Park Aves 1997- 2005

From: Brian DePouli

Sent: Monday, January 19, 2015 7:41 PM

To: 'Jon Thom'

Subject: RE: Park Avenues

Jon,

Sorry for the delay. I've been fighting a bug of some sort so haven't been feeling like playing on the computer.

On the matter of your BCA number the office should be able to determine your 4 digit number and give it back to you. many members return after an absence and get their old number back. It may be worth a call to the office.

As far as Park Ave guru's unfortunately I am not going to be much help there. Personally I really like this era of park avenues and there are some unique low production versions during this period such as the platinum roofed Ultra ones at the very end of the run ( I think only 300 or so were made). I'd say you may find the best response simply posting a question on the BCA/AACA Forum http://forums.aaca.org/f115/ its free to register and there are faithful servants to the club that actively try to assist folks where they can. As you noted the internet is impersonal, but the forum members are very friendly and most are BCA members who can easily be contacted via phone too for more thorough discussions.

I did look through the roster and saw a few park ave owners whose names I recognize as being active and friendly members such as

Brad Conley of OH

Tom Kromer of OH

Darrell Page of NC ( has two very nice low mileage Ultra's)

None of these to my knowledge are experts on PA's but it's worth a shot. I assume you have a 2014 roster thus can look up their contact info.

I hope this helps.

Brian DePouli

From: Jon Thom [mailto:jonthomagency@gmail.com]

Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2015 8:29 AM

To: brian.depouli@att.net

Subject: Park Avenues

Welcome to the hot seat! I joined the club in the early 70’s and wish I still had my 4 digit club member number, but let it lapse and had to reenroll. (current BCA 22880 and Reatta 168) Now for some reason I am into the Park Avenues from 1997 – 2005. My question is do you know anyone in the club who is a guru with those models? Please help me check around or guide me to someone who might know (besides the impersonal internet) about them.

Very truly yours! When better cars are built Buick will build ‘em

Jon Thom

Jon Thom Agency

http://www.jonthom.com

jonthomagency@gmail.com

Tel. 630-553-5661

Fax. 630-553-7501

Welcome Jon Thom. I guess the best way to tell if we can help is for an indication of what information you want to know about? Drivability, electronics, body? Or just general production information? I am assuming you are looking to buy one soon and maybe looking for areas of concern?

Whatever it is, feel free to ask. Just realize that failure to respond, is not cause of indifference. More likely it's cause the reader does not really know the answer. No one wants to put out incorrect information.

Hope to see a follow up.

And your question(s) are.....

Howdy and Welcome Back!

When I went to the "consumer ride and drive" event at Arlington Stadium (Arlington, TX), it was a Saturday afternoon and I was the only "consumer" there. There were plenty of product specialists there who needed somebody to talk to.

We started with the "Base" PA, with "low energy absorption" Goodyear Conquest radials. These tires took a few N-m less energy to roll down the road, which was supposed to provide better fuel economy. We went through their course to showcase/display various aspects of the car. The base car did not have MagnaSteer on it, just regular "power steering". It performed as expected in the handling, bumps, and acceleration sections of the course.

The next one available was the "Upgrade Suspension" version. Usually, by that time, the suspension upgrades were in tires and sway bar(s), but with the same struts (in many cases). I decided to skip that one and went to the Ultra next (knowing it had the suspension upgrades as a part of the package, plus the SC3800 Buick V-6). This one was more to my liking, with the firmer suspension calibrations, tires, and such. BUT . . . in the slow speed slalom (target 20mph), I was still mowing down anything past the second cone, whether in the Base model or in the Ultra with the upgraded suspension and tires. That's when I discovered a "secret" about GM's then-premium power steering rack unit, "MagnaSteer".

MagnaSteer seemed like a great way to use one rack on many similar vehicles, but also to be able to tailor the resistance or boost to what the driver wanted, with a scan tool. In many other GM cars I'd rented with MSteer, I'd noticed some things, but NOT what I found that day. Private Message me for details.

When done driving the PAs and their competition (fwd Continental, Chry LHS), then we went under the tent where a demo PA was there with sections of the body cut-away for display purposes. This was one of GM's first "Class A" finish roof rail vehicles. There are many more like that now, though, plus from other brands, too. This also means that should the roof panel need to be replaced, it can be replaced as one panel itself. The OTHER thing is that it is secured to the roof rail pieces via structural adhesive and spot welds, but you need to remove the windshield and back glass to do this, too. One benefit is that it removes "lead" from the mix of things on the car body, where many body panels are joined, plus the "uniside" panel for better fit/finish/door fit.

