped the annual safety inspection. MOT testing in the UK was suspended last year due to lock down but not this year due to the ” increased number of unsafe vehicles on British roads” .Thats the press explanation not mine.
Most US states have not had periodic vehicle roadworthiness inspections for many years. In most of those few that still have them, they’re so quick and cursory as to be substantially pointless.
If the US had TuV style or even MoT style inspections I suspect that at least 60% of the total fleet would have issues to be corrected before passing and at least 10% of the total fleet would be denied registration permanently. Which likely wouldn’t stop half of those from still driving around anyway 🙂
It’s somewhat surprising that we don’t have more rigorous inspections as they’d likely be a huge boon to the OEM and aftermarket parts industry businesses.
“Body on frame construction so would not be so much of a problem .”
No. Do you have any idea how flimsy the “frames” are?
All the way back in ’65, GM was building “unibody” cars but with the suspension and engine isolated on a crappy, weak, flexible (on purpose) “frame”.
If it’s not bolted to the body, the frame is flexible by pushing on it with your hand. Not at all like a pickup frame where the box and cab are separated.
In New Jersey, cars 1995 & older are now exempt from state inspection. This has saved the lives of a lot of doomed turkeys!
This has a full frame beneath the body, so crash resistance and rigidity isn’t compromised as much as you might think, and certainly not as much as it would be with a unit body vehicle.
No perimeter framed car has “a full frame beneath the body”. Perimeter frames are rather lightly built, and their function is very different than the full ladder frames under cars prior to perimeter frames and as still used in trucks/SUVs.
A perimeter frame absolutely requires a strong and stiff body structure to work in tandem with it. Which is why convertibles with perimeter frames required strengthening of their bodies to provide the necessary rigidity.
A perimeter framed car is really a hybrid of BOF and unibody construction. Which is why they aren’t used in trucks and such that can provide the necessary strength from the attached body.
But what of body rigidity? will the doors stay closed on rough roads?
It’s a body-on-frame vehicle; see my comment above.
Not saying it’s as good as it was before the chop, but not as bad as you might think. The doors might suffer from having the B-pillar unsecured at the top, unless reinforcements were part of the customization.
My thoughts exactly. Pay no attention to the door misalignment or how the windshield frame/cowl area flexes while driving over bumps. Looks fun though
If we each put in $10 we could make that the official CC staff car. Start a go fund me Paul.
We really wanted to do this to our Topaz the last year we had it, but instead gave it away to someone who needed transportation.
Where is the picture? All I am seeing is the headline and three sentences.
Same here. But if you view source, you can find the URL of the picture in question. https://i2.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Buick-ad1.jpg
Thanks
Do you have an adblocker?
Same here, in Firefox—even without any ad blockers, even with cookies and cache cleared, even in a “clean” profile with zero add-ons, plug-ins, or extensions. The picture frames very briefly load, then disappear; the images themselves don’t even briefly appear. The post loads fine (with images) in Safari, and if I copy the image URLs and paste them in Firefox, they load individually just fine, but not in the post.
It’s there for me on both Chrome and Firefox.
Works for me as well. I reuploaded the photos to see if that makes any difference.
I’m having the same problem, just this post. I’m on Safari.
Edit, just as I replied I now see them, looks like David Saunders’ reupload worked
Weld in a tubular support frame to keep things somewhat ridged and make a bikini top. If I was 20 again this would be a perfect beach bomber.
You May have touched on something I was wondering: what if you were to weld-in a small I-beam or similar right behind the front seats? Weld it to the B-pillar bulkhead on each side.
A friend of my sister and her husband did something similar to a mid-‘70’s Cutlass 4-door sedan. Definitely a summer cruiser.
There’s a Roadmaster wagon still hanging on in the neighborhood, but sadly no Sawzall has touched it.
That thing must shriek and moan and rattle.
May I call you Jiggly?
