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Wouldn't
you Really Rather
have a
Buick ?
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| A number of years ago I saw
a one page calendar that showed all the Ford
pickup trucks from the first one to the present day. I thought , what a nice idea. I thought that I might try something similar with some of the car pictures I have collected. I have been collecting pictures of Studebakers, Packards Nash, Hudson and Jeeps and many more for some time now and I first wrote a web page on the Studebaker. Then one on Jeeps and Packard followed. Since then I have many page on old cars and pickup trucks. These pictures came for a number of sources including web pages of the manufacture, news groups and my own. Since most of these pictures came from news groups there may be a chance that your car is shown here. I would like to invite any one
that has a favorite
John MacDonald
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A Brief History of the Buick
| Buick Motor Division, came into being in 1903.
The division's founder, David Dunbar Buick was building gasoline engines by 1899, and his engineer, Walter L. Marr, built the first automobile to be called a Buick between 1899 and 1900 however Buick traditionally dates its beginnings to 1903. That was the year the company was incorporated and moved from Detroit to Flint. The division's history has been exciting from the beginning. Buick recovered from near-bankruptcy in 1904 to become the No. 1 producer of automobiles in 1908 --surpassing the combined production of Ford and Cadillac. Buick was the financial pillar on which General Motors was created. Buick was where a number of major contributors to U.S. auto history first headed an auto-building company -- such as Billy Durant, GM's founder; Charles W. Nash, a founder of what later became American Motors; Walter P. Chrysler, founder of Chrysler Corp. and Harlow H. Curtice, a GM president and chief executive in the postwar era. Louis Chevrolet, co-founder with Durant of the Chevrolet automobile, had earlier achieved fame as a Buick race team driver. And Buick has been a product innovator from Day 1 -- starting with its creation of the overhead valve engine In 1940, Chris Sinsabaugh, who as a newspaperman had covered the automobile industry from its inception, reflected that "Buick was the first real success of the automobile industry and did more to promote the industry's well-being in terms of public education, engineering advancement, and manufacturing progress than perhaps any other company" Yet in 1903 things were quite different. Its founder had produced only two cars in three years of trying. David Buick though an inventor of merit, generally was considered a dreamer. The company was in debt, its engineer had just left, and the firm's financial backer wanted to bail out. David Buick, born in Scotland Sept. 17, 1854, and brought to the United States at age 2, had been a successful plumbing inventor and manufacturer in Detroit when he turned his attention to gasoline engines in the late 1890s. He started a succession of companies: Buick-Auto-Vim and Power Co. (1899), Buick Manufacturing Co. (1902) and Buick Motor Co. (Incorporated May 19, 1903), all in Detroit. These companies produced engines for power boats and stationary applications. And by 1901 a horseless carriage, referred to in letters as "The Buick Automobile," was in existence. Buick and his engineers argued often. Marr later said he worked for David Buick three times, and each time the company had a different name. But between Buick, Marr and another engineer, Eugene Richard, the sensational valve-in-head engine was developed. It was powerful, reliable, and developed more horsepower with its displacement than other engines of like size then on the market. Eventually the entire industry would make use of the principle. But in 1903, David Buick had neither the manpower nor money to fully develop it. That year, Buick's financial backer, Benjamin Briscoe, Jr., sold his interest in Buick to a group of wagon makers in Flint, Mich., 60 miles north of Detroit. Eighteen years later, Briscoe observed that Buick's success story was "so fraught with romance that it made the Arabian Nights tales look commonplace." On September 11, 1903, James H. Whiting, manager of the Flint Wagon Works, announced that wagon works directors had brought the Buick company and planned to move it -- bag, baggage and David Buick -- from Detroit to Flint. A one-story brick factory on W. Kearsley Street in Flint was in operation, building engines, by December. On January 22, 1904, Buick Motor Co. Of Detroit was dissolved and on January 30, 1904, Buick Motor Co. Of Flint was incorporated. Flint, an old lumbering center, was already known as "The Vehicle City" -- but not for automobiles. It had become a center of horse-drawn carriage production for several decades. In the summer of 1904, the company built the first Flint Buick. Walter Marr, back again as chief engineer, and Thomas Buick, David Buick's son, took it on a test run to Detroit and back July 9-12. The test was so successful that Whiting's group ordered production to start. Buick began production with the Model B that summer and built 37 cars by the end of 1904. When the company ran into financial problems that fall, Whiting turned to one of Flint's other carriage builders for help. The man was William C. "Billy" Durant, Flint's carriage "king." Grandson of a Michigan governor, Durant had gotten into the vehicle business almost on whim. One evening in 1886, he saw an attractive horse-drawn road cart on the streets of Flint. The next night, he took the train to Coldwater, Mich., where the cart was manufactured, and bought the rights to build it. That year he started the Flint Road Cart Co. By 1900, the