Later, Buick Zone brought a PA out for us to let customers test drive. I drove that one and was pleased with how spacious and solid it was. Having the base model suspension calibration, it did get a little floaty "at speed", but not too much. It had a nice, big feel to it, too, although it was not that "big".

There were not many changes throughout the model run. A main thing was the second half had different exterior colors and interior trim codes from the first half, although there might have been a few carryovers. Different interior fabrics, too, BUT you had to know what you were looking at to determine which half of the model run the particular vehicle was from.

The "sameness" seemed to draw some contempt, but it also provided "stability" for others. Many older owners still traded every few years, as they'd always done. Although sales seemed to start trailing-off toward the end, when word got around (though the news media, I guess) that the Park Avenue was going to be replaced by a "new Buick", the LOYAL Park Avenue owners (and their spouses!) started making plans to get "one of the last ones". The closer to the end it got, the more intense the interest was! We still had some inventory as other smaller dealers had already sold out of theirs. Some couples drove over 100 miles to come see us! They wanted another PARK AVENUE rather than something else! All of these "satisfied customers" seemed to come out of the woodwork, which was even more amazing.

This was one of the RARE times in dealership history when the dealers had a vehicle they needed to move (in preparation for the "newer and better" model) AND customers were lined up ready to purchase the "old ones". We still made them a good price on the new car, which they appreciated. I also might suspect that these LOYAL Park Avenue customers had some inkling of what the "newer Buick" might be, so they kept with a vehicle they "knew" and bought a Park Avenue. As good as the Lucerne might have been, it was NO LeSabre OR Park Avenue (both of which it was to replace). By comparison, where the LeSabres and Park Avenues were stylish, luxurious, and elegant, the Lucerne went about it differently.

Take care,

NTX5467

Just general info on PA's like it would be nice to get sales brochures from 1997-2005 on all of them to see just which options were available and when, those kind of specs. I'm having a tough time trying to look on the internet to gather those sales brochures. I'll be buying a selling PA's to take the place of my career work 'health insurance broker' due to the decline of sales and the red tape because of obamacare. Please correspond with me at 630-553-5661 or email jonthomagency@gmail.com Thank you for responding John.

Please respond to me via phone or email at 630-553-5661 or jonthomagency@gmail.com

You could try the following two websites, that may have the comparison info you are looking for:

http://www.lov2xlr8.no/buick.html is a catalogue of brochures over the years... they don't look like they have anything for 97 or newer

http://www.automobile-catalog.com/ is a database containing specs of cars. It looks like they will have everything you're looking for

Good luck!

Jon, if you can get those Buick catalogues from

a fellow hobbyist, their cost should be minimal.

(Dealers have to cart them around and naturally

would charge for them.)

The AACA Library had a sale this autumn of surplus

donated literature. Anything from 1980 up was

simply "make a donation."

Good news.....Parkis Waterbury recently volunteered to cover technical issues for 1985-2005 LeSabres and Park Ave. His information should soon appear on the web site and in the Bugle.

He can be contacted at (920-394-3865) and his email = (parkisw@gmail.com)

I bought a 1993 Park Avenue Ultra with about 30,000 miles on it and took it to 95,000 miles. Although it was a nice car, I was not happy with the way it aged. Routine maintenance and repairs, even using factory replacement parts never seemed to equal the smoothness of the original. I replaced the front wheel bearings with GM equipment and got a light rumble that had not been present before. I Did a complete brake job with parts from the dealer and noticed they didn't have the same feel. There were ways I would position my hand and arm while driving that made me sense a flexing between the door and the door frame. That was annoying. It was a car that was great up to about 55,000 miles and then the feel was not retrievable. I sold it and the new owner was very happy.

I decided to drop back to the more durable body on frame, longitudinal engine, rear wheel drive platform. Even though the cars were not as new, they were of the type that is traditionally restored to "as new" driving capabilities. I bought a 1994 Roadmaster with about 60,000 in 2002 that was a pleasure to own and maintain. New York State rust got that one and I let my daughter take it through her last years of college and off on the big move to Boston. It was replaced by another low mileage 1994 Roadmaster that has since rusted and been passed on to an old High School friend who needed it. I replaced the second Roadmaster with a 1994 Chevy Impala SS, again, making me quite happy.

