1964 Buick Electra 225 4 Door Hard Top --- Project ----- No Reserve !!!!! on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: 1978 Buick Electra 225

The Buick Electra was a big, plush, dignified land yacht for the 1959 through 1976 model years, but certain events in the middle 1970s, coupled with increasing sales of imported cars, convinced The General that a weight-loss program would help Electra sales. For the 1977 model year, the big Buick became 11 inches shorter and shed close to 900 pounds. Sales took off. Most of these cars are gone now, but I was able to find this faded '78 in a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard a few weeks back. Just to be clear, the Buick Electra in the iconic Sir Mix-a-Lot video, My Hooptie, is a 1969 model. That car was much bigger and more powerful than today's Junkyard Gem. This car has the optional Oldsmobile 403-cubic-inch V8 engine under the hood, which was good for 185 horsepower and 320 pound-feet of torque. This is the same type of engine that was badged as a 6.6-liter plant in the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am of Smokey and the Bandit fame, and GM's mix-and-match games with engines from different divisions went on to cause great disgruntlement among buyers who wanted a Buick engine in a Buick. The silver-faced gauges were pretty cool-looking by late-1970s standards. The interior is standard-issue Detroit luxury car for the era: much vinyl, many molded-in fake stitches, plenty of not-trying-very-hard-to-look-real "wood." These cars rode very comfortably and looked sharp, so who cared if the interiors were plasticky? According to Glenn Ford, the '78 Electra carried on an ancient tradition of Buick luxury. Related Video:

2018 Buick Regal GS First Drive Review | More power, style and doors

During our test-drive of the 2018 Regal GS, Buick took us to Atlanta Motorsports Park and hired stunt drivers to teach us mild-mannered journalists how to do a J-turn. It's an emergency maneuver, also known as a Rockford, in which the car reverses at full speed, spins 180 degrees and takes off in the exact opposite direction from where it was headed. It symbolized perfectly Buick's hopes for the Regal GS, its most ambitious attempt yet at a bona fide American sports sedan. Buick is trying to shake off decades of stigma as a maker of grandpa-spec wafters. Since 2008, it has been rebadging the Opel Insignia, developed by GM's German subsidiary and built in Russelsheim, as the Regal. In 2012, Buick revived the Regal GS badge, providing power from a 2.0-liter turbo four, initially at 270 horsepower but then detuned to 259 hp in 2014 as AWD was introduced. Buick had high hopes of challenging the luxury greats, and while the previous Regal GS received good reviews as a genuine sports sedan, it never really caught on in the marketplace. Buick took a risk by redefining the brand, but ultimately, it wasn't quite successful enough to be uttered in the same breath as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus. The 2018 Regal GS doubles down on that lofty goal with a better-fleshed-out version of the outgoing car. It returns with improved styling and even more power, courtesy of a naturally aspirated 3.6-liter V6 generating 310 horsepower and 282 lb-ft of torque. In other words, the new GS is up 40 horses, but down 13 lb-ft with an engine that comes straight from the GM parts bin. Within GM, it is known as the "High Feature" engine, used in everything from Cadillacs to V6 Camaros to the GMC Acadia. Autoblog has knocked this engine on refinement but generally praised its power, so it's a mixed bag. On the Regal GS, though, the drivetrain exhibited a marked improvement on the refinement front. Buick spokesperson Stuart Fowle attributed this to the new nine-speed automatic it's mated to, a quick and smooth-shifting transmission well-programmed to keep the engine at optimal revs. The result deviates quite a bit from the Opel Insignia, which maxes out with a turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-four good for 197 horses and 300 lb-ft. With turbo 2.0-liter fours now the de facto entry-level engine for most luxury carmakers, having the 3.6-liter V6 makes the 2018 Regal GS more distinctive, a bit more American and less of a European copy-paste job than its predecessor.

2020 Chevy Trax and Buick Encore spied testing

We just recently saw a little crossover SUV from General Motors being tested, and we weren't positive what brand it belonged to. We narrowed it down to Chevy or GMC, but we're feeling more confident that it's a GMC now, since both the next generation Chevy Trax and Buick Encore subcompact crossover SUVs have been spied testing together. Of the two, the Chevy has the more radically different sheet metal. It ditches the somewhat frumpy, lumpy shape of the current Trax for a body inspired by the bigger Chevy Blazer. The roofline has sharp corners, and the hood is wide and flat. The front fascia, though obscured, shows the most connection to the bigger crossover. It has the same split headlight configuration, and it looks as though the grille takes up a sizable section of the fascia. View 7 Photos The Buick Encore on the other hand looks evolutionary in design. The body still has plenty of curves, and the distinctive, sharply rising window sill are all hallmarks of the current Encore design. The headlights and grille are similar, too, though the grille appears to be slightly updated to fit in with the Enclave and Regal. It's understandable that Buick might want to play it safe with the new Encore, since the model is Buick's best seller, selling about 23,000 units in the last quarter, nearly twice that of the next best performer, the Enclave. Since this is the first time we've seen these little crossovers, we expect it will still be a year or two before we get to see them fully revealed. They will probably continue to use small-displacement turbocharged four-cylinder engines with either front- or all-wheel drive. Related Video: