Before World War 2 and again briefly in the late ’50s, Buick had antagonized Cadillac with its ultra-lux top-of-the-line Limited model. The Limited returned in 1967, this time as a plush interior trim option for the senior Electra 225. This four-door Electra 225 Custom Limited hardtop was the biggest, fanciest Buick you could buy in 1968.
The first Buick Limited appeared in 1936, adding a name to the existing Series 90 senior line. In the fall of 1939, Buick general manager Harlow Curtice decided to offer prestigious custom bodies for the Limited chassis, beginning in February 1940 with the chauffeur-driven, $3,895 Townmaster, built by Brunn & Co. of Buffalo, New York. Cadillac and Fisher Body cried foul, and GM management ordered Curtice to pull the plug on the Brunn program after only a few cars had been built.
The factory-built Limited continued through 1942, but it wasn’t a big seller, and it didn’t return when civilian production resumed in 1945.
Buick revived the Limited name for 1958 for a fancier long-tailed version of the C-body Roadmaster. Priced at over $5,000, it was indulgently trimmed and had a lot of troublesome high-tech features, including standard triple-turbine Flight Pitch Dynaflow transmission and optional Air Poise air suspension. Modest sales and lots of warranty claims made it a one-year wonder.
Still, the “Limited” name had value, and U.S. trademark law takes a “use it or lose it” attitude towards trademarks, so back the Limited came for 1967. This time, the Limited wasn’t a separate model, but rather a $195.77 trim package for the Buick Electra 225 Custom, advertised as “more luxurious than virtually anything else.”
The option included woodgrain door trim, seatback map pockets, and special Madrid-grain vinyl or Bevere patterned cloth upholstery with Rococo crests.
The Electra 225 Custom was itself just a trim upgrade for the Electra 225, but while the Custom sub-series was considered a separate model with its own VIN, the Limited was not, so no production totals are available. I struck out in trying to find non-brochure photos of a 1967 Limited; the Shadow Turquoise car pictured above is a “plain” Electra 225 Custom, not a Limited.
Although no production figures were recorded for posterity, Buick evidently decided the Limited option had sold well enough to bring it back the following year.
For 1968, the Limited was still a trim option, available only on the two- and four-door hardtop. (There was an Electra 225 Custom four-door pillared sedan, but you couldn’t get Limited trim on that.) The price was again $195.77, on top of the $4,509 base price of a Custom four-door hardtop.
Especially in triple black, this is a very imposing car. Its dimensions were pretty typical for a late ’60s full-size luxury car — 224.9 inches long on a 126-inch wheelbase, 80 inches wide — but it looks like it has enough mass to alter the orbits of Ramblers and Datsuns in its immediate vicinity.
Buick tried to promote the Limited as the last word in luxury, as you can see from this October 1967 magazine ad, which ran in TIME and LIFE. Really, Buick was playing catch-up with Oldsmobile, whose senior Ninety-Eight Luxury Sedan had moved out in front in interior lavishness. An Electra 225 Custom Limited was priced within a few dollars of the Oldsmobile, which was probably not coincidental.
Despite the ad claim that it lacked nothing but a fireplace, the Limited was not quite as well-equipped as the Olds — the Electra 225 came with power steering, power brakes, and Turbo Hydra-Matic, but Buick made even Custom and Limited buyers pay extra for power windows, which were standard on most Ninety-Eight models. Oldsmobile buyers could also get real leather upholstery by specifying the Royale trim option, where even the Limited had vinyl bolsters.
Where the Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Luxury Sedan had a seatback vanity set for rear passengers, the 1968 Limited again provided rear map pockets instead. It also didn’t offer as much rear legroom as you’d expect. The raked hardtop roof meant the rear seat was pushed forward, costing almost 4 inches of rear legroom compared to the four-door sedan. The four-door hardtop was only fractionally better than the two-door model in this respect.
The 1968 dashboard had been revamped to comply with the new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, with new attention given to shielding passengers from a “second collision” with the instrument panel and controls.
Buick stylists responded to these regulations by going in big for thumbwheel controls, which served for everything from courtesy lights to windshield washers. This had the effect of making the instrument panel seem rather cluttered, especially with this car’s cruise control, air conditioning, power antenna, and rear defroster, all of which were extra-cost options in 1968.
