J3Studio
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We got ours on May 1st—I know this because I mentioned it to @NC1968Riviera in an email.
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1 minute ago, RivNut said:
I edited my original post already😁
Ah, Mechanix Illustrated—not Popular Mechanics.
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2 minutes ago, RivNut said:
I have a Popular Mechanics issue that is a late 1962 issue. In that issue Tom McCahill runs a Riviera through its paces. When I bought that magazine the thing that puzzled me was that the test car was noted as having a 425 engine in it. And we're aware that the 425 wasn't available to the public until the first of 1963. Did McCahill have access to a prototype with the 425?
Perhaps the October 1962 issue?
https://books.google.com/books?id=qd0DAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false -
4 minutes ago, Buffalowed Bill said:
If memory serves me I think that it was Popular Mechanics in 1963, the cover of which had a picture of the new Riviera, Corvette and Avanti. It didn't include the T-Bird, my guess is because the model wasn't new for 1963. Having owned and been around these cars for the last fifty years has shown me how silly any driving comparison was and is. About the only things that these cars have in common are that they were new for 1963, they had two doors and they were all good looking.
The test I referred to had all four of them and it's in the Google Popular Mechanics archive. With any luck, this link works:
https://books.google.com/books?id=SeMDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false -
9 minutes ago, mp67riv said:
The Riviera got the award in 1979!
Specifically for the S TYPE.
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On 5/24/2020 at 9:49 PM, KongaMan said:
IMHO, there was some overlap between the divisions. We had a 67 Chevy Caprice wagon for a while. Big engine, fully optioned. It weren't no budget ride. Looked like this (same color and everything; wish I had it now):
In base price, more expensive than a Buick SportWagon of the same year and only one inch shorter—the brands were definitely beginning to overlap, something that had not been true earlier in the decade. There's that story—I don't know whether it's true—that the Caprice originally existed because Chevrolet executives were required to drive Chevrolet vehicles, and a Corvette wasn't appropriate for everyone.
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I find the different views of what the first-generation Riviera's competition was very illuminating—which is why I asked the question. I also often ask original owners of any collector car about how they made their purchase decision, like @Pat Curran with his 1971 Monte Carlo.
The whole first-generation Riviera competition question is an interesting one. Flory (a generalist, but a serious researcher) sees the competition as 300-J/K, Avanti, and Thunderbird. A January 1963 comparison test in Popular Mechanics included the Avanti, Corvette, Riviera, and Thunderbird.
Certainly, some weren't ever going to switch from Ford to General Motors. Others wouldn't buy a Buick, no matter what. I'm sure Buick's marketing people calculated that all into their hard limit of 40,000 produced in that first year.
Automotive marketers like to talk about "conquest" sales—when a purchaser allegedly moves from one marque to another. Those sales do exist, but I'm not convinced they are a large number. I am mindful of when we bought our first Corvette in 2003. We received several surveys inquiring why we had chosen our convertible over the BMW M3 convertible or the Porsche Boxter S—what was said to be the competition. Those were two good cars, but we never considered anything but a Corvette convertible—the only question was which one.
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1 hour ago, RivNut said:
I found a picture of it on the ROA's website. I forgot to mention the hood scoop and hood mounted tachometer which can be seen in the picture. I think it's even painted a Pontiac color.
I like it—it fits my "there's room for one in the world and that could be it" criteria.
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On 5/18/2020 at 8:03 AM, steelman said:
Friend (a real Ford guy) just bought a 66 Tbird. He admits it is a nice car, but still not as nice as my Riviera. But he didn’t want to spend the money a first gen Riviera would have cost.
That's a good point. Despite being the market leader, four-seat Thunderbirds just don't seem to sell for as much as their later arriving competitors do.
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On 5/21/2020 at 8:30 AM, Pat Curran said:
I think the HT 4100 brought tears to those who bought them too.
An engine I just don't understand.
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On 5/20/2020 at 9:08 PM, 1965rivgs said:
I cut my teeth on these as a young mechanic, had 2 jobs for quite a few years working on cars during the day and tractors (fleet of semi-trucks) at night. Valve cover and intake gaskets, water pumps/belts were fun … but this is a piece of cake compared to the 4.1 Cadillac ... which nearly reduced me to tears on several occasions ... ahhh, the good `ol days!
