Note: Today’s Guest Post is by Jason Bagge, AKA The Brougham Whisperer, who most of you may recall from the many ’70s land yachts of his I’ve featured here at RG the past few years. -TK
Well-the ’74 New Yorker sold. Going to a collector in Florida who restores these back to original. Same guy who bought Chris’ 1976 Cadillac Calais in Idaho. So with that-here comes the ’73 455 2 door Buick Deuce and a quarter.
The car, upon arrival.
I’m going to change out the wheels and tires. Back to new whitewalls and hubcaps. I’m going to store the rallyes away with the original tires on them. Planning on going cruising with my Dad next weekend. The whole car is pretty gangster. It just has that vibe.
Began the paint blending-still need to do a second coat (it will get darker) but you get the idea. Started popping out a few small dents as well. I told ya this would look totally different by the end of the week-check out the two pics above. This car is dope and it’s going to get sicker.
It’s pretty funny when you are so used to the controls on the bottom-that I totally forgot about the door panel controls-and realized my ’73 Buick 225 2 door has 6 way power seats. Excellent.
Tune-up done, fuses changed-got all the controls working (now have a super hot heater), all the windows work (now have 2 door hardtop access and look), Buick is running great. Need to change the front brake pads and headlight-she’s road ready to drive anywhere.
I’ve been waiting to be able to go evening crusin’ with the heater on-and the windows down. Going 30 just chillin’.
The interior in the ’73 Buick 225 is coming together. That is a April 1973 Spokesman-Review newspaper sitting there on the front seat. Need to install the center ashtray and lighter still (which I have).
It won’t be mint-but it’s still going to turn heads when I roll by with the windows down and my Raybans on!
It is interesting that having two names with Electra and Deuce and a quarter so you could market the same car quite differently to different clienteles I wonder if the second name came from Buick marketing or the other side of the town during the earlier models second life there? I know it refers to the cars length but by 73 the style seemed to be playing into that vibe. Contrast to the same time period ad of a two door 98 with a pre coming out Clark Kent at the wheel and his young daughter sleeping in in a much more upscale interior. https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.a0c42cf7ac7ae32ce3b7cd107cb6d914?rik=c8Y3QYDK2nl5ow&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.adclassix.com%2fimages%2f74oldsregency98.jpg&ehk=URUS3v6U4tPuv68r6mCJ0ikQHCmdJqBrj0XWMBV1pGI%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0
Now the two name stuff is also happening with these political women who market themselves as conservatives who will actually fight to conserve but once they get in suddenly are you go girrl feminists that we already had enough of.
Jason, I wish you the best in getting top dollar for this nice car and I commend your efforts to preserve these artifacts of a better America.
1973 a better America? Well compared to 2021 I guess anything would be better but 1973 was hardly a high point in American history. After huge diplomatic breakthroughs with the USSR, China, and Vietnam, by 1973 Nixon was in big trouble due to a minor league break-in at the Watergate. In contrast, Trump was impeached twice for fake “crimes” and babbling Biden and his crack addict son are in in the pockets of China, Russia, and Big Tech and congress and the media are totally uninterested. In 1973 fuel lines were around the block as the Arabs punished the West for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war and fuel if you could get it was almost 60 cents per gallon, while in 2021 babbling Biden is doing everything in his power to make American dependent on oil from the middle-East and Russia and the random fluctuations of the wind. In 1973 America had just gone off the gold standard and the dollar was losing value by the second, and prices in general were shooting up while American industry was getting battered by Japanese and European competitors and OSHA and EPA regulators, while in 2021 babbling Biden is doing his best to destroy the value of the dollar with huge spending to put everyone on welfare as he sends the DOJ after phantom white supremacists at school board meetings. In 1973 Detroit was turning out 10 mpg land yachts such as the featured Electra, which would soon lead to the implementation of CAFE rules that would gut the profits of Detroit as they downsized into gutless small cars that drove consumers to higher quality/performing foreign cars or pickups and SUVs. In 2021 GM and Ford have become bit players in the global car market, while Chrysler is now French, and the Japanese and Germans build more cars in the US than what remains of the Big 3.
From a Leftist perspective, 1973 America was still 85% white and dominated by feminism thwarting patriarchy and traditional family values, gays were still largely in the closet, and busing and affirmative action had not yet achieved the erasure of the white-black gap in educational outcomes. In 2021 the Left has gotten everything they ever dreamed about in terms of control of the culture and public policy, Democrats control Congress and the White House and 99% of the federal bureaucracy, and yet they still criticize America for being patriarchal, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, and want to dismantle what little remains of Constitutionally protected freedoms, representative government, and free markets.