Buick buyers generally didn’t skimp on stuff like that. In 1968, 86.8 percent of Electra 225 buyers ordered air conditioning, 77.3 percent ordered power windows, and 68.6 percent ordered a power seat; this car has all those option, which along with the Limited package and the vinyl roof pushed the original sticker price well over $5,000.
Buyers mostly didn’t order front disc brakes, which were newly optional this year. Buick’s 12-inch finned drums, which were aluminum in front, were better than average for drum brakes, but cars this size really needed discs, and didn’t often get them. Only 2.4 percent of Electra 225 buyers ordered them. This car also has the deluxe wheel covers rather than the now-ubiquitous Buick styled road wheels, which I think are more popular on modern collector cars than they were at the time.
The sole engine in the 1968 Electra 225 line was the 430 cid V-8, introduced the previous year to replace the ’50s-vintage “Nailhead.” It had 360 gross hp and 475 lb-ft of torque, and was mated to a Super Turbine 400 (Turbo Hydra-Matic) transmission with a 2.78 axle. The transmission’s unusual switch-pitch variable stator was gone this year; the latest big GM engines didn’t need it, and owners had found the increased noise disconcerting.
With or without the fancier trim, the Electra 225 was about like you’d expect: It rode well as long as it wasn’t too heavily laden and the road was fairly smooth. It had good pickup and passing power, with smooth, unobtrusive powertrain response, and its handling was safe and predictable, if not very agile. (For people who bought cars like this, “sporty” was more likely to mean “vintage sporting prints” or “season tickets with a private box” than back-roads handling.) Repair record was generally above average, so the main vices were heavy thirst and sheer size, which were par for the course in this class.
These big Buicks didn’t get a lot of press attention in their day. The enthusiast magazines generally weren’t interested — there wasn’t much overlap between their readership and the market for luxury-oriented full-size domestic cars like this — and consumer publications like Consumer Reports didn’t see the point when a LeSabre, a Pontiac Executive, or a Ford Galaxie 500 offered similar virtues for a lot less money.
However, Buick continued to sell quite a lot of these cars: 38,804 of the standard Electra 225 for 1968, plus 76,558 of the Electra 225 Custom; three-fourths of Custom sales were the four-door hardtop. As mentioned, I can only guess how many of the Customs had the Limited package; I’d estimate something between 10 and 20 percent, enough to earn another return engagement for 1969, but not yet enough to promote it to a separate model series.
The Limited finally became a separate sub-model in 1972 1974. By 1980, all Electras were Limiteds (surely a contradiction in terms, that), but the Limited was already being overtaken by the Park Avenue, which also began as a super-deluxe trim package. In retrospect, this tendency to constantly demote model an series names seems wasteful, but that was Detroit’s way in those days, and in any case, the Limited was far more successful as a suffix than it ever was as a standalone model.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1968 Buick Electra 225 – The Great Society (by Perry Shoar)
Full-Size Buicks Of The 1960s: How Buick Reinvented Its Lineup Between 1959 And 1970 (by me)
1963 Oldsmobile 98 Luxury Sedan – When Olds First Leapfrogged Buick On The Sloan Ladder (by Paul N)
1946 and 1968 Oldsmobile 98 Sedans: Cadillac Luxury From GM’s Mid-Priced Brand (by me)
Love the Electra 225s, classic GM style and power. Had a 1970 225 to run around in after high school, many fun times
It does not get much better than a black – Buick Electra 225 four door pillarless hardtop, regardless of the year model. 1964 Buick Electra 225s dressed in a ‘6 window’ four door pillarless hardtop body in particular, stand out.
But these cars provide further proof to my firmly held belief that the ‘four door pillarless hardtop’ is fast becoming a sort after classic, and is increasingly being viewed as a much rarer and more desirable body style than the relatively common 2 door pillarless hardtops.
Pretty car but I’d still take the Oldsmobile Ninety Eight equivalent, largely because my father was a diehard Olds buyer.
I like the Electra exterior a little better, but I think the Ninety-Eight Luxury Sedan had the edge in interior trim, which was really the big selling point of these.
