Buick’s 1971–1973 “Boattail” Riviera has always been controversial, but its 1974–1976 successor remains a non-entity, a car you could easily forget had existed at all. That’s not just a latter-day judgment: Back in 1976, Road Test tried the bustleback ’76 Riviera and found it an undistinguished big coupe that seemed to have suffered “a detuning of the personality.”
The Buick Riviera, Buick’s personal luxury car, had had a pretty good run for about the first decade of its existence. The 1970 model was a strange anomaly, but the 1963–1965 and 1966–1967 cars are classics, the 1968–1969 cars aren’t bad, and the 1971–1973 boattail car was at least distinctive.
No one involved with its development had been happy with how the boattail had turned out — not Bill Mitchell, whose idea it had been; not Jerry Hirshberg, who had to try to interpret Mitchell’s idea on a platform that didn’t suit it; not Buick general manager Lee Mays, who hated it; and not Ned Nickles, who had designed the car that became the 1963 Riviera — but it had character, and it still has its fans.
In 1972, designer Wayne Kady began a two-year stint as chief of the Buick styling studio and came up with a facelift for the 1974 Riviera that dispensed with the boattail in favor of one of Kady’s beloved bustleback rear decks. I am already on record as regarding the bustleback as an aesthetic abomination, and Kady’s fascination with it would later be ruinous for Cadillac, but this is probably the least-offensive variation on that theme, perhaps because it was plainly done on the cheap. Looking at this car, you can see how the designers looked for ways they could reshape the sheet metal to make the Riviera look different within what I assume was a very modest tooling budget.
The problem was that the Riviera now didn’t look like anything in particular. Scratch that — it looked like a two-door LeSabre with a different roof and exterior sheet metal, which it more or less was. A 1976 Riviera was 2 inches shorter in wheelbase than the LeSabre and about 3.8 inches shorter overall, but the resemblance was nonetheless strong. There were far worse things to look like than a LeSabre, but the Riviera had essentially reverted to the formula of the old B-body Oldsmobile Starfire, an Olds 88 with a different roofline and fancier exterior trim.
New Buick general manager George Elges said the restyled Riviera was “our bright hope for 1974,” but that hope was in vain: Sales dropped 41 percent from 1973. Much of that decline was undoubtedly due to the 1973–1974 oil embargo, which hit during the middle of the 1974 model year, but 1975 was even worse, with Riviera production falling to 17,306 cars. Big car sales rallied once the embargo was over, but the Riviera was lost in the shuffle.
Given all that, you can understand why the editors of Road Test started on a rather gloomy note:
Faded glory. The aristocracy clothed in proletarian raiment, a stately old home reduced to middle-class necessity, the Queen Mary as a tourist hotel. The 1976 Buick Riviera, once the proud flagship of the Buick fleet, is now a gussied-up freighter.
It happened kind of quickly, it seems, because it was only a few short years ago that the Riviera was a car to be lusted after maybe even more than the Eldorado. It was a status symbol, to be sure, but it was a symbol unattainable anywhere else. The Eldo was a car for the idle rich, the country-club loungers, while the Rivvie was somehow more spirited, more red-blooded. For awhile, when it was styled with a kind of boat-tailed panache, it even upstaged the Cadillacs and Lincolns. But only for awhile.
And, now, in what seems certain to be the gray twilight of the kind of car the Riviera used to be, the almost baroque flair of the car has given way to a grudging conformist attitude, in which the Buick Riviera, ex-style leader, ex-heavy hitter, ex-statement car, is now just another GM CorpMobile.
All of which is not to say that the Big R isn’t still big. or fancy, or expensive. It’s all three; at 4800 lbs., with all the options you could want and a near-ten-grand price tag, it fulfills all the elements of its personality—on paper. But when you see it, sit in it and drive it, you can’t help but miss that special aura a Riviera used to have.
The base price of a 1976 Riviera was $6,797.55, but its standard equipment still didn’t include essential features like a radio, air conditioning (with or without automatic climate control), a power seat, the chrome-plated wheels, or the ubiquitous Landau Custom vinyl top. This car has all that stuff, bringing the original sticker price to $9,023.05, not including destination charge, within about $80 of the Road Test car.
