I reference my parents’ 1977 Plymouth Volaré coupe a lot because that was the first car with which I had developed a love/hate relationship. My years as a toddler starting in the mid/late-’70s are filled with memories of riding in the Volaré as my family’s “nice” car, despite the fact that our ’71 Plymouth Duster, six years older, proved itself to be, far and away, the more reliable car.
I loved the Volaré because it looked the part of an up(per) scale ride, with its richly colored burgundy paint, white, pebble-grained bodyside moldings and vinyl half-roof which stretched from the A- to the B-pillars, and deluxe wheel covers complete with the Plymouth “frog-legs” emblem in the center. I also hated it because it was the source of considerable stress on my parents when it broke down (which was often enough), which then left us kids feeling “shook,” in current urban parlance.
The summer following my third grade year of elementary school, our family took a one-hour drive south from Flint to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the annual Ann Arbor Street Art Fair – which is still a major draw and celebrated cultural event that brings artists of all media and spectators to “A-Squared” from all over the state. We met long-time family friends, the Hackmanns, there, walked around, and made a fun day of it. (I also remember this being the first time, as a kid, that I had ever seen the “f-word” printed on a t-shirt in the same font used on Ford’s blue oval insignia. My mom probably clutched her pearls, but I don’t remember her actually saying anything about that shirt, even if I probably snickered.)
After we had parted company with our friends, we piled into the Volaré, then just six years old, and headed back toward Flint on US Route 23. Our family of five made it about halfway home before our Volaré said, “Nope. I’m tired. Pull me over.” Unacceptable.
CC Readers, let me take you back to a time before cell phones, when major highways and interstates in Michigan had call-boxes with little, blue lights on them, every mile or so. While my dad left my mom, older and younger brothers and me in the Volaré with the hazard blinkers on, and with my younger brother whimpering softly like Randy Parker from “A Christmas Story,” I sat in the back seat of our temperamental Plymouth, literally wondering how all of this was going to turn out, as if there was actually a possibility that this situation would not end well.
I realize that some of you must be wondering if I’ve mistitled this piece. Enter our knight in shiny, lacquer-finished, landau-topped, tail-finned, chrome-plated armor: the Hackmanns’ early-’70s Buick Electra 225 hardtop. To be completely honest, I’m pretty sure theirs wasn’t a ’73 like our featured car. I seem to recall it had the horizontally bisected taillamps and a few other minor details of the ’71, but it was dark out, cars were whizzing by as we sat on the shoulder, and I was a freaked-out kid. Let’s just say that the sight of our olive green example in these photos shared enough DNA with the Hackmanns’ car so as to have triggered these memories.
There was a collective sigh of relief in our car once we saw headlights slowly approaching us on the side of US 23. Let’s also take a moment to remember that this (true) story was set in the ’80s, long before kids like my brothers and me felt like we had to wonder if something bad was about to happen to our parents at the hands of a stranger as we sat stranded on the side of the road.
After we had all piled into the Hackmanns’ Electra (all seven of us fit because my younger brother was on Mom’s lap), I remember several sensory details. The textured brocade upholstery in the back seat felt much nicer than even some of the living room couches I had sat on before – almost like it should have been covered in plastic. The inside of the car was utterly silent like a cocoon, even under acceleration in the passing lane. I might have even craned my neck from the middle of the back seat to get a glimpse out of a window to make sure we were still moving. There seemed to be so much room in the interior of that car, even with four adults, a teenager, and two young kids inside. There was also that wonderful, 1970s-GM-interior smell, which I might wear as a cologne today if something like that actually existed.
It was then that I realized that, save for our piano, the inside of the Hackmanns’ Electra was probably nicer than our living room. I’m not going to lie. It was. I’ll bet that if Pastor Hackmann had turned on the AC Delco factory sound system, it would have made our Fisher hi-fi sound like an artifact from the Sloan Museum in downtown Flint.
These C-Body Buicks may have been among the largest full-size passenger cars that GM ever produced, may have consumed half a dinosaur’s worth of fossil fuel between fill-ups, and may have external dimensions that would make them nearly impossible for the average U.S. citizen to park – but I’ll always remember the time it had felt like last night, a Deuce-And-A-Quarter saved my life (with apologies to funk / post-disco group Indeep). Sometimes, it’s true – there’s not a problem that cubes can’t fix, and four hundred fifty-five of them boasting over three hundred horsepower came to the rescue of the Dennis family on the side of US 23, early in the summer of 1983. For forty minutes or so as we rode in silence back to our house, the inside of that Electra had felt so comforting, and almost like home.
Lakeview, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, December 15, 2019.
Note: a rerun of an older post.
So very well said .
Interestingly, I too remember being stuck on the side if the New York Turnpike in the 1960’s in an epic thunderstorm when pops poorly maintained Peugeot 404 Family Break’s oily, greasy ignition got wet from the rain and stopped working .
At the time I wasn’t worried about being slammed into by the other vehicles whizzing by, now I understand the danger .
