2002 Buick Park Avenue - I Like Big Cars...

 

I Like Big Cars...and I Can Not Lie. I just do. Don't know why. My wife says that I like, "old man cars". Well, if the shoe fits it...I wear it. Unashamedly so.

 

 

Perhaps it's a vestige of my youth; my parents, eccentric children of the Great Depression that they were, judged the size of a person's wealth by the size of the automobile they drove.

 



 

Bizzare as that may sound now there was some merit in that thinking years ago. After all, Cadillac carved its image producing gigantic automobiles. Particularly between 1971 and 1976, when I was a tender, young, impressionable nipper growing up in the concrete and asphalt wilderness of suburban NYC.

 

 

In those days, Cadillac (GM), produced some of the largest automobiles ever made. Some of that size had to do with enormous battering ram bumpers (starting in 1973) that the Government mandated but those chrome logs aside, they were some truly gigantic iron.

 

 

My parents had a 1972 Cadillac deVille that was very similar to '71 above. It was obscenely large. So much so that my father would routinely back it into trees. The car of course wouldn't show a scratch. Can't same the same for the poor old tree. Honestly, though, these cars were too big and The Good General knew that. By 1977, these big boys were gone.

  

 

This 2002 Buick Park Avenue fits my fancy to a tee. Yes, she's a tad long in tooth but she's in pristine condition. Had, if I recall correctly, a mere 25,000 miles on her clock and most importantly, she's big. Oh, so big. While pricey for a ten year old car I felt it a fair deal considering her condition and low miles.

 

 

Big as she is, though, she handles much smaller than her actual size. That's a good thing.  Performance is pretty brisk too for a large car with a six cylinder engine. That six being nothing like the wobbly sixes of yore. No, sir. The mighty GM 3800 standing at attention, sir!. 200 horsepower and 225 pound feet of torque at the ready. Very decent fuel economy too for a car of its size. Back then, GM offered a supercharged version of this engine on the Park Avenue Ultra that delivered significantly more performance. At a price. First as a window sticker premium and then at the pump. Not only did the supercharged engine require premium fuel for maximum power, gas mileage was appreciably lower to boot. Think I'll stick with the regular engine, thank you.

 

 

 

So, what's not to love, right? Well, my wife hated this car so that was that. No talking her off that ledge. This was not going to happen. No matter how much of value this big ole beauty may have been. Value, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.