So yeah 1973 might have been a better America (except for fashion and hair styles), but it was still not a great America – for truly great America you would need to go back to the Eisenhower administration or ahead to the Reagan years.
Men, white, black, yellow, and red were still respected for doing the right thing and criticized for falling short. Women were respected as wives, and mothers, and as cooks and not so celebrated if they weren’t. Most things sold here were built and designed here and virtually all invented here.
You can argue rightly. that we spent too much on our non reciprocating “allies”, but so were the Soviets on their sponging loser allies so it evened out. If we in retrospect only gave one more F5 to South Vietnam or if the Soviets gave one more Mig 21 to Yemen said no one ever. Here or there.
The vast majority grew up in intact homes and even had siblings. The schools still taught reading, writing and arithmetic with in person same age socialization. Kids played with each other not their childish parents. The society was uniform enough that we watched the same TV and shaved with the same razors. The economy was not totally financialized, so if you wanted to get ahead, you built something and sold it, not fart around with stock options or crypto.
The fashions were questionable but polyester lasted forever and styles still existed and regularly changed.
Now we have no path toward fulfillment but can be barely occupied by phones you don’t talk on and solitary role playing games while awaiting the dawn of indifference. 1973 was better.
The 1973 cars like this especially. The designers sensed the society decline setting in and reacted by more formal outsides and relaxing insides and driving to cocoon the owner at least during his alone drive time. What else was there to do?
@ John ;
You’re weird but SR65 is insane.
Always blaming others for what he does & thinks .
I thought we were supposed to enjoy this HUGE land yacht .
I don’t want it but I’m certainly glad it survived and is being up fixed .
Nate
No doubt regarding my weirdness but I don’t think Stingray is insane. A lot of us with comfortable upbringings thought we had it all figured out in our youth and today struggle with what went wrong personally and more widely. Stingray sticks to what he was taught and and hopes a new implementation of it will go better. I instead look at what we used to do when things seemed better and think copy that. Not too different. Someone for whom their long ago youth was not so rosy will naturally have a different perspective, especially when their today is the best they have had it. Lucky, sane, but maybe a little weird himself, Nate.
Fortunately for Jason, he gets to enjoy this car where he leaves it better than he found it, and parts with it when someone pays directly in cash. An ideal to which we should all aspire
Good to hear you had a comfortable upbringing .
Lying isn’t O.K., never has been, never will be .
Always needing to change the thrust of the discussion away to obviously dishonest political discourse is the sign of a fascist want to be .
-Nate
“Always needing to change the thrust of the discussion away to obviously dishonest political discourse is the sign of a fascist want to be .”
That’s called critical theory.
Buick never called the car a “deuce and a quarter” that was a nickame given to the car.
Buick called it an Electra 225.
@Carmine :
I always thought a ‘Deuce and a quarter’ was a military transport truck….
=8-) .
Yes, I got to (had to) ride in the back of one in the 1960’s .
-Nate
Close, Deuce and a Half is the nickname for the old military 2 1/2 ton truck.
Not close Carmine, my exact answer .
Fold down wooden benches in the bed were barely adequate .
-Nate
It looks like you typed “deuce and a quarter” to me.
But hey….
Thanx Carmine ;
I was tired or some other lame excuse…..
-Nate
Great find. Those early 70’s Electras still hold a special place in my heart. The first car of my dads that I remember well was a 1971 Electra Limited. He followed that up with a 1975 Electra Limited, the car I learned to drive in. Both were supremely comfortable and truly nice to drive cars. The 71 was far and away the better car of the two. It did 140,000 almost trouble free miles, with corrosion finally doing it in. When the wrecker came to get it, it started on the first turn of the key, and backed regally down the driveway. If not for Ontario’s enthusiastic salt use, combined with crap 70’s sheet metal, it would have gone 200,000 miles or more I’m sure.
A Lincoln Town Car did some short term duty, and I was always amazed how much worse to drive the Lincoln was. The Buick’s seemed just so much better engineered all around.
I love yours, but do disagree with the swap to the somewhat bland 73 wheel covers. The others are period, and Buick correct, and give a, ahem, sporty look to it.
Enjoy!
fond of these, too. my best friend’s parents had a couple of them including a ’68 hardtop that was great. my parents had the more pedestrian ’67 le sabre which served us well for many years. personally, i prefer the hubcaps on this one especially with the fender skirt. the other wheels are better suited to widlcat.
this exact same car color and everything except mine had cloth seats was my first car. my grandmother gave it to my mother when my older sisters first started driving it was there first car..then I got the chance to buy it from my parents. if this car was for sale I would by it today.