Just Got Home From Portland!

I had a great time! That might be influenced by the fact that I came home with a BCA Gold Award for my '90 vert. The Portland Chapter and the volunteers are to be commended for putting on a very successful event. It is my understanding that there were 280 cars and 850 attendees which is great attendance, especially for a West coast event. As another feather in their cap, they got the Awards dinner and awards over by 8:30.

From a Reatta standpoint, there were 14-15 cars. Interestingly, there were only 2 red cars. There was only one '88 and no '89s at the show. The vast majority of the cars were white convertibles with 4-5 of them being '90 Select 60s. Parked next to me was an incredible '90 Select 60 with only 3,500 miles. The 2 guys who owned it had recently purchased it from a dealership where it had sat all these years. The Rendezvous was an amazing sight with 15 or so cars most of them white with white tops winding their way through the picturesque Washington back roads to the Rusty Grape Winery. At the show there was also an amazing '91 Driftwood convertible with about 40,000 miles on it. I think it was For Sale too!

The weather was very iffy at first. Driving down from Seattle area was like driving in a moving car wash on Wednesday. What was normally a 3 hour drive took 4.5 hours because of the heavy rain. When we set out on the Rendezvous on Thursday we had our tops down which we quickly had to put up as the rain hit just as we left I5.

The Air Space Museum was an amazing exhibit with something for everyone. The only problem was that it took most of Friday which left little time for me to wash my car after the rain on the Rendezvous tour. Saturday dawned with bright skies and sunshine and eventually warmed to the mid 80's which was perfect for a car show.

My drive home was uneventful with the top down, a smile on my face, my tunes cranked, and a carefully packed Gold Award in my trunk. Thanks for a great time and memory!

Congrats!!!!

Nice job, Greg!!! Sounds like it was a great event. (Unfortunately I had to be out of town for a trade show...but I can't wait to get back and take a scenic cruise in your honor! )

It was a great time! There were four Senior Golds awarded. Besides Gregs car, and obviously the 3400 mile Select Sixty, there was the black '88 and myself. Four others were awarded Senior Silvers. The Reattas that attended looked great. I think several that did not get judged could easily have been Gold cars.

One of the fun things Barney did on arrival, was stick a gold starburst "R" sticker on each of our name tags. So as we walked around the show, we could easily spot the other Reatta folks. Also as a result of it, I got a lot of questions and comments from non-Reatta folks too. At the Reatta Division meeting, everyone agreed that it was a very successful idea.

Thirteen Reattas went on the Reatta Rendezvous to the winery. Nine were white, and eleven were convertibles. You would never have guessed that red coupes were the most prevalent model produced. There were a few other Reattas that were at the show, but not the Rendezvous. Kinda hard to tell how many because not everyone parked in the "R" row that the organizers reserved for us. But probably 15-16 Reattas in all.

congrats on the award. That is a pretty car you have there!

That be mine, the first one on the left, right next to yours!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]261344[/ATTACH]

Select60, that was one fine looking car of yours!

My Reatta is the white one on the far left - between Reatta1's black car and the silver car.

<img src="http://forums.aaca.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=261344"/>

Great picture, Ron! I spy my car right next to Cal's burgundy '91!

What a great time in beautiful Portland. It was really super meeting all of the Reatta-people....all so nice and helpful. All of the Buicks were incredible to see or should I say the Reatta's! And here is another view of the Reatta line-up on row "R" in Portland.

Good to see all the great cars, 3 Select Sixty's at a meet may be either a record or tie. Glad everyone had a good time and arrived home safely.

We made it to Redding on Sunday, went thru the Redwoods on Monday and I am ready for some straight road driving....I have never driven so many curves and elevation changes in one day. Finally cried uncle a 6:30 pm staying in American Canyon CA. Would like to get to Flagstaff tomorrow but that may not happen. Looks like it is going to take 5 days to get home.

Keep posting your pictures of Reattas and the meet.

Good to see all the great cars' date=' 3 Select Sixty's at a meet may be either a record or tie. Glad everyone had a good time and arrived home safely. We made it to Redding on Sunday, went thru the Redwoods on Monday and I am ready for some straight road driving....I have never driven so many curves and elevation changes in one day. Finally cried uncle a 6:30 pm staying in American Canyon CA. Would like to get to Flagstaff tomorrow but that may not happen. Looks like it is going to take 5 days to get home. Keep posting your pictures of Reattas and the meet.[/quote']

My end count was 4 select 60s. Chuck's, Jim's Ron's and Wayne's. Probably a sight never to be seen again.