Road Test speculated that “the kind of style inherent in the [boattail] Riviera may have been considered too openly flagrant for the times, its sweeping flanks and silly boat tail too gauche for an automotive era of relative conservatism.” So far as the high-end personal luxury market went, that was ridiculous: The tastemakers of the segment were the Cadillac Eldorado and Lincoln Continental Mark IV, which offered glitz by the full-ton lot, and really well-heeled buyers might also be tempted by gaudy low-production neoclassical horrors like the Excalibur or the Stutz Blackhawk, for which the word “flagrant” might well have been coined. At the lower end, the one to beat was the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, which offered dramatic disco-era extravagance on a Chevelle budget. People didn’t buy ’70s personal luxury cars to be subtle.
Car magazine testers can forgive a lot if they like the way a car drives, but Road Test found the Riviera completely average:
Whatever the reason, driving the new Rivvie is hardly an exercise in feeling regal or powerful. It handles, accelerates, brakes and rides just like all its B-Body brothers, which is to say: sloppily, moderately, easily and softly, in order. You’ll get to 60 mph in 12 seconds with the 455 4-barrel engine, get stopped in about 170 feet with a lot of fade and the de facto brake modulation of the GM no-lock brake system, and will achieve lateral-g figures of 0.67 on constant-radius turns. A big, softly-sprung car.
Their reference to “the GM no-lock brake system” like refers to the brake proportioning setup (front discs and rear drums were standard on these cars), not to the electronic rear-wheel ABS that had been available on the Eldorado and Oldsmobile Toronado. Buick hadn’t offered that system, although the Riviera had been available for a while with MaxTrac electronic traction control. (MaxTrac was no longer available by this time — likely for emissions reasons, since it worked by cutting ignition power.)
Assuming that you have just come out of a time capsule and have no preconceived mental picture of what a Riviera is supposed to do for you, the car is no worse or better than all the others in its price class. We even got it to gasp out 14.5 mpg on our driving cycle, even though a more realistic number would be found in the 10-12 mpg range, considering that few people can resist the thrust of a big engine fed by a four-barrel carb.
Comfort levels in the Riviera were of the highest GM quality throughout … which is to say, right up there with the Eldo and Lincoln and Imperial (now called the New Yorker Brougham). The seats were wide and soft, covered in our test car with the best imitation crushed velvet you could ask for, and. while the driver had the six-way power seat to help him get comfortable, the passenger didn’t. This complaint of ours—that each front seat passenger should have at least reclining seats—is a familiar one to longtime readers, but it must be restated. The only real clues to the Buickness of the big car inside are in the arrangement of the dashboard, which has huge air conditioning vent openings (easily the biggest in the GM structure) and the typical silver speedometer face. Otherwise it could be a Pontiac. Olds, Chevy or even a Caddy.
I can’t tell what color the Road Test car may have been, but they also had the $123 Custom trim option, with a 60/40 notchback bench seat upholstered in crushed velour and vinyl.
The Riviera dashboard differed little from the one in the LeSabre, although the Riviera had a three-spoke Custom wheel with that awful woodgrain ring. Early Rivieras had also shared dashboards with the rest of the line, but back then, Buick dash design was a good deal flashier than it was by the mid-1970s.
Road Test had complaints about the doors as well:
As the Riviera has grown, so have its doors, until now they seem to weigh at least 50 lbs. each. Buick engineers have done their best to aid the passengers in opening and closing them, but their tremendous length doesn’t aid the short people of the world, and more than once, as the huge door swung past center and accelerated to the closed position like the gates of Babylon slamming shut, we had to move fast to avoid a crunched limb. Now, we know about safety-beams, and we know about the sound of quality, but if Volvo, Peugeot, Mazda and Mercedes can build strong doors that sound good, why can’t GM?
For 1975, Buick had restyled the bumpers of the Riviera, trimming overall length by 3.4 inches and curb weight by around 50 lb, so they could demonstrate that they were Doing Something in response to the energy crisis. The 1975–1976 Riviera was still nonetheless an enormous car with a tiny back seat. Road Test complained:
In a car with an overall length of 223 inches, you’d hope for some real sprawl-room in the back seat, but you’d be disappointed in the Rivvie. The rear seat area is wide, but legroom is remarkably limited for such a huge car, even with the driver and passenger scrunched forward. The trunk, at 15.1 cubic feet, is a wide, flat rectangular prism not too well suited to carrying big, bulky items.
