1980 Buick Regal - When in Kentucky

Finally. I've figured out why it is I find all 1978-1987 General Motors intermediates so off-putting. It's their proportions - they're totally out of whack. Although they're hardly "small" at two-hundred inches long, they're narrower than GM's then current compacts and with their stubby, truncated wheelbases, the designers had their hands full cobbling together cohesive designs. So, to that end, you almost have to applaud the job Buick did with their Regal, this one a 1980, seeing how relatively clean, although quite dull, subjective as that is, the overall design is. 

Amazingly, our Regal is four and a half inches longer than GM's seminal if not iconic 1955 Chevrolet. What helps make the Chevrolet better balanced looking is that it's nearly three inches wider and has a wheel base that's a whopping eight inches longer. There's also the fact the Chevrolet is more than a foot taller allowing for more sheet metal to be sculpted below the car's belt-line. The "longer, lower and even wider" idiom still several years away. 

This Regal looks all but appliance like in comparison to the Chevrolet, don't you think? The cheesy "half-landau" top and chunky chrome safety-bumpers doing this poor little car no favors either. GM did a great job updating all of these cars for 1981 doing the best that could be done with a very awkward canvas. Well, they cleaned up the coupes; the sedans and wagons they left the same. GM replaced these cars with the front-wheel-drive "GM10's" (to be known as W-bodies) in 1988. 

Best that can be said about this car in particular is that in this insane used car market, it's refreshing to find something like this that isn't priced out of this world; although I might be numb at this point thinking that $1,000 is reasonable for a non-running, rusty bomb. Might include a parts car if the owner is able to recover it. Apparently it was stolen. As we say up here in Ohio, "when in Kentucky". Seriously, if this was a '55 Chevrolet in this shape the asking price would be north of ten-grand. And how crazy is that? 

Hot rodders like these cars because they're front engine, rear-wheel-drivers with full-perimeter frames. They're also relatively light weight with large engine compartments that can swallow just about anything. Bonus, you get a power driver's bucket, power windows, locks, tilting column and a front passenger seat full of trash. 

And the ad for this car is one of those obnoxiously written ones telling potential tire-kickers not to waste his time or low-ball him because he knows what he has here. Err, ok. Well, at least it's not a 1978-1980 Chevrolet Monte Carlo or Pontiac Grand Prix so it's got that going for it.