I was saddened to learn this past Monday that a friend of mine, Kevin Campbell, passed away last week. He was one of my online Brougham compadres. We could comment or message back and forth about Cadillacs, Lincolns and Buicks easily-and frequently.
Kevin was someone I met through Facebook, on the various Cadillac and Lincoln groups, like the American Brougham Society headed by Dave Smith, and the 1970’s Great American Land Yacht group. Over the years he’d owned many different U.S. luxury cars. But he was a major Buick fan, and daily drove a 1995 Buick Roadmaster.
He also had a treasure trove of ’70s-’90s Buick, Pontiac, Olds, Lincoln and Cadillac pictures, rivaling your author’s “Vault” for total picture count. And he knew everything about B-body, C-Body and D-Body GM full-size cars.
He was an admin on several FB GM groups as well. One of the cars from his digital vault was this showroom new G-body ’83 Bonneville Brougham-with leather.
Kevin’s 1975 Buick Electra Park Avenue
His first luxury car was a 1975 Electra Park Avenue. As he told me some time ago, “Originally the exterior was dark blue w/ matching top, had been repainted & slick-topped before I acquired it.”
Not Kevin’s car, but his had an identical interior, including the center console
For those not in the know, the 1975-76 Park Avenue was, for all intents and purposes, a Buick version of the Cadillac Talisman. It had a very similar velour bomb interior of Broughamtastic proportions. So decadent, a Kia Rio would blow up from sheer overload if one was parked nearby.
But when I first got to know him, the Roadmaster was his pride and joy. He just loved to cruise in it. He also loved car shows and car cruise nights as much as I did, and posted hundreds of pictures on his home page. Two of those show cars he graciously allowed me to use for two columns. Those two, a 1977 New Yorker St. Regis coupe and a 1973 New Yorker Brougham four-door hardtop, were suitably huge and imposing.
He was a good guy. We never met, as he lived in Nova Scotia, but I’ll miss him. Godspeed, Kevin.