Lordy!
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On 5/19/2020 at 1:03 PM, Jim Cannon said:
The A/C option alone added 10% to the Base Price. Can you imagine today having them add 10% to the car's cost for A/C?
Sixties air conditioning could be crazily expensive. The automatic climate control air conditioner introduced in the middle of the 1966 model year was $484.15—that would be a $3,900 option nowadays. Air conditioning didn't become standard on the Riviera until 1978.
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On 5/18/2020 at 9:02 PM, RivNut said:
Do you have any information on the 1983 Riviera XX, Twentieth Anniversary Edition? The XX added more $$ to the base price of the coupe than the convertible did.
The 1983 XX Anniversary Edition Riviera was expensive, but not quite up to the eye-watering level of the convertible. The option itself was $3,759, making the minimum price for a XX Anniversary Edition $18,987. Of course, many went out the door with thousands of dollars of extra equipment, but so did many of the $24,960 base price convertibles.
In today's dollars, a XX Anniversary Edition is about $49,400. The 1999 Silver Arrow was actually more expensive in 2020 dollars—about $59,300.
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And thanks for all the interest!
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Here you go—original base prices normalized for 2020 CPI. It does make the raw numbers look much more impressive than normalizing for 1999. And yes, the Riviera convertibles were expensive cars to buy new—you can get a C8 Corvette convertible for about the same price.
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1 hour ago, RivNut said:
I don't see the 6th Generation convertibles bringing that kind of money. Are these figures from auction results? If so, that could be a reason for what I call a discrepancy.
Original base prices, normalized for 1999 CPI. No claim made that these represent current values.
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2 hours ago, telriv said:
Sorry, BUT it's 20 years + behind.
Compared to the final year of production—"normalized for 1999 CPI." Give me an hour or so and I'll convert it to 2020 dollars.
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Thanks for all the contributions, folks.
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3 minutes ago, RivNut said:
I tried to post the cover of the magazine along with the other photos but I got bumped telling me that the cover would take me over my GB limit for attachments. ??????
Ooog … we want you to keep posting stuff.
I can't find anything that tells me how much my attachments have used or what the limit would be.
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21 minutes ago, RivNut said:
Car Exchange, March 1984 (upper right hand corner.) Last I knew, Gene may have had a couple of these for sale.
Thank you, Ed. You can safely ignore the message I sent you.
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1 hour ago, RivNut said:
Can you tell me what book or magazine these scans are from?
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44 minutes ago, Pat Curran said:
1963 was certainly THE year for Bill Mitchell. Between the Riviera and the split window Corvette, could it get any better?
It was a notable year for automotive styling in general, but Mitchell definitely led. There was also Raymond Loewy's Avanti, of course, along with notable and acclaimed revisions to the Grand Prix. Across the industry, manufacturers were substituting "creases for chrome." Popular Mechanics wrote at the time that there hadn't been so much styling change since 1959.
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15 minutes ago, 60FlatTop said:
And just 20 years before Cadillac dropped LaSalle because it was cutting into Series 62 sales. They didn't want another smaller car (but they didn't know the wait would get them a Nova platform).
Of course, it only took them four model years to decide that they did need a personal luxury car—even if it was larger car than the Riviera, the 1967 Eldorado was smaller than any other Cadillac sold that year.
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14 hours ago, RivNut said:
Buick sales had slipped from 3rd place in 1955 and Buick won the rights to the car hoping that the Riviera would draw customers into Buick dealerships just to view it and walk out with a different Buick.
Agreed. A draft from the Riviera Project:
"As the decade changed to 1960, Buick was suffering because of a combination of unpopular styling, product problems, and the 1958 economic recession. From a high of nearly three-quarters of a million cars in 1955, sales had plunged to fewer than a quarter of a million units in 1959. Worse, the division was declining in comparison to its competitors. From a height of third place among all domestics for the 1955 model year, Buick fell steadily to ninth place by model year 1960."
Rivieras and Riviera parts for sale on local Craigslist, eBay, etc.
in Buick Riviera
Posted
1984 Brown Riviera with Brown Prima Cloth 45/45 seats and 10,600 miles, asking $24,900:
https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/cars-for-sale/buick/riviera/2400515.html