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Ebay Reatta items


Barney Eaton

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Some good stuff on Ebay......... a 1988 Select Sixty Buick Dealer hood emblem, a 36" lighted Reatta sign.

There is also a 1991 black/grey convertible with 50K that is bid to $11,500. Looks like the price of Reatta "stuff" is creeping up.

Edited by Barney Eaton (see edit history)
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Guest steveskyhawk

There must be two Select 60 hood ornaments now on ebay. The one i'm selling is for a 90 Select 60 convertible. The kid with the damaged used one off the 88 must have relisted. Did anybody get the item number of the other one?

If my hood ornament sells for what it is worth I may bid on the sign!

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Guest steveskyhawk

Also there is a nice 1990 Select Sixty on ebay right now with the Select 60 hood ornament. Get them while you can. When the economic funk is over the prices will skyrocket and the selection will be poor. All the nice cars will go back in mothballs.

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This hood emblem was produced for the 1988 Select Sixty Dealers. Because the availabity was late, the 1988 cars were shipped without the emblem. The emblem was sent to the dealers when they were available. Mike's friend Tom Payette can verify this as he received a 1988 SS60.

The 1990 Select Sixty cars had standard hood emblems.

While 2 (1990) cars happen to have the emblem, we can identify many more virgin cars without the emblem.

post-30596-143138204114_thumb.jpg

Edited by Barney Eaton (see edit history)
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Barney,

I don't think there is any discussion here about 1988 Select-Sixtys, but you did bring up an interesting point.

as I mentioned, the 1990 Select Sixtys did not have the hood ornament mounted on the car when it was delivered; it arrived in a box at the new owner's address several weeks after the owner purchased the car. it was up to the owner to have it installed at that point.

this was verifed by Rusty Childress, owner of (the former) Childress Buick in Phoenix, as well as by Bert Pitre, owner of (the former) Pitre Buick in Scottsdale. they were both Select Sixty receipients, as well as Tony Coury Buick in Mesa, Liberty Buick in Glendale, and Royal Buick in Tucson (all in Arizona).

this is not unusual at all. I've bought many new Cadillacs. in the late 80s thru the late 90s, they had a card in the owner's manual packet to send in for a gold medalion that had (in Roman numerals) the number of new Cadillacs you had owned. not all of these were installed, either.

it would have not been easy to install the 1990 Select Sixty emblem, as it was slightly smaller than the 1990 standard emblem, which would have required the removal of the mounting tape under the original emblem. it is also nearly impossbile to remove the emblem without damaging the paint under and around it.

when you received the Select Sixty emblem from me back in 2003, it came in a box with 19 others that I had purchased from an employee of the original supplier in New York State. the box had a part number, and it was stamped "9/28/89".

I sincerely doubt these were produced to retrofit 1988 Select Sixtys. they were produced for the 1990 Select Sixtys.

Mike Rukavina

buickreattaparts.com

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"it would have not been easy to install the 1990 Select Sixty emblem, as it was slightly smaller than the 1990 standard emblem"

Was it the same size as the 88 ? That was slightly smaller than later emblems as well. It would not surprise me if the purchaser just went back to the original supplier and orered some more. It also would not surprise me if they were stopped when the size issue was discovered.

Note that the box date was September 89 while the first S60 was not produced until about half way through the model year (January ?). Have any build dates (on tire placard in door jamb) been recorded ?

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I am looking for the email from Ed Mertz that explains what I repeated in the note above.

The assembly line in 1988 was working at max capacity (they had just started and there was a demand for 1988 Reattas). Management did not want to disrupt the line so the 1988 Select Sixty cars were just like the other production cars..... except the emblem was sent to the dealer because they were not ready when the cars were built.

The logic, or lack of logic for them to use a smaller diameter hood emblem on the 1990 does not hold water. If the original 1990 emblem which is 2.95 inches in diameter were to mark the paint.... when it was removed and replaced with a smaller 2.55 inch diameter SS60 emblem the mark would show. If there was actually a special emblem for the 1990 cars, the diameter would have been the same as the production car or larger to avoid any marks showing.

I believe Ed Mertz and Tom Payette.

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Barney,

the 1990 standard hood ornament never touched the hood at all. the two way pressure sensitive tape underneath made sure the metal of the ornament never touched the metal on the hood.

if they did, the results would have been catastrophic with regard to rust. bare metal would easily rust, as the ornament would be right in the windstream of the car. one little spot of rust would have corroded a hole in the hood within a few years.

when I sent you the Select Sixty ornament back in 2003, I had nineteen left. I gave most of them away to some of my best customers, and have none left.

what was most interesting was when I gave eight away to eight of my 1990 Select Sixty customers for Christmas presents in 2003. what was even more interesting is five of the eight called back immediately to say they already had one.

this was quite surprising to me, but it turns out that all five were original owners, and all still had the ornament in the box it came in from Buick after they purchased the car.

my knowledge comes from my customers, as well as the eleven customers we have that worked on the Reatta project, all the way from plant and program managers, down to the actual folks who built the cars, and the dealers who sold them.

every auto manufacturer digs thru their parts bin on a regular basis, and comes up with all sorts of "new" things. it makes no sense that Buick finally made a "special" Reatta (1990 Select Sixty), and they would not bestow it with a special ornament to celebrate that occasion with a part they already had available.

there are a lot of things in life I've never personally seen, but I have no reason to doubt they exist just because I haven't seen them.

a good example of this would be in regard to the VIP owner's manual portfolios. these were created for VIP customers, and substituted sterling silver Cross pen and mechanical pencil sets for the cheap plstic pen and tire gauge in the 1990-1991 owner's portfolios. the pen and mechanical pencil sets had an engraved Reatta logo in pewter on the clasp of both.

I had never known this until several managers at the Craft Centre told me this, totally independent of one another. one was kind enough to send me a very unexpected "care package" a few years back with twenty Cross pen and pencil sets, about 40 Reatta coffee mugs, 30 Reatta model cars, and quite a few other irreplaceable memeroblia items. one thing I look at every day is the 6'X12' full color Reatta poster I have on my office wall. this is the "photo car" and is easily distinguised by the fact the pinstriping is reversed (small stripe on top; production cars had the larger stripe on the top).

Mike Rukavina

buickreattaparts.com

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