-Nate
It could be interesting to photoshop this Electra with the front end used in the 1975-76 model years to see how it might look without the Landau top like this 1974 shown in this picture. https://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Buick/1974_Buick/1974%20Buick%20Full%20Line%20-%20rescan/slides/1974%20Buick%2018-19.html
Don’t leave us hanging, Joe…
Whatever happened to the Volare’?
My sister got it a couple of years later after my folks transferred the title her for a dollar. She and her BF at the time had an unfortunate run-in with a moving truck or something at some point – a minor hit to the rear corner. After that, we never heard about that car from her. I do remember that her BF had said to my dad upon taking possession, “Doc, you keep your cars good“.
If you had meant on that particular day, I’m sure my parents had called AAA or something to get it towed. I’d hate to think a spare ballast resistor kept in the glove compartment might have saved the day.
Volare or Buick. Let me think about that for a minute – OK, don’t need the whole minute.
“It was a Detroit-made, deuce and a quarter babe…” – Bob Seger
My aunt had a ’68. It was a four-door sedan, and my dad’s best friend had a ’68 convertible. Given that we are a family of eight, neither was suitable for us, and Buick stopped making a full-size wagon in ’64, content with fielding the Sport Wagon, which was a Buick-powered Vista Cruiser, one size down, although with a slightly longer wheelbase than the standard A-body wagons, which also allowed a forward-facing rear seat.
But I digress. Buick reintroduced the big wagon, the Estate Wagon, in 1970, which had an interior just as plush as the Electras but in vinyl. So Dad grabbed one. We kept it 17 years, which meant that all six of us would be able to drive it.
I’ve been helped by Good Samaritans twice on the side of the road. Both times I was out of gas. And in both cases the person whostopped – on busy roads with lots of traffic – went the extra mile (well, several miles) to find a gas station that would loan me a gas can (they did that … both times were in the Seventies) and then took me back to my car. One time the person who helped me was in a Renault R10, and once was a huge green Buick. But not a 225, a boat tail Riviera. It too was probably nicer than my apartment at the time.
I have been helped a couple of times as well. The most memorable was when my MGB stalled on the freeway. I was in the lane to the right of the fast lane near where the freeway interchange was splitting off into three directions (this is in Los Angeles.) A person with a big pick up truck pulled up in front of me, hooked a couple of big tow ropes to the front of my car, and pulled me across many lanes of traffic to the right side emergency lane. Then they just unhooked me and left. I barely had time to thank him. This was way before cell phones were a thing.
When I was very young, probably about eight years old, my dad bought a platform trailer in Massachusetts and we were driving it back to Ohio when the trailer lost a wheel in Connecticut one very rainy night. I remember being in the gas station waiting with my mom, and my uncle wanting to take us to his house in Hartford, but my dad was insistent that everything would be OK, it was, and we drove the rest of the way home after the trailer was fixed. I’ve had a life long disdain for trailers ever since and vowed I would never have one.
Our family had that exact 1973 Buick Elecrtra 225. We had bought it after our LeSabre was in an accident. We have 7 in our family and we all sat comfortably with room to spare. The in 1981 my dad bought a Buick Skylark and the Electra became the “kids” car to drive to school and back. It was the perfect car for that because the doors were as 6″ thick and it was like riding in a tank. We actually had given our’s the nickname “the boat” because of it’s size and the very distinctive horn it had. I was the last of the 5 children in our family and it got retired after me. The one memory I’ll always remember about that car was the needle on the speedometer that you could set at a choosen speed and a buzzer would sound when you reached that speed. My dad would set the needle at 57 mph, but then I would get in the car and crank it over to 120 mph (the speedometer went that high) not that I ever drove that fast. Regardless of what speed you were driving, it felt like you were riding on air. That dark brown 1973 Buick Electra 225 with a 455 under the hood is fondly remembered by our family because all the memories that were made with that “boat” of a car.
The Hackmanns kept their car nice too, if it still felt that special after 10 northern winters. I’m the same age as you and grew up in northern New England and I mostly remember those old pre-downsized barges having become old beaters by that time.
Now that you mention this, I think Pastor Hackmann was something of a car guy. After they had moved to St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada maybe five years after the Volaré incident, we had gone to visit them. They had a shiny, beautiful Lincoln Continental Mark V parked comfortably in the garage that might have been their occasional or collector vehicle. It was a stunner.
I see zero things wrong with a pastor owning a car like this. In fact, when I was much younger, our Lutheran pastor (different gentleman) had what was a classic ’61 or so full-size Chevy (this was in the early ’80s) that I remember taking a ride in. I chalk this more up to being in and/or from the greater Flint area than anything else.
Cars just don’t get more comfortable or safe, what a reassuring sight that must have been! The pastor had good taste!
Fisher stereos were typically pretty high-end so that one in the living room might have given a Delco stereo a real run for the money, especially if it was one of their tube models, say pre-1964ish… they’re highly collectible today!
What a Beautiful Automobile.
I love it and would daily drive it today. Mileage be damned. I have a 2016 Jeep that almost gets 14 MPG if I drive carefully (I didn’t buy it for the economy), and a 77 Lincoln Mark V (gift from my uncle), Dove Grey, Red interior, w/the 460 with New dual exhaust, sounds Amazing. Gallons per mile: Unknown.