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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.

2022 Buick Enclave Review | More style and features doesn't mean better

The Buick Enclave has been updated for 2022, and it delivers some added style and additional features, it also doesn't do anything to lift Buick's three-row SUV beyond average for the segment. For the most part, the 2022 Buick Enclave is the same as it was when this generation launched for the 2018 model year. On the plus side, it has a powerful V6 and a smooth transmission. The cabin is incredibly spacious, and additional standard safety features are certainly welcome. The base price is also quite low for three-row premium SUVs at just under $44,000. Where this biggest of Buicks falls short is in the finer details. The engine isn't well isolated, allowing coarseness into the cabin. The cabin also doesn't rise to the level of Lincoln, Acura, Infiniti and Volvo -- brands that aren't exactly the upper crust of luxury, but certainly beyond Ford, Chevy or Honda. For instance, while its controls are easy-to-use, the buttons and knobs feel low rent and are obviously shared with cheaper GM models. There isn't anything that makes it particularly stand out from the competition, either. So while the Enclave is spacious, affordable and decent enough to drive, we think there are nicer options wearing luxury badges as well as vehicles like the Kia Telluride and Hyundai Palisade that surpass it in their uppermost trim levels.  Interior & Technology | Passenger & Cargo Space | Performance & Fuel Economy What it's like to drive | Pricing & Features | Crash Ratings & Safety Features What's new for 2022? The Enclave gets a variety of small updates mainly consisting of styling changes and feature additions. The exterior features new front and rear designs with new LED lighting front and rear. New wheel designs and exterior colors are also available. Inside, it's nearly identical to last year's model except for a new steering wheel, new push-button shifter and updated seat designs. A variety of other features have been added either as standard or as options such as a wireless phone charger, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a power sunshade for the rear sunroof, a front camera, head-up display, rear-pedestrian alert, adaptive cruise control, rear camera mirror and surround view camera. Furthermore, lane-keep assist, blind-spot monitoring, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, rear cross-traffic alert and automatic headlights are now standard. What are the Enclave interior and in-car technology like?

Junkyard Gem: 1973 Buick LeSabre Custom Hardtop Sedan

The steps on Alfred Sloan's "Ladder of Success," in which you'd start your career by buying a Chevrolet and then move up through the GM marques as your wealth increased, stayed rigidly fixed from the 1930s into the late 1960s. By the early 1970s, though, "prestige creep" among The General's divisions had set in, with lower-zoot marques leapfrogging their betters with ballooning price tags and snob appeal; a fully-loaded Chevy Caprice could cost more than an Olds 98, a Pontiac Bonneville could out-snoot a Buick LeSabre, and the LeSabre itself came to threaten mighty Cadillac at the top of the GM pyramid. Here's a fully depreciated '73 LeSabre Custom Hardtop Sedan, once the picture of Malaise Era opulence but now brought down to earth in a San Jose self-service car graveyard. The high-rollingest of all LeSabres in 1973 was the Custom (though shoppers for full-sized 1973 Buicks really wishing to rub the noses of their lessers in their success could opt for the even pricier Centurion or Electra 225), and that's what I found among the Achievas and Cateras of this yard's GM section. Wasps now nest in the rust holes caused by rainwater seeping beneath the padded vinyl roof, but this car once told the world, "I've made it!" It went without saying that your big, comfy Detroit luxury sedan had a big, comfy front bench seat; let those frivolous rakehells in their Rivieras have their bucket seats. Believe it or not, a three-on-the-tree column-shift manual transmission was still standard equipment on the lower-level Buick Century in 1973, but all LeSabre buyers enjoyed two-pedal luxury that year. Some junkyard shopper grabbed the massive 455-cubic-inch (7.5-liter) V8 — rated at 225 horsepower, due to Nixon's stricter emissions standards and the switch from gross to net horsepower ratings — before I got here. I'm guessing this car got driven into the ground by the early 2000s (there's a 2001 calendar inside) and then spent the next couple of decades bleaching in the harsh South Bay sun before arriving here. So good, shoppers bought them sight unseen!