Malaise Era Junkyard Gem: 1979 Buick Electra Limited

Wed, Jun 22 2016

In the fall of 1973, the Arab members of OPEC shut off the oil taps, and Detroit got busy making many of their full-sized land yachts a lot smaller. By model year 1977, the downsized fifth-generation Buick Electra was ready to go ... just in time for the 1979 Iranian Revolution to squeeze the supply of the black stuff even further. You won't see many of the 1977-85 Electras these days, but I spotted this faded but solid '79 Limited sedan in a Denver self-service yard last week.

General Motors must have bought up the entire world's supply of blue velour around this time, because you'll see this stuff in just about every car they made for the following decade or so.

By this time, GM was doing a lot of mixing-and-matching with engines from its various divisions, which meant you could buy an Oldsmobile 88 with a Chevrolet 350 V8 engine, a Chevrolet Monza with a Buick 231 V6 engine, or— as in this caseÂ— a Buick Electra with an Oldsmobile 350 V8 engine. Do you want to know how many horses this engine delivered to this 3,631-pound car?

155 horsepower out of 5.7 liters of engine displacement. Times were tough during the Malaise Era.

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malaise era

By Murilee Martin