Obviously, people shopping for cars like these were prepared to make significant sacrifices in interior space for style. (Anyone with Riviera money who wanted space could certainly afford an Electra 225 instead.) However, that did presuppose that the Riviera offered enough style to make up for the shortfalls in space, which was arguable.
Even so, the Road Test editors couldn’t bring themselves to do too much number-crunching consumer analysis:
But even when you try to be strictly consumerist about the Riviera, you can’t help but feel like you’re kicking a dog when it’s down. The same day we picked up the car from the distributor we passed a ‘67 Rivvie on the highway and were astounded at the grace and sheer style of the older car. After nine years of exposure to the slings and dings of the outrageous real world, it still looked classy, and maybe more important, was smaller than the new car to boot. We wondered at our reaction (maybe we all just had a strange liking for older Rivieras) and began a concentrated program to see if anyone even recognized the car we were driving.
On the road, it simply blended in with everything else. People who would follow a Mark IV’s progress past us wouldn’t even look when we drove by. The car seemed to be no more attention-grabbing than the Caprice Classic we tested last year, which had to be the most invisible car we’ve ever driven. And every time we stopped and watched the reaction of people around the car, that feeling we had that it was invisible was reinforced.
Just to twist the knife, here’s a 1967 Riviera like the one they saw.
Road Test wasn’t arguing that the 1976 Riviera was a bad car, just a very bland one. The editors concluded:
Clearly, the last two years have seen the beginning of a trend to less personal cars, a trend brought home with great force by the blahness of the Riviera. Perhaps it is the price we are paying for the restrictions the feds have poured onto Detroit; perhaps the automakers can’t go on making individual models with specific identities because they need to amortize tooling costs more than ever. But if, as now seems likely, big cars are going to stay around, it would sure be great if they all didn’t have to feel exactly the same. ■
For its third and final year, production of this Riviera was back up to 20,082 units, but that was still less than the old boattail car.
The 1977–1978 Riviera seemingly embraced its destiny of becoming just a fancier LeSabre, although since it was based on the downsized and updated B-body line, it was a more competent driver’s car than before. Fortunately for Riviera fans, this turned out to be a temporary fix while Buick awaited the all-new, further downsized FWD 1979 Riviera, which had the panache and pizzazz that its two predecessors had so desperately lacked. Its stylistic flair was amply rewarded: The 1979–1985 car was a big hit, the bestselling Riviera ever.
When the magazine first launched in the mid-1960s, Road Test had an amateurish quality to their editing, with lots of sloppy editorial errors. (Since they didn’t accept advertising, they didn’t have the budget that magazines like Car and Driver or Motor Trend boasted.) By this time, they had cleaned up their act, and their specifications and test data were about as reliable as any of the magazines of the time.
Incidentally, there’s a minor discrepancy in the dimensions of the Riviera, which seems to have been Buick’s doing rather than the magazine’s. The 1976 Buick brochure listed the overall length of the Riviera as 218.6 inches, but the trade publications and car magazines (including Road Test) listed 223.0 inches. I don’t have the MVMA specifications for this car, but I think the source of the discrepancy was the rear bumper guards, which were technically optional. The front bumper guards were standard, but the rear ones were not. Obviously, the extra length of the bumper guards had no bearing on interior space or driving manners.
The Road Test data panel supports their comments about the unexceptional nature of this Riviera’s performance: 0 to 60 mph in 12.2 seconds was adequate, but it wasn’t great, especially for a 455 cid engine. Granted, lower compression and mid-’70s emissions controls had trimmed its claws to 205 net hp, and Buick had saddled it with a tall 2.56 axle ratio in pursuit of better gas mileage, but getting only 27.7 hp/liter and (barely) 14.5 mpg made it seem like a weak compromise. The 1977 car used the Buick 350 cid V-8 or the Olds 403 instead of the 455, but performed better than the ’76 because it weighed less.
As Road Test suggested, it’s hard to summon any very strong feelings about this Riviera, pro or con. If this were a LeSabre coupe, that would have been fine — LeSabre buyers didn’t expect their cars to be scintillating. However, the Riviera was a much more expensive car (you could have a very well-equipped LeSabre Custom for the price of a minimally optioned Riviera), intended to compete in a class full of hey-look-at-me alternatives. In that league, the 1974–1976 Riviera just didn’t rate, even if you could set aside your memories of how much more stylish it had previously been.
