1963 Buick Riviera Base Hardtop 2-door 6.6l on 2040-cars

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Buick version of Equinox/Terrain CUV spied testing... with autonomous gear?

Let's get the most pressing bits of this story out of the way right off the bat: What we see here appears to be a new compact crossover from Buick. According to the spy photographer, this machine may be a little bit smaller on the outside than the current Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain 'utes, which makes sense since recent rumors suggest GM's small crossovers will migrate to a new platform that will mark a convergence between the automaker's Delta (Chevy Cruze, Buick Verano) and Theta (Equinox, Terrain) platforms. This Buick would likely use this new D2UX platform.
We've been expecting Buick to unleash a crossover to slot between the very small Encore and the very large Enclave, and various rumors have indicated that the model may be known as either the Anthem or Envision. It's worth mentioning that Buick had planned, back in 2009, to release a vehicle in the compact CUV market, but abandoned those plans after a particularly poor reception.
And now for something completely different... Take another look at the spy shots above, and pay special attention to the cylindrical device mounted to the vehicle's roof. We can't say for sure what it is, but our spy photographer opines that it looks quite a bit like the 360-degree Lidar camera equipment used by Google for its autonomous cars. Is General Motors working with Google on autonomous car technology? We don't know, but you can definitely consider us intrigued.

Junkyard Gem: 1957 Buick Special Riviera Sedan

While I find plenty of 1950s Detroit cars in quick-inventory-turnover self-service wrecking yards during my travels, they tend to be the ordinary post sedans that were built by the millions during the heyday of the three-on-the-tree manual transmission and nuclear-attack symbols on car radios. The more sought-after convertibles, coupes, and four-door hardtops are tougher to find in such yards, which makes today's 1957 Buick Special Riviera in a yard in northeastern Colorado an A-List Junkyard Gem. During the late 1950s, the Special ranked at the bottom of the Buick prestige hierarchy just below the more upscale Super and Century. Of course, this was the era of Alfred Sloan's "Ladder of Success" and the lowliest Special outranked even the nicest Olds Ninety-Eight on the Swank-O-Meter. If you were the Buick-driving Joneses and your neighbors had proletarian Chevrolets, aspirational Pontiacs, or petit-bourgeois Oldsmobiles, they were failing to keep up with you… but then you'd see a new Cadillac and feel intense envy for your victorious rival. The Ladder of Success collapsed later on, when the top-trim-level Chevy Caprices began to compete against their Cadillac Calais big brother, but it was still standing tall in 1957. The Riviera name ended up being used for its own distinct model starting in 1963 and continuing nearly into our current century, but in 1957 it was a trim level designation, used to indicate a Century or Special sedan with the then-radical pillarless hardtop design. This car listed at $2,780, which comes to a cool $27,630 in 2021 dollars. That price included the 364-cubic-inch (6.0-liter) Buick Nailhead V8 engine, rated at 250 horsepower and enough torque to peel 1957's rock-hard bias-ply tires right off their rims. The Special had a three-on-the-tree column-shift manual as standard equipment, but the original buyer of this car sprang for the extra $220 ($2,185 today) to get the Dynaflow transmission. While the shift indicator looks just like the ones on GM cars equipped with the two-speed Powerglide, the Dynaflow was an odd beast used only in Buicks; while it had gears for two forward speeds, the driver had to select low gear manually. Otherwise, a complex torque converter rig provided an experience something like today's CVTs (though with better smoothness and much more wasted power), in which the car stayed in high gear all the time and used the torque converter to multiply as needed.

2019 Buick Regal GS Review | Because Buicks are allowed to be cool, too

Buick continues to try to convince everyone that its cars are cool, but we still haven't seen much evidence of this working. However, the 2019 Buick Regal GS is exactly the car that can help change people's minds about Buick in 2019. It has big red Brembos sitting inside superbly stylish wheels, bright red GS emblems everywhere, aggressive bodywork and some of the best sport seats in any car today. Buick truly made the GS look the part, and if you can get past the brand's Wal-Mart greeter personality, you're going to like the way it drives, too. The Regal GS is powered by GM's 3.6-liter V6 that makes a healthy 310 horsepower and 282 pound-feet of torque in this application. That gets mated to a nine-speed automatic transmission, which is the only option for the GS this time around. The previous generation Regal GS offered a six-speed manual, but we weren't missing it too badly here. With seemingly every car under the sun going the turbocharged route, it was refreshing to see GM use a big, naturally aspirated V6. Even stranger was that the Regal GS before this one was boosted, so you could say GM went the opposite direction of the industry trend. That previous GS made 270 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque from its turbocharged 2.0-liter four cylinder. So, while the V6 beats it by 40 horsepower, the old GS has it by 13 measly pound-feet of torque. Still, we dig the V6, because this car's power delivery is fantastic with a snarly but restrained exhaust note to go with. My largest quibble is taking off from a stop. The GS's throttle response is a little numb from the get-go, but put any revs to it and the car is ready to leap forward at any speed. This immediacy is increased when you put it into "GS" mode, which sharpens up the throttle, quickens shifts, stiffens the suspension, sends more power to the rear wheels and makes the steering heavier. The nine-speed is seamless and unobtrusive in traffic, but offers up surprisingly quick shifts when you're flat-out. Most of the time I end up ignoring the paddle shifters on cars with torque converter automatics, so I wasn't exactly missing them here. You can select the gears via the gear lever's slapstick function if you really want to, but it's hardly more engaging than just letting the car go at it. In GS mode it holds gears long enough and resists shifting out of the power band. During fall-attack on a backroad, it works smart and is on-par with the eight-speed in our Stinger GT long-termer.