Concurrent with those cars I bought a 2005 Silverado that will probably be replaced with another, if it even breaks beyond repair.

The bottom line, my personal experience with unibody, transverse engine, front wheel drive cars has been disappointing. Especially as a collector vehicle, the traditional body and frame car is the choice for the long run. I have one now. It is an anomaly in the garage. It is a little special and I keep it to show I am not completely cynical and opinionated.

Bernie

I believe the '93 was the "prior-generation" car to the 1997-gen PA. Those earlier cars were nice and luxurious, in the "traditional manner" of things. Fantastic interiors, but like many vehicles of that vintage, "build quality" had some issues. On the LeSabres, I noticed that there was a difference in how the door trim panel would shake when the door closed, with Flint-built cars being more solid than LeSabres from other plants. Back then, as body structure solidity was a key thing, it seemed that retention of items TO the body was where things "got loose".

By the same token, I observed that some Cadillacs (trade-ins) were more junky-feeling than others. One day, I was behind an older couple at the gas pumps. When the lady closed the door, it was solid, the front seat back didn't shake or anything. So I guess that owners who had Cadillacs and treated them as such generally had nicer cars than those owners who had Cadillacs and treated them like Chevrolets. Same with Porsche owners who treated their cars like Volkswagens.

What I'm going to mention might or might not been affected by Bernie's dealership service experience, but just because it's a GM dealer might not mean they use "production" GM replacement parts. OR can the quality always be the same as "factory built". There were the GM "production" parts (the more expensive option), then the ACDelco parts (even with some promotional items, along the way), and now what they term "World Parts" (where GM obviously co-opts an aftermarket brand's parts and gets them approved and placed in GM boxes . . . although ALL of these things are built to GM's standards.

"Production parts" were always more model-specific, although as the vehicles aged, they could be combined with other applications for one part number. The ACDelco parts were more "auto supply level" back then. For example, the front struts on a Buick would be different than for a Pontiac or Oldsmobile, for the particular model year in the production orientation. Yet in ACDelco, one part number fit them all. In the 1990s, the LeSabre struts were significantly softer than the Pontiac Bonneville's struts, at the production level. The ACDelco items would have been more similar to what Monroe might have offered, I suspect. But, as time progressed, the OEM struts and the ACDelco struts became one and the same.

In the middle 1980s, Toyota had a "Cheap to Keep" promotion. A DFW area dealer had a handout of what the costs on various maintenance schedule items were. I looked at it and determined that, in the long run, it would be cheaper to buy and keep a 1985 Caprice 5.0L V-8 car than a Toyota Camry. A solid, not overly complicated, rwd Chevrolet that was comfortable and decently economical on fuel. When I saw a choke pull-off for a '80s Citation was $85.00, versus about $25.00 for the Caprice, it broadened that orientation somewhat as the USA rwd car being the best long-term "cheap to keep" vehicle.

Just some thoughts,

NTX5467

My son has a 2000 Park avenue that is cheap transportation. The two rear door handles had failed at the time he bought it. Now the front passenger door won't open. He was taking a college course in statistics last semester and I asked him to apply some of that learning to the four doors on his car. As mentioned in reply #11, the cars have stupid problems and shortfalls in expectation.

I did try out a 2005 Ultra last time I was looking for a family car. The problem was getting out of my Chevy truck and expecting the Buick to ride better. It may have been the car's low profile tires, but it didn't ride as good as the truck.

Trying to maintain a collector car at an original performance level won't be easy with a menagerie of misleading parts sources and labels. I just bought lower outer suspension pins made by Moog for my '48 Packard, just for spares, I know they are good quality.

I keep my cars a long time.In three months I will enter my 37th year old owning my Riviera. Last week I put two "Moog" u-joints in my ten year old Chevy truck. One was bad. I mentioned the few repairs needed over the 150,000 miles to my wife (both doors have always opened). I also mentioned how many people asked for car advice and then argued my choice as anachronistic, or too big, or too expensive, or too some other subjective misinformed idea.

If the plan is to live long and prosper with your collector car choice, buy something from Buick's first 60 or 70 years of manufacture, otherwise there is a high risk you ain't gonna be happy in the long run.

P.S. My son found a huge market in supplying aftermarket door handles for his 2000 PA.

Bernie

Oh, you can buy an aftermarket INTAKE manifold. Give me a break! Cars are built with intake manifolds so prone to replacement that an aftermarket company can produce replacements. I bet there are '41 Buick owners who wish their cars had plastic manifolds.