The most interesting thing is what a Roadmaster 4-door hardtop (no B-pillars or window frames) might have looked like. Frankly, probably pretty good.
It really kind of does, the big puffy seats leaned way back kind of ruin the flow of the beltline but it looks longer and sleeker without the chunky pillars these had. GM should have figured out how to engineer modern hardtops, instead they buckled under the slightest regulatory pressure and threw out the most iconic body design they popularized.
I have family in the area who might be willing to check it out, if anyone is interested. Presumably they’d wear a mask so they wouldn’t be recognized 😀
I don’t think I’d want to be in this car above about 25 mph—wind noise and buffeting.
Paul, there is no photo. There has been no photo since I first accessed this site a few hours ago.
Is this some kind of a joke?
There’s info ☝︎up there☝︎ (further up the comment thread) about this. It’s being looked into on the back end.
Can you see them now?
Affirmative—in Firefox, with no changes on my end, so whoever did whatever they did fixed the problem.
Bets are the image in the rear view mirror is a blurry one at road speed. The wind buffeting from that scoop top has to be horrendous.
No vehicle has ever mastered the road as well as this one.
As the builder of 2 Buick Targas I approve, however a better starting point could have been used. I built mine out of 2dr hardtops so no worry about the door post missing its upper attachment and no door frames to get in the way.
The first was a 68 Skylark and also later owning a 72 Skylark convertible I can say in that instance there wasn’t a significant difference in cowl shake between the two despite the fact that the convertible had the boxing channels. Interestingly my friend’s dad who built this: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/comment-image/240777.jpg wouldn’t let him ride in it because he deemed it unsafe, citing the fact that “convertible frames are reinforced” That car lasted in that configuration for at least 4 years as I sold it to a buddy who ended up taking it with him when he moved to CA. It regularly was run on logging roads when I had it.
The second was a 74 Century Luxus. I put a set of 10-15lt tires on the back and beat that thing pretty hard on the local logging roads and the like. Never once had the doors pop open or be any more difficult to close than any 2dr Colonnade with a few years under its belt. What I did do is loose a rear spring once when driving too fast over a big bump. Part of that problem was that the car had air shocks that I kept at full pressure. When we heard the twang, felt it list a bit and saw the spring bouncing down the road I stopped. Surprisingly the air shock was doing a pretty good job of holding up that corner. I was able to use the bumper jack to get it up high enough that with the help of the lug wrench was able to pry back up in there.
My ’67 Impala was 4 door hardtop cut down into a 4 dr convertible. Done by a previous owner. It was interesting to watch the rear door gap almost disappear when a bumper jack was used on the rear bumper. Back on the ground, the gap came back to normal.
Thank god it has the original alloys included, I was worried for a second it couldn’t be brought back to original!
The rear defogger was an essential option on this model.
I see so many cars with the cheap plastic “roadster” emblem on them I think it’s funny. The owner wouldn’t know what a “roadster” actually is.
What is your definition of a “roadster”??
The Merriam-Webster definition
roadster noun : an automobile with an open body that seats two and has a folding fabric top and often a luggage compartment or rumble seat in the rear
The definition I’m familiar with says it doesn’t come with a top. If it has a folding soft top it is a convertible.
Both IH and Ford marketed their Scout and Bronco when it didn’t come with a top as a Roadster, though the Ford didn’t come with doors either. https://fordauthority.com/2019/09/1966-ford-bronco-u13-roadster-is-perfectly-restored/
IH revisited those door inserts for the SSII but it came with a soft top and soft doors.
I don’t hate this. I’ll give it an A- for concept and another A- for execution. I’m not the person to grade it for safety, as I’m not the technical person when it comes to these things.
I’m originally from Chicopee, I think that picture was taken at Westover ARB.
A neighbor in the mountains did an even more extreme one on an older Buick, the C pillars and rear window as well. This was in snow country. Fortunately, his daily driver was a 4×4 Chevy pickup (with snowplow). He cleared my driveway of snow with it.