With all due apologies and respect to Sir Mix-a-Lot and his classic if not seminal 1992 smash-hit, "Baby Got Back", "I like big Buick's and I can not lie".
Although not my favorite big Buick, I find this 1976 Buck Electra 225 coupe far more compelling than the similar "posted" offerings from Oldsmobile and Cadillac. "Posted" referring to the center post or "B-pillar" that GM stuck on their big coupes starting in 1974 thus doing away with my beloved "hardtop coupes". Allegedly the post was to re-enforce the top of the car in case of a rollover; as if that sort of accident happened regularly, but the concern was the National Highway Safety and Traffic Administration (NHSTA) was going to insist on it as they had with the five-mile per-hour safety bumpers. How to explain that hardtop four-door models were still around at GM during that time you ask? Umm, good question. Maybe they designed the coupes first and when they got around to the sedans they found out that legislation wasn't going to happen? Roll-over safety concerns supposedly doomed the convertible too but we all know that's bunk; bad sales killed the drop-top not Uncle Sam.
Whether it's that the side window and landau roof doesn't align with the door like it does on the Cadillac Coupe deVille and Oldsmobile 98 coupe, through my foggy goggles the rear of this car looks less like stacked boxes as it does on the Cadillac and Oldsmobile. Don't get me started on the Buick LeSabre, Olds 88, Pontiac Grand Ville and Impala\Caprice B-body coupes (slightly shorter wheelbase) of the mid-'70's. In particular the '74-'76 Buick LeSabre that somehow still had a roll-down rear window in front of the B-pillar making for a more cluttered design than any Ford designer could have come up with. Perhaps Bill Mitchell had senior-itis knowing that he was out the door at age 65 in 1977?
Historically speaking, though, to those of us who find this sort of minutia interesting, our '76 here is special because it is the last of the big "C-body" Buick coupes. The party was over come 1977 when GM's great Downsizing Epoch started that was akin to someone calling the cops a good hour or so after the hookers showed up. Yeah, the party lasted too long but up until that time it was a blowout of a good time. If you like big cars that is. Really, really big cars.
Speaking of size, you can't have any discussion about these cars and not go into at least some detail about how ginormous these things were. Photographs don't do them justice - at 80 inches wide they were wider than most humans are tall and at 233 inches long they were roughly the same height as a two-story house. There's more than ten feet between the driver's head and the right rear tail light - no wonder this car still has vestigial tail fins as they're the only way the driver has any idea where the back of the car is. Trying backing this boat up in a tight parking lot.
What's more incredible is that when Buick first introduced the Electra "225" in 1959, the "225" denoted the overall length of the car; if you're keeping score, that means our '76 here is a full eight inches longer. I take it that Buick Electra "233" didn't have the same ring to it as "225" did?
So, why and how did Buick's get so big in the first place? Well, big on the outside that is. It's not like these cars were particularly spacious inside. Designed from the outside-in, leg, shoulder and hip room was more like an afterthought.
The bigger is better axiom started in the late 1950's when, whether GM over reacted to Chrysler's remarkably fresh and exciting 1957 lineup or not, starting in 1958, they came out with the most outlandish cars ever made. Not only that, but they were the longest and widest cars ever made as well.
1957 1958
1959
The Buick Roadmaster leapt in length from a still large but manageable 216 inches for 1957 to 219 for '58. Then 1959 happened and all hell broke loose. Buick stretching their flagship to 225 inches and apparently being so proud of it they changed not only the name of the car to "Electra" but called out attention to its length by festooning "225" as a post-fix. Who knows why Buick ditched "Roadmaster" for Electra; probably because some suit thought it a more progressive moniker. Or someone wised up and determined, wisely, that the new '50's cheesey sci-fi movie inspired model wasn't worthy of the Roadmaster name.
1970 1971
Through the 1960's and up through 1970, the '70 being my favorite, Buick kept the Electra 225's length more-or-less in check ebbing it back and forth between approximately 223 and 226 inches stem to stern. Still absurdly long but somewhat diminutive compared to what was to come. Even the fairly vilified '71's were under 226 inches long. Won-ton styling differences pushed out the '72's to just under 228. The front safety bumper for '73 made them 229 inches but it was a wholesale styling update for '74 along with a massive "safety" for the rear that stretched things out to 231 inches. A redesigned front end for '75 got the big Buick out to 233 inches where it remained for 1976. And then, poof.
For 1977, Electra was eleven inches "less-long" although it was still a very substantial automobile at approximately 221 inches bumper-to-bumper; roughly the size of a 1958 Roadmaster. More importantly, since they were allegedly designed from the "inside-out", there was more genuinely usable interior and trunk space. Oh, but to 13, 14-year old me at the time and 57 year old me to this day, the styling came up way short of Buick's of yore. Yes, even the cartoonish 1959 Electra 225. Perhaps I'd feel differently about The Great Downsizing Epoch had it been generally successful but we all know how that story ultimately played out; kind of like you're favorite sports team starting out the season real well only to finish in last place.
But I like Big Buick's and I can not lie. For me they're wonderful rolling sculptures even if they handle like crap and get eight miles per gallon. If you're lucky. They're also great values if you're looking to get into the classic car world; measure your storage space to make sure it'll fit. Our lovely cake-topper here has an asking price of $10,990 and that's priced about right. Figure you'd need to spend around that to get anything in decent condition right back to the early '60's models. The most expensive of the post-war Buick's, save for the "Rain Man" Buick's (that was a '49 Roadmaster convertible), somewhat, ironically, the '59 models.
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