The ultimate view of 2014 Buick Club of America National, Portland, Oregon...row R, Reatta

Driving up to Portland, I joined up with one of the caravans from So. Cal. when they got to the SF Bay Area. There was a beautiful black '41 pulling a vintage trailer, a '54 Super, several '60s cars (e.g., a '63 Riv, a '64 Skylark, and a '69 Skylark convertible). The fellow who set up the convoy was going to drive his '59, but had a fuel system problem and ended up driving a modern Nissan truck. He had two VIPs with him - the president of the Norway Buick Club and his wife. (They own two '62s.) They were busy taking photos of the drive and meet so they can write it all up upon returning to Norway. They said there are no Reattas in Norway, nor had they ever seen one before mine. Of course they saw lots of them in Portland. They really liked them, so maybe one will end up in Norway soon?

Heading north, we went up 101 past Crescent City, passing through the redwood parks along the way. Cut across to Grants Pass, Oregon and spent the night. Some other Buick folks were staying at the same hotel. Driving at a fairly casual speed of about 60ish, to accomodate the older cars, was getting nearly 30 mpg.

On the way home, I drove straight down I-5. Average speed in the 70 range, mpg was more like 27. Hit the huge road jam north of Redding - where they have torn out a bridge and had all the I-5 traffic funnelled down to 1 lane in each direction. That added a good hour or so of stop and creep. Including gas and food stops it took about 11 hours. The Reatta ran perfectly.

Great video!

Nice meet, cool weather and now we can put a few more names to faces on this site. Plus, we saw some cars we had never seen before.

Tom

there were indeed 4 Select 60's. Every meet I have ever been to there were never 4 of them. There was 3 in Ames. The fact there was only 2 Red cars is unbelievable. There was not a blue car either. We usually get at least one maui. I just got home this morning after hitting rain and wind and small hail, plus a road crew working with the old black tar, so now mine is several shades of brown.

It was a super meet and it is really nice to meet you west coast guys and can put a face to a name on the fourm. This was a very nice meet, and an easy beautiful drive. total of 3900 miles.

Chuck

5262 miles and we are home. Did not drive a Reatta but our wheels were Buick. Attached are a couple of pictures from the Rendezvous..cars were not parked together so getting them all in one shot was impossible.

Also two pictures of gas extremes, the $4.99 was in Needles CA, the only station at that interstate exit and he was taking advantage of that. The other extreme was Lubbock TX hard to read but $3.05.

Nancy and I in a Buick at the Tacoma WA Lemay Automobile Museum.

Arrived home Friday night. 7,512 miles for me. Highest gas prices for me were found on Highway 1 in California. $6.50/gallon for premium! Beautiful sights across this grand country. Saw several cars from the show on the way home. '49 and a '64.

Stripped several cars in a junk yard like this gold

1990. The gold car was so rusty the rear suspension was literally on the ground. Holes in the rear fenders the size of golf balls.

Wish I's known! Mine is still a "project" though (needs paint, top, etc..........

Wow Marck, that's an unbelievable journey....7,512 miles!! Hope you took a bunch of pic's to load up on the forum. Reatta run OK?? No problems to report??

Still amazed at how many white convertibles were at Portland. So I did some quick grepping through Barneys database (Aug 2013 version) and came up with the following color counts:

$ grep "1G4EC33" 130823_reatta_data.txt | cut -f10 -d" " | sort | uniq -c

43

165 BLACK

85 BLUE

1 BLUE?

48 BURG

28 DRIFT

19 GREY

370 RED

53 SILVER

442 WHITE

So it seems white was indeed the most popular color for convertibles in general, followed by red, then black - at least for the cars in the database. The 1254 convertibles in the database represent roughly half of the convertibles that were manufactured. So I would expect that if all 2500 or so were counted, the distributions would be about the same.

Interesting! I wonder if we are at that point where we are beginning to see more roadsters at the National because they are more desirable among collectors. I say this in a loving way as I have owned 2 '90 coupes and they were both fantastic cars as well.

The database for 1990 is incomplete so you will not get the total numbers of convertibles from that source. 1991 is complete. From another source here are the colors and numbers for both years.

1990 BUILD 1991

WHITE 741 109

RED 668 88

BLACK 295 44

BLUE 154 22

BURGUNDY 117 13

SILVER 60 23

GREY 37 5

DRIFTWOOD 60

For some reason the numbers got pushed together...... if anyone knows how to make this look good please change it.