1984 Buick LeSabre - Meet Mike

They sure don't make 'em like this anymore.
 

I found this clean, I mean CLEAN, '84 Buick LeSabre outside the gym I go to. As my excellent luck would have it the owner was walking out just as I was going in. A quick, "I love your car!" was all it took to have "Mike", wave me over to give me his and the car's life story
 

 

A Korean War veteran and Middleburg Heights native, Mike, who's retired now, had spent thirty years working for NASA. He and his (now late) wife picked up this LeSabre at an estate sale in Evansville, Indiana back in 2009. It had just 25,000 miles on it when he first got it, just under 40,000 now. They found out about the car on Craigslist.
  

The car belonged to the grand father of the man Mike bought it from. When he passed away, the oldest son moved it into the back of a barn because he didn't have the heart to let it go. And there it sat, under a car cover for twenty years. In 2009, the family decided to move and Grand Dad's Buick had to go. Mike got it for $4,000. They had wanted $7500. Such the deal.

Mike's not the biggest fan of it although he's run into many people, like me, who are. He finds it difficult to maneuver and he says it's terrible in snow. He wishes it had more power but the upside is it gets about 20 miles per gallon. He likes the big trunk. It's made several trips to Florida in the time he's had it and he finds it a comfortable highway car.

 

 

He asked if I was interested in the car and I politely nodded yes. If it was a coupe or wagon I might have been really interested as I have little real interest in a sedan. He gave me his number and told me to call him in the spring if I was interested in buying it. He misses his Volvo. He offered to buy me lunch too so we could talk more about the car and his time at NASA (he could tell I was interested it what he did) but I had to get back to the office after my workout. He smiled, shook my hand and patted me on my shoulder. Nice man.

 

They sure don't make 'em like Mike anymore. 

The full size, rear wheel drive, V-8 powered, body on frame sedan went the way of the dinosaur back at the end of the 2011 model year when Ford stopped production of its Crown Victoria. General Motors stopped production of their rear wheel drive full size car, what us car geeks lovingly refer to as the "B body", at the end of the 1996 model year. Chrysler hasn't built a car like this in nearly a generation and half.