The Buick Wildcat had established itself as Buick’s big performance car of the sixties. It had been available with a hot dual quad V8 and four speed floor shift, although most of them were not quite that gnarly. But the times they were a changing, and for 1971, Buick replaced the Wildcat with the Centurion. It was intended to convey a more understated aura of performance and sportiness for a new era of smog controls and changing priorities. Road Test Magazine tested one, and although it was reasonably brisk for 1971, despite its larger 455 cubic inch V8 it was almost three seconds slower to 60 mph than one of those gnarly ’64s.
The Wildcat had been replaced by the Mildcat.
Right out of the gate, Road Test noted the Centurion’s positioning as the “sportiest” of the big Buicks. Not that you’d realize it from looking at the car, however—it was simply a handsome full-sized 4-door. GM deserved credit for making their new “fuselage-type” designs for 1971 look smaller than they actually were—in sharp contrast to Chrysler’s Fuselage offerings that unfortunately looked even more gargantuan than their dimensions would dictate. The excellent styling was proof, once again, of the talent of Bill Mitchell and his teams in GM design.
Buick engineers had done their homework with the Centurion. According to Road Test, cornering capabilities were impressive for such a big car, though there was a bit of deterioration in ride isolation due to the suspension set-up. That fact alone made the Centurion a bit of an odd choice for the Buick brand, since the company’s hallmark for decades had been riding comfort. Too bad that Pontiac, which still had some credibility as GM’s “performance” division in the early 1970s, didn’t see fit to make this sort of suspension set-up standard on all its big cars—it would certainly have been a better fit from a brand imagery standpoint.
Weaknesses for the Centurion were typical for full-sized cars at the time: horrific fuel economy and unimpressive braking performance. Road Test noted an average of 9 miles-per-gallon around town during their test period. Even in the era of “cheap” 36¢-per-gallon regular gas ($2.17 adjusted), the fuel economy would have been painful to bear: filling the Centurion’s 25-gallon fuel tank would have cost $9.00 ($54.25 adjusted) and would have been required every 225 miles or so. Well, at least the engine was smooth and powerful, as befitting a Buick… While stopping ability overall was rated as “good,” the Centurion was critiqued for brake fade after repeated hard stops.
Inside the Centurion skewed more “Buick” than “sport” with a cloth-and-vinyl notchback bench seat, plenty of chrome and fake wood trim and no gauges available beyond the speedometer and fuel level. Fairly comical was the lack of interior storage space and a relatively small trunk (17 cubic feet of capacity), given the overall extra-large size of the Centurion.
When packed with options like the test car, the price for the Centurion was $6,678 ($40,167 adjusted), putting it into competition with cars like the Electra 225 Custom, which were considered to be in the “luxury” class. Conversely, the nearly identical-looking LeSabre with the optional 455 V8 and Turbo-Hydramatic could be had for $135 less ($806 adjusted).
There was nothing in the rankings that was especially exemplary: the car was rated as “good” overall. Not bad, but not a reason to buy either, especially given the price. So the Centurion looked like the cheaper big Buick, was priced like the more luxurious big Buick, and offered relatively impressive handling capabilities from a brand never noted for that attribute. Little wonder then that the Centurion never found its niche…
Related CC reading:
Vintage Car Life Road Test: 1964 Buick Wildcat with 425 V8, Dual Quad Carbs and 4-Speed Manual – More Carbs and Gears Are Not Necessarily Better by PN
Car Show Classic: 1973 Buick Centurion – When Sportier Cars Are Built, Buick Will Build Them by W. Stopford
Car Show Classic: 1972 Buick Centurion Convertible – Flint’s Early ’70s Full-Size Sporty Droptop, In Chile by R. Baron
I remember once an article from Collectible Automobile about the 1971-76 Buick published in 2006, there was a photo of an clay model showing they was once toyed the possibility of a 1971 Wildcat before they changed their minds.
American manufacturers seemed to love the idea of 3 trim levels. And it always seemed to be the middle one that never did as well as the others. Buick’s Invicta had been a weak player. The same with Chrysler’s Newport Custom. Customers either moved up to the basic model (which seemed plenty nice) or they splurged on the top one.
I thought Centurion was a great name.
3 is a magic number in marketing. It gives the salesperson greater flexibility in manipulating a buy into making a choice. Do you like a, b or c Mr. Buyer?
Mr. Buyer will rarely say he does not like any of them.
Yup 3 trim levels was very common on the full size lines from many brands. At Buick it seems the middle child was by far the least popular. That may be due to the fact that it was the “sporty” version and Buick buyers weren’t typically looking for sporty.
Meanwhile over at the Chevy store the middle child was often quite popular and probably the #1 seller in many years. I’m guessing some of that is that the base models were really spartan and geared to fleets, not retail buyers and that middle child was stocked deep on the lots.
It would be interesting to see a break down of the full size models relative take rate between the brands and price classes. It seems like Ford also did some good business with their middle child, I suspect for same reasons it happened at the Chevy store.