Dorman Products sells LOTS of aftermarket parts, including exhaust manifolds for small block Chevys. Kind of like a Help Rack gone wild. There were issues with some Olds V-8 intake manifolds on the '80s cars. GM stopped servicing a good bit of things in the later '80s, as a matter of course. In one case with later model Chevy pickups, the way the door panel is made, at the OEM level, should the door handle break, the only way they service it is with a complete new door panel assembly, but Dorman has a "handle only" fix kit for it . . . they can get away with doing some things the OEMs apparently didn't want to do, it seems.

Obviously, many of these "things" were affected by what it cost to get the car to the end of the assembly line. When the car is "priced out", before final approval or in the original design process, there obviously are options of how much to spend and get a particular "longevity rate" for all of the parts. I suspect many of these decisions to save a few dimes/vehicle might have resulted in some of the failed items noted. "Dimes" x production run = "lots of money". I also saw some of that in the earlier '70s, where a GM part would fail "too soon", but the Moog item was a beefier part and would obviously have a longer service life. The service station guys we patronized knew which parts to get from the dealer (and what they usually had in stock) and what to get from name brand replacement parts vendors (who had the parts in stock, due to failure rates of the OEM parts). The same thing exists today as some OEM parts always work and some of the similar chain auto supply parts fail quickly, in comparison, for similar parts costs.

In Iacocca's bio, he talked about when he was a young guy at Ford, in the later 1950s. He was invited to a car pricing-decision meeting. They had the option to use shock absorbers with a factory cost of about $1.30 or spend about $2.50 for a better-lasting product. When they opted for the less expensive one, young Lee was concerned . . . until the reason for that was explained to him. Knowing the shocks would only last about 12K miles on the new car, when the owner went back to the dealership for new shocks, THEN they'd sell him the better ones, which helped the dealer make money, too, and keep a customer for the corporation. BUT, remember how Monroe shock absorber ads, back then, talked about factory shocks being worn out past about 15K miles, and to replace them with Monroe 500s for a better handling car? Guess the factory guys didn't see that one!

In the DeLorean book on GM, which came out in the earlier 1980s, he mentioned the car pricing meetings, where GM financial wanted a certain amount of money "out of the car", just before production was to begin, to meet their financial targets. The engineers knew they'd done a good job sourcing things for the car, to give the owner the best value and also to help maintain used vehicle prices of the Pontiacs they were doing, while still holding the car's price to then-current levels. No matter, for approval, they had to make some changes late in the game. Which resulted in some years of cars having upholstery which failed at the 18month stage, while the year before's upholstery wore "like iron", some trim being deleted as "standard", but made optional . . . less expensive brands of tires or smaller standard sizes, or similar. It all depends upon where you want to "spend money" on the car and what things you can't "spend money" on . . . no matter which brand of vehicle it might be.

When the fwd Park Avenues came out, some owners who'd traded in rwd PAs heard noises they hadn't heard before, in a Buick . . . "strut noise". There were about six TSBs on that issue. We did all of them for one owner and it didn't satisfy him, unfortunately.

When the Lucernes came out and a PA was the trade-in, there were complaints of "too quick steering", yet the only thing to change was the use of lower profile 17" tires/wheels versus the 16"s that were on the prior cars. Never did hear of any similar complaints from Cadillac DTS customers, though, with the same wheel/tire package. Just Buick PA customers. Alignments were checked, but found to be "in spec", as were other things on the car. When the second model year's cars came out, no similar complaints for some reason. On the Lucernes I rented, I found no issues with them, in the steering response area.

And then there were the delaminating side moldings on the rwd Roadmasters! Stainless steel with vinyl bonded to it . . . looked good, but as soon as the vinyl got some age on it, it started shrinking, then it fell off. New moldings, for the doors, were about $600.00 + tax, back then. Seems the later gray ones didn't fall off as much as the earlier black ones did. After I'd price the moldings, the buyer expressed shock, I'd offer him enough 3M Molding Adhesive Tape to do the job, complimentary. Even that didn't work on some cars, though. Recently, I think I've come up with "a fix", but it would have been too labor intensive for the factory to do.

Just some thoughts and observations . . .

NTX5467

Yep, If the plan is to live long and prosper with your collector car choice, buy something from Buick's first 60 or 70 years of manufacture, otherwise there is a high risk you ain't gonna be happy in the long run.

