Here’s something you would not expect to see amongst common late-model fare at a small repair shop/car lot. Yet there it was: this stately ’56 Buick Special, looking like an elegant matron stranded at a Burger King. A car built during Buick’s early- to mid-1950s heyday.
You would not know it to look at one, but the Special was the shortest-wheelbase, plainest, and lowest-cost Buick that year. Top of the heap was the luxurious Roadmaster, then the Super, the Century (not all Buick Centurys were wire-wheel covered, landau roofed Early Bird Special-mobiles), and finally, the Special.
Even the plain two-door Special sedan looked pretty nifty with wide whites, full wheel covers and snazzy black-over-yellow two-tone paint. You can see why Buick bumped Plymouth off its #3 perch for a few years in the ’50s, despite its higher prices and position in the new-car hierarchy of the times.
The four-door Special had a price of $2416 and saw 66,977 sales. The most expensive Special? The $2775 station wagon, with the $2740 convertible right behind it.
And for you numbers fans, the most expensive 1956 Buick of all was the $3704 Roadmaster convertible coupe, which saw 4,354 assemblies.
Specials were much more down-to-earth, and were very popular. The best-selling Special was the two-door hardtop, with 113,861 sold. A 1956 Ford Fairlane could be had for $2294 and a pillarless Plymouth Belvedere for $2258, so the Buick, with its standard 220-hp 322 CID V8, was a pretty good deal for, on average, only $200 or so more.
It all worked to Buick’s benefit, as the company held third place in sales for the year, and had model year production of 572,024. Buicks were seen as a very pretigious make, and the 10% or so markup over a Chevy, Ford or Plymouth seemed a small price to pay for such a step up.
The lovely styling of these cars certainly couldn’t have hurt, either. Even this basic four-door sedan looks pretty good to me; a four-door hardtop or convertible would be even more stunning. Sad to say, though, 1956 was the last year Buick held third place. The marque dropped to fourth in 1957, and the combination of the ’58 recession and chromed Hohner harmonica styling plummeted Buick down to ninth place.
But the new ’59s were lookers, and things were back up to par by the early Sixties, perhaps hitting the peak with the unquestionably beautiful 1963 Riviera. Buick would never again soar quite as high as they did in the Fifties though, sales-wise.
I spotted this Special way back in August of 2013. After passing it several times, I finally stopped to check it out and take some pictures. It was in very original shape. Not perfect, but a solid, honest car, one you wouldn’t worry too much about driving semi-regularly in nice weather. A cool bonus to see it while taking a late-evening summer drive!
It was nice to see such a well-preserved example and odd to see a ’56 Buick at a small downtown car lot that usually has the typical 10-15 year old rolling stock!
Ah, back when this country had style and swagger!
Did GM keep the Buick nameplate around only because of Chinese sales? You would have thought that Pontiac had the better brand recognition.
Pontiac sold 358,022 cars in the US in 2008. Buick sold 137,197 cars the same year. I could have picked other years in the 2000s when Pontiac sold over half a million. Pontiac died and Buick lives because GM is one of the most Chinese car companies in our market. Only Volvo is worse. These days, Buick is still in the US to sell Chinese and Korean cars. They’re like a nightmare Geo, since Geo sold Japanese cars while Buick sells Envisions and Daewoos.
GM should be excoriated for their Chinese business practices. It’s sad that their buyers probably don’t know or care where Buicks come from.
It still kills me that the last Pontiac made was a white G6 sedan that was part of a fleet order in 2010. But most American corporations are corrupt and totally suck at this point.
Just as some westerners fetishisize aspects of eastern culture to the point that they tattoo menu items on their bodies, the inverse happens as well. I imagine that the only reason that GM maintains a US presence for Buick at all is to have credibility for its Chinese customers wanting an “American” car.
It is nice of you to pretend you didn’t want Pontiac to die. They had done what people like you wanted. Heck even the would be Grand Am was a rebadged Opel, assuring it could never break even at the prices they had to charge. Wasn’t it inevitable that once allegiance shifted to Asia, than China would be the ultimate destination?