Cheap skates and fleets of course, seemed to be the only buyers going for the lowest rung of the “low price 3” while retail buyers mainly went for the middle rung and if they were looking to spend a little more, and stepping into the base model in the mid-price field was often the step up from the middle market low price class.
The modern version is of course pickups only now they have a lot more than 3 trim levels, and like their low priced 3 car predecessors the middle levels are the most popular.
In the ’60s and ’70s, there were usually more than three. Chevrolet had the Biscayne, Bel Air, Impala, and Caprice, for instance, and the Impala was by far the biggest seller of the four. Likewise the Cadillac De Ville.
Many segmented the individual series, too — in 1971, the full-size Buick technically had five series, since the LeSabre and Electra 225 had standard and Custom versions. (There was also the Electra 225 Custom Limited, but I think in ’71, the Limited was still an option package rather than a trim series.)
The Wildcat had done quite well in the mid-’60s, but at a glance, it looks like its sales didn’t recover after 1967 (which had been a bad year for the whole industry), perhaps in part because it ended up not being that much different from a LeSabre except that the 455 was standard.
Chevy was the outlier with that period where the Caprice had been introduced on the top and the Biscayne didn’t fall off the bottom immediately.
In 1971 3 was the most common number of Model names for full size vehicles from the big 3.
Catalina, Boneville, Grand Ville
LeSabre, Centurion, Electra
Calais, DeVille, Fleetwood (Since Coupe and Sedan is more to denote 2dr vs 4dr)
Custom 500, Galaxie 500, LTD
Delta 88, Ninety-Eight
Monterey, Marquis
Polara, Monaco
Fury (though they did sell them as l, ll, and lll.)
Continental
Yes there were some 1/2 steps like the Custom used by Buick, Mercury, Chrylser and Dodge or Brougham as used by Dodge, Chrysler, Mercury, and Pontiac. I consider those half steps since they were a mostly generic term used by all 3 MFGs (other than the Ford Custom 500) as they still used the same grille and taillight treatments as the non-suffix versions.
I can give Olds a pass into 3 models with the Delta 88 Royale, since it did get a different grille from the standard Delta 88 and was positioned similarly to the Centurion as a “sporty” model and not just some extra trim and/or fancier interior as found on those “custom” and “brougham” packages.
Chrysler is a unique case since they folded the Imperial brand into the top Chrysler model so yes they also had 4 when added to 1970’s Newport, 300 and New Yorker. For 1972 the 300 went away and they were back to 3.
Kudos! This car looks exactly like what we Europeans imagine and want an American car to look like.
Ship the mine with dark green metallic paint work and tan upholsetry, please. Well, and – of course – with a vinyl roof.
and would have been required [a fill-up] every 225 miles or so.
That’s a fascinating stat considering that one of the major issues with many of today’s EVs is a low range. Of course, a stop to charge an EV’s battery is going to take substantially longer than an ICE vehicle, too.
The Centurion was the last gasp of the full-size, high-performance road car that began with the 1955 Chrysler C-300. There was also the lower-tier Plymouth Sport Fury GT which, like the 300, last year was 1971 (same as the first year for the Centurion). Ford’s final entrant in the category was the 1970 Mercury Marauder X-100.
By the Centurion’s final year in 1973, the base engine was down to the 350 (fuel mileage was probably a bit better). Didn’t help sales any, and the Centurion would be history for the next year. The latest fad in cars had mostly transitioned completely away from performance to the PLC / brougham era of the seventies.
Kind of amazing that with 315 net bhp and 450 lb-ft of torque, it could only manage 0-60 in 10.3 seconds. That’s plenty for most practical purposes, but not really high performance. Not worth the 9 mpg, to me, at least.
The 315 hp rating was still gross in 1971, as noted on the specs page. They mention in the article that the test car had dual exhaust, which was listed at 330 gross hp. The net ratings were 225 and 250 respectively in 1972.
I posted a photo of my neighbor’s 455 Centurion as an Outtake a while back. It gets driven occasionally but mostly sits curbside. At 9 mpg I can see why.
A Buick and I just passed a pristine 69 Skylark on Highway 680. Blue but with new CA plates starting in 9. My stick shift precludes getting a photo. Last time I saw a Centurion has to be in the 70s.
My rusty brain recalls that the 1971 GM full size cars “boasted” a new front suspension geometry that was said to have made them track better in a straight line. This was supposedly done by altering the camber change with wheel travel. Theoretically the positive vs. negative camber change was reversed from what was “traditional” and would theoretically result in more understeer. Most magazine reviewers ignored the change, though a few noted it and said that in cornering, the cars leaned so much in turns, it didn’t really make much difference.
I can find no mention of this change on the Web.
You’re remembering right, but it started a bit earlier than 1971: It was introduced for 1969 by Buick, which called it Accu-Drive. Some 1969 magazine reviews talked about it a bit, in particular Car Life, and there was a 1969 SAE paper describing the mechanics. It said:
Not a 1971 model, but Bud Lindemann and his team of Car & Track tested a 1972 Centurion.
Thanks for posting this, I love the old Car and Track reviews. The introduction on this one is particularly good.