It is like a baseball game. If one is in the bleachers and has figured out all the angles, jump in and play ball. I have a 1985 Park Avenue convertible (it's a little older but you can Google the model) that could be your summer ride in the decades to come. $12,000 takes it home.

Bernie

I will take a 95 lesaber over an 85 any day.

No carburator and few vacuum lines.

and it's the year before they routed the exhaust gasses through the upper intake, mine has the original.

it has 233,000 and is my daily driver.

just made a 2400 mile round trip on $188 worth of gas.

Seems like there are several posters that have interest in the 1997-2005 Buick Park Avenues. I have a 1998 Ultra and like it a lot. Among various issues I've had with the vehicle is the intermittent then finally quit working cruise control. I went through several tries to fix the darn thing only to come to the realization that it was not the cruise control system itself. There is an inhibit signal that comes from the powertrain control module on pin D, a purple wire that receives the disengage input. Now this is not a 12v or 0v signal rather a digital signal that can not be faked. Also many repair shops do not have a scanner that will report the fault never mind fix it. So if any of you people are having cruise control problems with this series of PAs, the fix using a Rostra universal cruise control I put on my website may be of help. See: http://blogofhawaii.com/buick/1998%20Buick%20Cruise%20Control%20Fix.html

I have searched and searched the net looking for a solution on the factory cruise control system to no avail. Since I had installed a Rostra on my other car (1964 Falcon convertible) I was very familiar with what would be required to tie into the factory wiring so as to keep the factory control stick so the install looks stock.

A universal throttle knob would work. Get one with a flat shaft. Pull it out and set a dime for moderate speeds. pennies and nickles are good for local cruising. Quarters are great for interstates. And a Kennedy half; whoa, Baby.

I think the collector's edition has a coin holder specifically for the long term owner.

Just my two cents..... a little more than a quarter.

Bernie

With as little throttle movement as it takes to keep that later model PA at 60mph, you'd have to slice those coins to make them thinner, not lay them down between the knob and the cable housing.

I would think the only place an "inhibit signal" could originate would be either from the "Coast" function , the "Cancel" function, OR possibly from the speedometer's speed signal (as the vehicle speed has to be above a set amount for the cruise control to engage). Might very well be a chafed wire in the steering column housing (which we seemed to see in the shop, with other GM cars of that era, for some reason).

NTX5467

With as little throttle movement as it takes to keep that later model PA at 60mph, you'd have to slice those coins to make them thinner, not lay them down between the knob and the cable housing.

I would think the only place an "inhibit signal" could originate would be either from the "Coast" function , the "Cancel" function, OR possibly from the speedometer's speed signal (as the vehicle speed has to be above a set amount for the cruise control to engage). Might very well be a chafed wire in the steering column housing (which we seemed to see in the shop, with other GM cars of that era, for some reason).

NTX5467

My mistake of saying the purple wire on pin D of the cruise control module. The signal I should have listed is on pin H (dark green) on the cruise module. The digital signal comes from pin 13 on the powertrain module.

The front drive Park Avenue ran from 1991-2005. I have owned four of them, 1991 Dad bought new), 2001 (I bought new). 2005 (bought with 7K and traded in 2013 on a Dodge Charger), and a 2001 bought last year with 67,700 miles on it. In those years I also owned a 1995 LeSabre Limited (I bought new) and a 1998 LeSabre Limited I bought used with abt 81K miles. These are, without a doubt, the finest cars I have ever driven, and I honestly think the second 2001 is the best running and riding of them all. The '95 LeSabre Limited had the most comfortable seats. The 3.8 engine was so good, GM quit making it, I guess for fear these cars would last forever. My daughter drove the '91 up to 190K miles until I gave her the first 2001, and now she has 175K on that one. She drove the '91 from Baltimore to Florida to get the 2001 and came down here 70+ mph and it never used a drop of oil and got 30 mpg. But, therein lies the only glitch with these cars, GM electrical quality. You keep them long enough and they all become an electrical nightmare. I've found that fact going way back into the 1960s. My daughter works at a Buick dealership in Baltimore, and the mechanics there finally threw up their hands on the electrical and told her to get another car. I have a giant electrical maintenance manual here that the shop gave to her. I will sell it reasonably if anybody with a '91 wants it. She also tells me that the factory changed the intake manifold from cast iron to plastic around 1997 and that is a problem as the plenum (sp?) will warp or burn and cause water leakage. The first 2001 had that problem twice, and the second 2001 had already had the original replaced when I got it. The 2005 seemed to be more cheaply made than the others. It kept breaking the front motor mount. A transmission shop said the pressure in the tranny was too high, so I traded it instead of fixing it. But, on the whole these cars with the 3.8 engine are wonderful. Oh yes, electrical again. I changed a battery on the 1998 myself and the automatic air condition would never work right again. The Buick dealer did something inside the trunk lid to wiring and after that it worked half right until I traded it on the 2005 Park Avenue. The 1995 LeSabre was a wonderful car, maybe the best of all my front drive big Buicks. The only issue it ever had was that it would use a quart of oil in 1600 miles from the day it was new. They gave me an 80K warranty on the engine as a result. But, in 116,000 miles there was never one single other issue with that car...new brakes at 114-115,000 miles, and then a guy hit me head on and tried to kill me. He wasn't successful at that, but he did kill the car.

