General Motors redesigned their B- and C-body (full-size) line up for 1971 with cars that were evolutionary rather than revolutionary in terms of what they replaced. To be in compliance with 1973 federal five-mile-per-hour impact standards, the front ends were reworked so that enormous, some would say hideous, "cowcatcher" front bumpers could be bolted on to them. Our '73 Buick Electra here, which I found for sale on Marketplace with a $14,000 asking price (good grief!) suffers from the ignominy of the chrome battery rams.
All I can say is, as a car-crazy urchin running amuck with minimal parental supervision at the 1973 Auto Show in the city at the long since razed New York Coliseum, the big bumpered 1973 models looked fresh and modern making anything without the damn things look dated and old. The heck did I know?
For 1974, the rear end of all cars sold in this country had to be able to absorb a five-mile-per-hour oopsie and not sustain damage too. As often happens, things got worse as all C-body hardtop coupes got tossed into the proverbial dumpster for 1974; the B-body two-doors would follow in 1975 and 1976. There were no hardtops at all through "The Great Downsizing Epoch" of 1977-1986.
Thing is with the big bumpers, which were intended to save consumers money by making cars less prone to damage in fender benders, in the end they actually cost owners more. Manufacturers passed the cost of engineering them onto buyers and the big bumper cars were more expensive to repair in collisions greater than five-miles-per-hour. Whoops! The impact standards were rolled back to two-and-half miles per hour for the 1984 model year and beyond. Explains why today, if you just tap someone or someone taps you, you're out $1,500 to $2,500 to fix it. At least.
Our '73 here has more problems than a massive chin-spoiler, though. While you'd never confuse the performance of a Buick Electra with a race car, by 1973, lower compression and primitive emissions equipment had whittled away at what little go there was. Furthermore, what defined a luxury car sold in this country had been fading since the mid-'60's, and these class-of-'71's may have been the tipping point.
Cheap plastics, rubber, vast expanses of genuine, imitation fake wood too. Who were they kidding. You couldn't get leather seats in a Buick Electra either back then. Not that the slippery, rock hard and soulless leather you could get in a Cadillac was anything special.
Perhaps no car sums up my childhood more succinctly than this big old Buick, again with a towering $14,000 asking price but that's what these dinosaurs are going for these days in this kind of shape. Much like this country at the time, forget my upbringing which was a shit show in and of itself, this Buick was caught between what was and the uncertainty of what was yet to come.
Cliches be damned, some things never change.
