Harley Earl's Le Sabre Concept Car

[Guest]

Does anybody know what ever happened to this car? Is it in a museum somewhere, or part of a private collection? It's quite an important Buick in American Automobile history in my opinion. There is a nice article about it in this month's Sports Car Magazine.<P>Thanks,

[Guest]

I belve it is in the General's Collection and is in storage with hundreds of other cars that are valued as priceless. I saw a program that featured a car show and it had been brought out on display. If I remember correctly it was owned and driven by him for a couple of years before going back to GM. If I remember correctly it had all sorts of neat features like an alcohol level guage for the alcohol injection and all sorts of wild stuff that were state of the art back then.

[Guest]

I saw the 1951 Buick LeSabre concept car at the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI during the BCA National Meet in 1988. I have not been back to this museum since, and do not know if it is still there. I'll bet someone on the board has seen this car since then.

[The Old Guy]

The Le Sabre was on display at the Woodward cruise!!!! I t is on loan to the Ford museum ,but will eventually come back to the Buick Archives in Flint MIch

[Guest]

I've always loved this car. Technically it's not a Buick; has no Buick symbols or ID; it's more a "GM" car than anything else. Buick just picked up the name. Nice article with a half dozen pics & plenty of info below. I'm cuckoo over those headlights!!!!!! <BR> <A HREF="http://detnews.com/joyrides/2001/lesabre/" TARGET=_blank>http://detnews.com/joyrides/2001/lesabre/</A>

[Centurion]

Eventhough the LeSabre was a GM Styling exercise, its relationship to Buick goes beyond the name it gave to Buick's long-running series. My understanding is that the car's experimental V8 engine was built by Buick and the transmission is a Dynaflow.<P>Aside from the mechanicals, have you noticed how predictive the car's styling is of the Buicks that appeared during the 1950's? There's the obvious sweepspear molding, but there's also the sculpted character line in the front rear quarter area, just below the beltline. A very similar design detail was used on the '54 - '57 Special and Century cars, just below the rear quarter window.<P>The front fender design has always reminded me of the 1958 Buick. And, when the 1959 Buick was initially envisioned as a facelifted version of the 1958 Buick, at least one full-size styling clay was done with the full LeSabre dream car front end treatment.<P>By the way, when we think about long-running Buick series names, we often think of Special, Century, Super, and Roadmaster. I was surprised recently to realize that the LeSabre name has been used for more model years than any other Buick series name, including Century. Perhaps even more surprising is that the name has consistently been applied to the least expensive full-size Buick. Usually, nameplates have been downgraded or disappear over time. For example, remember when the fanciest Chevy was a BelAir, which was then superseded by the Impala? The Impala itself was supplanted by the Caprice, and the BelAir eventually became the cheapo line. At Ford, one could see the same pattern with the Fairlane and Galaxie series names.

[Guest]

I agree with the Buick stlye influence. Notice also the Red-White-Blue circular band in the emblems which Buick used in the early '50's, and how close the rear fenders and taillight theme matched early 50's Buicks, especially the '54s. <P>The dash looks like it inspired that of the early Corvettes.<P>Ive read that the Dynaflow was replaced by a Hydramatic. And the engine was redesigned before it went into this car so that it would conform to what the stylists wanted to do with the design of the car's nose. I've read that the shape of the heads (and small valves) of intial production nailhead V-8 engines were spec'd to meet a styling requirement for a narrow engine as well, rather than any cost or performance requirements that came down from engineering.