NTX5467 when you talk about GM interiors, therein lies a rub. They are mundane to the max and the old Park Avenues are no exception. I don't know when the tan and gray leather became the only option, maybe it was 1993, but it is truly mundane. The current 2001 is more comfortable for a long drive than any others except the '95 LeSabre Limited, but it is gray, one of those two ugly colors. That had a lot to do with me buying the 2013 Dodge Charger. It is black with read leather interior. Well, by 2014 Chrysler took away the red leather and offered only ugly colors. I saw a new one the other day with black and white leather. It was neat, except in my case that white would get really dirty...a personal problem.

While putting together the piece on the Stealth Buicks for the April issue of the Bugle, I started digging on the production numbers. The Park Ave Ultra with the 3800 Supercharged engine is one of the performance Buicks and I was searching for the numbers. As you will see below, I did find the model year numbers for all Park Avenues, the 1991 - 1999 came from the BCA Roster and KP book on Buicks, the 2000 -2005 from Ward's Automotive Yearbook.

Ward's list the supercharged engine option (which was a Ultra only engine) in percentages of total production and while close does not give an exact production number.

1991 = 87461 Ultra = 22030 supercharged engine did not become available until 1992

1992 = 57443 Ultra = 11499 Note starting in 1992 all Ultra had the 3800 supercharged engine... the supercharged engine was not available on the non-Ultra PA

1993 = 40468 Ultra = 14738

1994 = 52034 Ultra = 12630

1995 = 51874 Ultra = 11120

1996 = 41016 Ultra = 7757

1997 = 59637 Total I have not looked to see if Ward's breaks out the supercharged engine

1998 = 61974 Same as above

1999 = 47419 Ultra = 13637 1999-2005 totals in red from GM Heratige Center (2002 -2005 second set of numbers from Ward's)

2000 = 42777 Ultra = 9545

2001 = 27130 Ultra = 6091

2002 = 27885 Ultra = 4033 31918 12.1% w/supercharger

2003 = 21364 Ultra = 7845 29209 26.9% w/supercharger

2004 = 13015 Ultra = 4144 16986 23.8% w/supercharger

2005 = 7500 Ultra = 1863 9363 23.8% w/supercharger

Note that the GM Heratige numbers and Ward's are the same total of PA and Ultra... but because of rounding of the percent, the Ward's number with supercharge is off.

Not really sure why, other than possibly decreased production cost from only TWO interior color selections, but I concur that only a "charcoal" and "tan" interior color choice is not too swooooft. Oh, they do include "light" and "dark" of the same color pallet, but that doesn't go quite far enough. Unfortunately, GM isn't alone in this orientation. Possibly something they "borrowed" from the Asians? It used to be really spiffy to get a "roll and pleated" factory interior in the earlier fwd PAs, in crimson red leather ("color keyed", remember that word?, to the exterior crimson red metallic, but NO more. Heck, even some of the '50s Plymouths and Pontiacs had spiffier-looking interiors than modern Buicks! One of our chapter members sold a Cadillac (that was a good car and he and his wife liked) and got a Ford Expedition solely on the nicer-looking interior in the Ford.

"Tan" and "Charcoal/black" are still what they are, regardless of the nuanced shade of each or the fancier name attached to these resultant colors. I wonder if some of the minor earthquakes happening every so often might be the result, not of fracking, but Harley Earl being "stomping mad" that his old Art and Color Dept designs have been replaced with shades and textures of black and tan?

NTX5467

Note that I updated post #22 with more numbers.