Related Reading
1973 Buick Riviera: A Slightly Toned-Down, Two-Owner Boattail (by Aaron65)
Curbside Capsule: 1977-78 Buick Riviera – The Placeholder (by William Stopford)
The Cars Of GM Designer Wayne Kady – An Obsession With Slantbacks And Bustlebacks (by Paul N)
Vintage R/T Review: 1979 Buick Riviera S Type – The “S” Stands For “Sharp,” Not “Sporty” (by me)
1985 Buick Riviera – The Last Great Riviera (And The Last One That Really Sold) (by me)
I actually think these look really good, especially with the Buick Road Wheels.
In fairness, every Buick looks better with the Buick road wheels!
>>Road Test tried the bustleback ’76 Riviera and found it an undistinguished big coupe that seemed to have suffered “a detuning of the personality.”<<
This car has ten times more "personality" than any SUV, CUV or truck you can buy today.
But you couldn’t buy one of those in ’76, and big cars spammed the roads just as those do now. Its’ personality is that of a survivor from a bygone era, which by definition it wasn’t when Road Test took out a new one on streets filled with GM B-bodies and their Fomoco and Mopar equivalents.
1975 was the first year Subaru sold their 4wd wagon in America (complete with international-type slim chrome bumpers since NHTSA classed it as a “light truck”!) and that would’ve had buckets more character than the same year Riv.
This comment makes me wish we could upvote comments!
+2
Actually I was going to say it reminds me of every SUV made today, all the fun elements that made SUVs grow in popularity(removable roofs, graphics, actual off-road capability, actual ruggedness etc) are all but supplanted for bland greyscale fixed roof 4 doors which are in the crossover end of things are just taller uglier hatchback cars. That’s what this Riviera is to full size cars in the 70s, it blends right in with the noise the same way the current Chevy Blazer just blends in with the noise.
Victory is claimed by all, failure to one alone.
I am no fan of Kady and I think the 1974 Riviera is a very bad design, but my understanding of what happened behind the scenes is that Mays wanted the boattail gone, and it was Mitchell who assigned Kady to Buick.
Kady had a very tough job as he was mandated by management (Mays) the use of certain body panels of the other E bodies; and anyways, Mitchell approved the final design, as much as he might have considered himsel forced to do so.
All in all, an institutional failure and an egregious example of the Malaise era of car design, in my opinion.
And somehow they moved Kady back to Cadillac, giving us other deadly sins…
Oh, yeah, there’s no question about that. That wasn’t Kady’s doing, nor were the obvious budget limitations. The sharing that I think hurt most from a design standpoint was the commonality with the B-body, which had been due in part to Mays and in part to Ed Cole wanting to cut production costs on the E-body cars with greater commonality with the B-bodies. The problem is that without the boattail, there was no longer anything to make the Riviera not look like just a LeSabre hardtop with a different necktie.
The 1974-76 Riviera is THE poster child for ugly mid-seventies cars. It ties with the Aztek for GM’s “Most Ugliest Car” award. It’s not surprising sales numbers dropped significantly after the boattail Riv. Lessons could have been learned from that ugly back end when it came to the 1980 Seville design. Only thing an ugly car like that is good for is in a demolition derby.
Take the tail off the boattail and all you’re left with is a boat.
It would have solved absolutely none of its ills but Buick should have made the switch to FWD UPP right here and now to at least give the Riviera *some* gimmick/purpose for it in the lineup. As it is I can’t say anymore than what’s already written, I agree with all of it, this was textbook enshittification before there was a word for it.
Say what you will, this car has tons more presence than the ’77 – ’78.
The 1976 was a far cry from my 1972 Silver Arrow IV (mild custom). Dramatic to Generic.
Excellent contribution as usual from Mr. Severnson. The mid 70’s was a tough time for stylists who had government regulations to deal with as well as shifting market expectations due to the shocking price jump for gaosoline brought on by the oil embargo.
To my eye, the Riviera of this era has too many styling elements searching for attention rather than working together to come up with a pleasing overall design.
Still looks sharp to me .
Kinda porky at nearly 5,000 pounds but it’s a _BUICK_ so it needn’t be small nor light .
-Nate
I agree, Nate. I always hated the roofline of the 2 door LeSabre of 1974-76, and considered this a far better looking big 2 door Buick from the get-go. I still think so.