Mr. Honda would have known that. Japan attacked Manchuria 10 years before Pearl Harbor and 20 years after they had Korea. They understood Asian power.
John, Pontaic’s demise was not only the fault of GM and the plastic cladding of look alike models of the early 2000’s. Pontiac was killed by Obama’s Steven Rattner, who nixed GM’s plan to restructure Pontiac as a combination of the best of Pontiac and Holden (as the G8 and future Pontiac products as shown in 2008-2009 demonstrated). Steven Rattner was and continues to be a Wall Street gutter rat as demonstated by the fact that after he bailed on “Government Service” was fined by the NYAG $10,000,000 but never saw a day on Rikers Island, and today is a wealth manager for none other than Mike Bloomburg.
I know people like to spit on the plastic clad “we build excitement” Pontiacs, but there was a market for them in flyover country in adequate volume to keep the dealers afloat. Lutz noticing that they still built Cateras in Australia even though Euroland had gutted the European buyers, was not going to save Pontiac or Australia, their misguided youth preferred Mazda 3s by then. Compare G8 sales to 10 years before numbers of Bonnevilles and Grand Prix remembering it replaced both.
Obama and Ratner definitely had their ghetto shivs out for the Grand Am guy in Columbus and the t-top Firebird gal in Waco, but careful cost control could have kept them supplied with a distinct to them offering a while longer.
I can’t recall who, but someone suggested that GM would function better in the 21st century with only three distinct, walled-off brands: Caddy for luxury, GMC for trucks, and Chevy for everything else, concentrating on one product line, and to do it well. As a layperson, it’s hard not to see that logic but there is a lot of nostalgia for now defunct sub-brands like Saturn, Pontiac and Olds. How much of the pushback was from influential dealer networks?
Is there a lot of nostalgia for Saturn? A lot of people bought 88s and Cutlasses, but I also don’t see that much nostalgia for Oldsmobile, which had few really cool cars over its very long history (Curved Dash, Clampett truck, early Rocket 88s, Jetfire Turbo, Tornado, 442 are about the only ones that come to mind as “cool”). Pontiac had its golden era during the V-8 era to the mid-70s with just about their whole line-up being stylistically excellent, with some very stout V-8s and cool models such as the Bonneville, GP, GTO, Firebird, and I expect there are more Pontiac collectors than Buick or Olds, but collectors don’t buy as many new cars as the Chinese do, and Buick is GM’s China brand.
I always thought GM should have started consolidating dealers back in the 60’s-70’s.
Chevrolet-Chevrolet Trucks-Oldsmobile
Pontiac-Buick-GMC Trucks
Cadillac
The Pontiac-Buick-GMC one eventually happened, mostly, though today its a Buick-GMC dealer network, there still are a tiny number of standalone Buick and GMC dealers left, even after the mass extinctions that have taken place over the last decade or so.
Combining them would have avoided the “They have one…why don’t we have one” child like rants that dealers often had, for years Oldsmobile dealers complained to GM management that they should have had an F-body too, for example. It would have also avoided, for the most part, the awkward shoehorning in of compacts like the H-specials and J-cars into line ups that they didn’t really belong in, like Buick and Oldsmobile.
I agree Carmine – merging the dealer networks would have saved a lot of resources and made it easier to maintain some brand distinctions. But the dealer move that was truly the most stupid of all time was to create a separate dealer body for Hummer when they had GMC dealers all over the country starving for some uniquely not Chevy to sell.
I’ll bet those dealers were happier than shit when GM whacked Hummer after they spent millions on those unique “Quonset Hut” showrooms for Hummer too….
Well, I have nostalgia for Satrun. Great little cars, the most reliable GMs in decades, but killed because of “NIH” and corporate feuds. When vice-presidents fight, all the rest of us suffer.
So they decided to kill all further development right at the time that engine NVH became a big concern in the industry, saddling Saturn with noisy rough running (but reliable) engines, and then just imported Opels and called them Saturn. Yet another example of a good concept nickel-and-dimed by GM, introduced half heartedly, development abandoned just as the cars were getting good, and cancelled.