Agree about the superlative interior trim of the Olds 98 Luxury Sedan. A friends father had a 1966 Olds 98 LS and not only was it more luxurious than the Electra, but even more than a contemporary Cadillac Calais. I was impressed..
Unlike Ford with the LTD (which had to have Buick’s legal department pressuring Product Planning to slap the Limited name on something, now), Buick really embraced Limited as a trim level. By the late 70s you could get a Skylark Limited and all full size Fords were LTDs, even the cop cars and taxis.
Back in the day, my office was in what the TV news reporters called an “inner city neighborhood” and I will always associate this model with the name “deuce and a quarter” ! Lordy, those were huge (and impressive…) monstrosities. I was indeed driving a “little” 510 two door, with stick shift , wide rims, and the factory tach…
Different worlds, coexisting peacefully but mostly ignoring each other… 🙂
As for “model name creep” I recall that all the big Detroit Iron cars would have an upper trim model name that would slowly be pushed down to the bargain end of the line in a few years.
Thanks LB. For a moment I thought I was going to be the only one to mention the “deuce and a quarter” nickname.
The 1965-68 Buick C body Electra was one instance where that Division simply nailed what a Buick was supposed to look like. When someone says the word “Buick”, this is still the car that immediately jumps into my mind.
Some photos of a 67 Limited from this post, https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics/curbside-classic-1967-buick-electra-225-lowered-nox/ . Which is also relevant to the 66 Coronet post from today
Really like the look of that “67”.
A stunningly beautiful car both then and now. I would like to see it with Buick’s road wheels to make a comparison.
When viewing a CC I like to think back to that year, assuming I was around.
1968 was not a good year in the life of our country.
Monsignor Nelligan, pastor of Immaculate Conception in Towson, drove a triple-black 225 like this. He came from a family of bankers, and he was considered the “banker” of the whole archdiocese, so it suited him perfectly.
Quite the ride for the Monsignor. The local Olds dealer was a prominent member of our parish and starting in 1959 our pastor got a new Olds 88 every three years. Black, of course, nondescript looking with black walls and dog dishes. However, they were all loaded inside, including power windows and A/C. Perhaps a bit of Catholic guilt here. If you enjoy creature comforts, just don’t be showy about it.
The “Limited” moniker, which has subsequently been appropriated by various domestic and import makes over the years has been something of a curiosity to me. It could be construed as having limited value or limited capabilities. The rationale, however, was to suggest exclusivity as in limited production. Obviously, every vehicle is limited only by the number ordered to satisfy customer demand.
Whenever I see “Limited” or “Limited Edition” on a car, I take it to mean “limited by the number of them they can sell”.
I have a dealer close by that used to put “(dealer’s name) Limited edition” on the rear end of pretty much everything they sold.
Nice article, but air suspension was optional (not standard) on the 1958 Limited.
Oops, quite right — very embarrassing, given that I said so myself in the linked post on the 1958. Fixed now, thanks!
I like the styling and the amenities, but the car is much too big and profligate for my tastes, then and now.
I believe it was in the early 1970s when I walked past a Buick Electra 225, and was captivated when I saw “Limited” posted several inches from that. And then, upon further viewing I saw “Park Avenue.” I was totally awestruck by all of this. Buick knew how to reach me.
That picture of the 1958 Buick Limited reminded me that my sister just recently showed me a picture of a car my dad had. It was the wagon version? I have no idea what that model would have been but it had the same grill. My sister told me that dad and her used to wax each of those billets!
There were Buick Estate Wagons in the Special and Century lines in 1958, which had the same dazzling overdecorated front end treatment.
Ok thanks. I know Vicki (my sister) said it was a huge car! He traded it for a 62 Invicta convertible!
All it lacks is a fireplace. And a TV. And drywall. And fibreglass insulation.
Gosh they had some doozies in their marketing schpeel.
I remember the 67-68 Electra Limiteds being very popular with the moneyed folks in Midland,Texas where I grew up. My mother badly wanted one even through we were not part of the Raquet Club set. My father would have nothing to do with a car that needed premium gas, so we ended up with a 318 Fury VIP. In dark blue with a black vinyl roof and FM radio for the “beautiful music” station, it satisifed my mother.