That said, I don’t think it made a very good Riviera because it lacked that special something that had always distinguished the Riv from other cars, be they Buicks or otherwise.
For a moment I thought this was a Caprice based on the lead picture and how the front clip appears based on the angle of the shot. Only the wheels said no right away.
I’m probably the odd man out here, but I’ve always liked these Rivs from the late 70’s more than the boattail Rivs. Yes, they looked similar to the LeSabre, but that wasn’t a bad thing to me. I think my favorite Riv’s were the 1979 to 1985, then this model. But I also liked the 1989 to 1994’s a lot and even the last gen was nice in the right colors.
I remember reading this article when it first appeared. The magazine also tested an Oldsmobile Toronado that year, and came to the same conclusion. It really wasn’t all that special compared to other large Detroit cars (even with the front-wheel-drive format).
The big GM personal luxury coupes looked too bloated. The Colonnade personal luxury coupes were better looking, while the Lincoln Continental Mark IV and V managed to be more appealing, even if it was also very large.
The downsized and revamped 1979 E-bodies were much more attractive and better performing on the road.
Not a bad looking car if the half vinyl top was left out, that just looks stupid a real landau was something faking one just makes it look cheap
I am also an odd man out. I like the rear treatment of the Riveria. The bustle back is pretty restrained, not like the later Cadillac Seville. What I don’t get is the front: it doesn’t seem to jive with the rest of the car.
How far have we come? Well, instead of having huge 4800 lb “personal luxury cars” that get 14 MPG, we have huge 4800 pound SUVs that get 17 MPG.
Some people quit smoking dope and start drinking thinking that they’ve scored a victory.
It wasn’t THAT forgettable — it served as the inspiration for the Willard Idaho in the Grand Theft Auto series
This was my personal introduction to it, way back when I first played Grand Theft Auto III, I had no idea what it was until I saw a genuine 74-76 Riviara. It honestly looks like a video game amalgamation of a “70s car” only a video game designer would create yet it’s actually remarkably faithful to the design. I do recall it being uncharacteristically slow and ill handling in the video game which is remarkable considering box trucks barely handle any different than sports cars in those old GTAs.
I love most of the big 70s coupes but these never really appealled to me. I couldn’t see choosing the Riviera over the much better looking and nicer driving Regal or Century that was sitting next to it on the dealers lot for thousands less. Even the LeSabre and Electra coupes looked better IMO.
These actually resembled the Electra coupe more than the LeSabre coupe, with the latter having an extra side window around the B pillar the Riviera and Electra didn’t have, as well as the fancier inner door trim and full-length armrests from the Electra. But the Riviera was utterly redundant, unless there were sizable numbers of buyers who thought the Electra would be perfect if only they shortened the rear seat area by a few inches. I don’t mind the styling of the ’74-76 Riv, though I find the proportions off with the front half of the car being too long to match the shorter rear half. I’ll give the design team credit though for completely revamping the boattail Riviera’s looks while keeping many body panels the same. I didn’t notice for a long time that the ’74 doors, front fenders, and hood were the same as the ’73’s (I think).
“Meh”.
+1. I was really into cars when these were new. I remember the boat tail Rivs. Yet not a single memory of this model. I may not have even been aware they were still being made after the demise of the boat tail.
I can remember I had the exact same take when these first came out – “What’s that?”
I was kind’a indifferent to the boat-tail – didn’t think it looked too bad, and it was certainly distinctive.
I always thought the 66 model designed by the late Dave Holls was somewhat overlooked and under-appreciated because of the iconic nature of the first gen car. Then GM just “uglied it up” in subsequent years – the 70 model is atrocious.
I think the 66-67 is criminally underrated as a design. Only fault in it is that the mostly similar 68-70 designs watered it down if not ruined it but I think in the purest form they’re either every bit as beautiful as the universally praised 63-65s, and every bit as expressive as the Boattail.
I actually stare your indifference to the boattail. I mostly defend it on the basis that it was a bold expressive gamble that you rarely see in the industry, hell I’ll even defend the likes of the Cybertruck on the same grounds because I can respect it breaking from the same old shapes and expectations of everything, even if the result is grotesque (mind you the boat tail is a masterpiece by comparison to that literal dumpster). The Boattail may have been a fail in the expectations for Riviera but it’s certainly a memorable car, these 74-76s however look like what there: a corporate spanking to artistic expression… and in the grand scheme one that was even less commercially successful than the design it was desperately trying to push away.