Can you say Corvair, Vega, Fiero, Saturn?
you absolutely nailed it
It is nice how high production was in the mid 1950s, a great sign of a country with upward mobility and the successful in even smaller places were getting far enough ahead to pay a little extra for some dignified swagger.
It is so long ago that there probably is no definitive answer. After reading Tom’s article, I rushed to my referance book to look up 1930s Buick 8 production. It was a small fraction with the bulk being four doors. I wonder if the 50s car connoisseur was sneering at these offerings as fit only for rotary club style upstarts, as happened with the 70s and 80s offerings with the dramatic velour and wire wheel covers.
Now I’m picturing an F body Oldsmobile…let’s call it the Cutlass Macho…strangely compelling…
Smokey and the Cutlass!
They could have used the Magnum name before Dodge got it…..Oldsmobile Magnum….mustache standard.
The funny thing is that Oldsmobile almost did get an F-body of sort. one of the variants of the aborted GM-80 FWD F-body program was a proposed Oldsmobile GT type car named….Silhouette.
Here you go Jack, do an F Body Olds “what if” for Hagerty!
I think he already did one off the current Camaro but with a Cutlass waterfall grille.
I love the Buicks. My holy grail would be a 69 or 70 Electra.
I seem to recall that part of Buick’s late 50s slide down the sales charts was due to quality problems on the very hot selling 55-57 models – apparently running the factories 24/7 didn’t help quality control back in the days when Buicks were only made in Buick plants. I suspect it also didn’t help Buick status when they became more common than Plymouth (one of the low-price 3), and hence Buick offered a preview of what would happen to Cadillac a decade later as sales went up and quality went down.
I think the 56 model is one of the Buick’s best looking cars from the 50s, but it is amazing to see that 63 Riviera which looks about 30 years newer than the 56.
Good point about that 63, those are seriously pretty cars. Crazy how much car styling changed. I’ll take one of each and then ruin them by putting them on air and putting a 6.0 vortec under the hood.
Stuff was cooler back when everything wasn’t optimized to save 12 cents a car. And back when regular dudes could afford to spend a little extra on something cool.
Stuff was also cooler because they weren’t slaves to the wind tunnel and could just design things that looked fast for fancy.
Weird cars are great. One of best bosses I ever had drove a bright orange cummins dodge on 38″ mud grapplers with no exhaust.
People rant on and on about the suicide door Continentals, which, on their own, were great stride forward in tastefulness compared to the 1958-1960 uni-body Lincolns, but they look like a slab sided box when put next to a 1963-1965 Riviera in my opinion.
The later Lincolns with the added hips are better looking, but those hips come from copying Bill Mitchell at GM.
They got better and worse, the later 1966 and up dash is kind of an awkward mess. It also took Lincoln forever to add a 2 door hardtop Continental to the line up, and this is when the 2 door hardtop was a solid king in sales, when Cadillac moved 100,000 Coupe deVilles a year……I always thought that was a miss from them. Maybe they thought it would steal Thunderbird sales?
Oddly enough though the Continental 2 door was sort of a slow seller and then the Mark III came out and was a solid hit, though Lincoln still continued to offer a 2 door Continental through 1981, always selling in small numbers compared to the Marks.
I didn’t mind the 66-69 dash, it was wild, but very Jetsons too.
It kinda looks like a typewriter sticking out of the dash, the best dash those had was the 1961-1963 symmetrical dash with the twin coves, very classy, the 1964-1965 dash looks more like something that would be in a Mercury.
Oh yeah the 61-63 dash was way cooler. But I’ll always love the 66 since my grandfather had a dark green one with dark green leather and factory 8 track player. My dad remembers them taking a vacation down to Biloxi and South Padre Island in that car.
I always thought Elwood Engel’s best work was on the mid 60s BOF Imperials. Chrysler’s engineering was not up to Caddy or even Lincoln, but those Imperials looked the most classy to me. My understanding is that he retired in 1974, I wonder if he also did the 74-78 C body Chryslers/ Imperials.