1977 Buick Regal - If the Brake Shoe Fits

Perusing Gateway Classic Cars massive inventory of what they deem "classics" is a Sunday morning, coffee cup in hand timewaster and they never let me down when I want to find something that piques my fancy. They're a nationwide consignment network and everything they have for sale, from exotic cars to sports car and ponies to crossovers, is hysterically overpriced.  Like this very nice, low mileage 1977 Buick Regal. Asking price? $18,000. To make matters worse, they claim it has a "heart pounding 305 V-8", guys, you're talking to car people here, these cars never came with a "305" which was a Chevrolet engine anyway.  Be real. And they claim this is a "personal luxury car". 

I'm not going to spend today's soliloquy drilling down into who or what would spend $18,000 on this thing. But, who the hell would? I wouldn't pay half that. By the way NADA price guidelines peg this at $10,900. And that's for "high retail". 

I'd also stop short of lumping this quasi-handsome, two-door Century in the same vehicle grouping as my beloved Pontiac Grand Prix and Chevrolet Monte Carlo of the same vintage. Although, if the brake shoe fits, you can call it a "personal luxury car" or whatever you want. For my money, a "personal luxury car", by my definition, is a stylized, two-door, intermediate sized coupe with unique sheet metal from the four-door sedan it shares its underpinnings and mechanicals with Like the Grand Prix was different from the LeMans and the Monte Carlo was different compared to the Chevelle.  

In fairness, Oldsmobile didn't exactly disguise their two-door Cutlass' as anything more than what it was either. And seeing that it was one of the best-selling nameplates of the 1970's, my argument holds no water. However, these Regals where a different putt since Buick sold a smattering of them compared to the number of Cutlass' Oldsmobile sold. To say nothing of the zillions of Grand Prix' and Monte Carlo's sold. This all really matter? Of course not. But if I'm going to drop eighteen-grand on anything from 1977, it most certainly wouldn't be a Buick Regal. 

Back in the days before the Earth cooled, I test drove one of these that was for sale for around $1,500. It was in real nice shape similar to what this looks like too. I passed on it because it didn't pass my vaunted definition of what a personal luxury car was. I wanted a Grand Prix or Monte Carlo but those were going for a thousand if not two thousand more. This kid had his standards and he stuck to them.  Hey, if you can't join 'em, do the next best thing and get a shameful knock-off. I bought a Chrysler Cordoba on the cheap and never looked back. 

The Regal started out as a trim level on the 1973 and 1974 Buick Century. It became its own separate model, so to speak, in 1975. The nameplate stuck around off and on for most of the last fifty years with, amazingly, General Motors only dropping the nameplate after 2020 when they stopped selling rebadged Vauxhall\Opel Insignias as Buick Regals. They had also put it on hiatus from 2004-2010 but something tells me "Regal" might just be kaput for good now since Buick doesn't even make "cars" anymore.