It seems to have been a particular GM styling trait in those days, to go from one extreme to the other. Deeply curved thick bodysides falling from favour? Let’s go to the sheer look! Semi-fastback rear windshields a bit passé? To the formal look. Polar opposites.
If the boattail was one extreme of Riviera, this was pretty much the other.
Superficially it looks generic, and disappointingly so. The bustle isn’t immediately obvious as being a bustle, not like the Seville’s treatment. It just looks…odd. It certainly brought the Riviera into the GM style mainstream – to the point where it became ‘which Buick is this?’.
But the Riviera had always been distinctively sporty in looks; the first gen was almost European – this is not. Not even remotely. It just looks like a big, almost-nondescript obviously-American coupe. The dropping front fender line fades out to nothing in front of the rear wheel. The window line drops down to just above the rear bumper – no reason, it just does. The bustle sits above this looking like an afterthought, almost like a pimple on a pumpkin.
I can see what Kady was trying to do, but none of his ideas ‘work’ for me.
Maybe not exactly a straight line, but pretty close. Every Riveria since it’s into in ’63 looked worse than the previous year. First gen looked great! And then downhill it went. The chopped off slowback roofline on the one that followed this one is even worse, the rounded ones in the 90s did nobody any favors and little wonder they just folded the line.
But everyone likes the early ones, except I guess the people at Buick, then at least.
“if Volvo, Peugeot, Mazda and Mercedes can build strong doors that sound good, why can’t GM?”
The sound (and feel) of the doors on those 1971-76 GM B body (and C body) cars was just horrible. For my entire life up through 1970, there was one given in life – opening and closing the door of a big GM car was a highly satisfying experience. For 1971 that was just gone. The door handle felt thin and flimsy, and closing it resulted in a big “FLUMP” sound. And usually required two tries because it wouldn’t close all the way until you slammed it harder. The 1977 redesign didn’t do anything about the flimsy-feeling handle, but it was acres better than the 1971-76 version.
I think FoMoCo was the champion of the door experience in the 1970’s. The hardware felt great and the car felt incredibly solid when you closed the door. Ford got a lot wrong in that decade, but this was one thing they nailed.
Lovely looking car. IMHO, it’s the best looking Buick Riviera since the 1966-69 Riviera years.
I was age 24 in late 1975, and looking to get a new 1976 something. It came down to two very different new cars I loved at first sight. The first was a Jaguar XJ6 two door coupe that I remember that just felt right when I test drove one. The other was an Eldorado convertible that I didn’t test drive and ordered because I wanted a convertible. Loved that Eldo for ten years and would consider buying another 1976 convertible without hesitation.
I had no issue with big cars during that era, as I had much experience driving a 1972 Mark IV and a 1975 Imperial. Regarding Riviera’s the 1963-65 & 1966-67 models were beautiful, then and now. I am also a fan of the 1971-72 Boattail Riviera’s (before the big bumpers). I agree with the quote in this article, “the Caprice Classic we tested last year, which had to be the most invisible car we’ve ever driven. And every time we stopped and watched the reaction of people around the car, that feeling we had that it was invisible was reinforced. ” I agree the 1976 Riviera was invisible. I must have seen one or two back in the day but have no memory of it, registered zero in my memory. Sad how GM could go from beautifully styled, upscale two door personal luxury coupes to non-descript generic autos in ten years.
I finally did get a Riviera, a 1998 model in Pearl White. Loved that car and still have sellers remorse.
Adjusted for inflation, this car cost about as much as a loaded Honda Passport Trailsport Elite. I would take one of those instead. To be fair, the regulators were demanding things that the manufacturers couldn’t deliver without massively compromising their products in 1976, but this car combined glutinous fuel consumption with lethargic performance while stretching out to 223 inches without offering the benefit of a livable back seat. There’s a reason that CUVs have sold strongly longer than silly fads like PLCs, and it has something to do with how well they actually provide transportation in our world of poorly maintained roads and aging new car buyers.
Curb weight, lbs………………………………………..4810
Cripes almighty! The 1979 Riviera dropped 1000lbs compared to this fatty.