firm, renamed the Durant-Dort Carriage Co., was the largest producer of horse-drawn vehicles in the country. Durant didn't particularly like automobiles -- he was no different from most carriage men in that opinion. But he was a strong supporter of Flint, and he knew a "self-seller" when he saw one. The Buick, he observed, drew plenty of attention because it could climb hills and run through mud like no other car he had ever seen. If automobiles could be this good, he thought, then maybe it was time to switch from the horse-and-buggy business to automobiles. Once Durant made the decision, Buick's success was assured. No one could raise money, sell products and plan big organizations like Billy Durant. He went to the 1905 New York Auto Show and took orders for 1,000 Buicks before the company had built 40. He moved Buick assembly briefly from Flint to Jackson, Mich., in 1905 (building more than 700 Model Cs there that year) while he gathered money from Flint banks and businessmen to build the largest assembly facility in the country on Flint's north side. He persuaded Charles Stewart Mott (later a GM director for 60 years) to move his axle business from Utica, N.Y., to Flint to build axles for Buick. He promoted Buicks across the country, using Durant-Dort carriage outlets and salespeople as the nucleus of a giant distribution system. He created a racing team -- with stars such as Louis Chevrolet and Wild Bob Burmann -- that won 500 trophies from 1908 to 1910. The success of Buick engines was evident on the race tracks (including 1909 successes at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in its inaugural year -- two years before the Indy 500 started), and in endurance tests across the country and around the world. Buick was the only car to complete a 1,000-mile Chicago to new York relay race in 1906; a Buick was the first car to travel across South America, driven from Buenos Aires, Argentina, over the Andes to Santiago, Chili, in 1914. Buicks won hill-climbs across the country -- including one in 1904 with one of the first 40 Buicks ever built. In 1908, with production totaling a little more than 8000, Buick led the country in production. Durant had made the transition from the biggest seller of buggies to biggest seller of automobiles. And, on Buick's success, Durant created a holding company that year. He called it General Motors. Durant first engaged in merger talks with other producers in the low-price field, including Henry Ford and Ransom Olds, who then headed REO. Then, when those talks failed, Durant created GM as a holding company Sept. 16, 1908, and quickly pulled first Buick, then Oldsmobile, into the organization. Then he added Cadillac and Oakland (forerunner of Pontiac) and dozens of parts supplier businesses -- including AC Spark Plug, which he helped create with Albert Champion (whose initials formed the division's name). Durant became financially overextended as he pulled more than 30 companies under the GM umbrella in 1908-10. He lost control of GM to a financial group in 1910. He and Louis Chevrolet developed the Chevrolet company the following year, and Durant used Chevrolet to regain control of GM in 1915-16. Ironically he succeeded, as GM president, Charles W. Nash -- whom Durant had hired into his carriage business and later helped make president of Buick. Nash had brought Walter Chrysler to Buick as works manager. Durant retained Chrysler and made him Buick president, though Chrysler later resigned in a dispute with Durant. In 1920, Durant resigned as GM president in a short depression during which he was again overextended in the stock market. According to Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., who in 1923 became GM president, Buick's strong reputation and financial position was a major factor in pulling the corporation through the period. Buick's star climbed steadily during the roaring twenties, with production reaching more than 260,000 units in 1926. The car's reliability was world famous. In 1923, the famous writer-traveler Lowell Thomas used a Buick in the first automotive expedition into Afghanistan. Two years later, Buicks won trophies in a series of Leningrad-to-Moscow endurance and reliability runs -- beating more than 40 cars from throughout the world. Also in 1925, a Buick was taken around the world without a driver -- to show the reliability of Buick's and GM Export's service operations worldwide. The car, driven by dealer representatives in various countries, went to England, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Egypt, by trans-desert convoy to Damascus, Baghdad and Basra, through India and Ceylon, across Australia, and then from San Francisco to New York. A Buick magazine of the '20s routinely reported such events as a hill-climb victory in Africa, winning a tug-of-war with an elephant, a trek through New Zealand, and the Sultan of Johore with his Buick in the Far East. In addition to U.S. production, Buicks were built in Canada (a result of an early agreement with the McLaughlin Carriage Co. Family). And, in those decades before World War II, Buick components were shipped to such countries as Spain, Belgium, England, Australia -- even Java -- where assembly was completed. In 1929, Buick opened a sales office in Shanghai, China. Being a maker of premium automobiles, Buick was harder hit by the great depression than most of its competitors. In 1933, production plummeted to a little more than 40,000 units. By late that year, Harlow H. Curtice, the 39-year-old president of AC Spark Plug, was tapped by GM to bring Buick back to its former greatness. A super salesman in the Durant mold, Curtice brought power and speed back to Buick. In 1934, the small Series 40 was launched. It gave exceptional performance for its price of $865. Production that year topped 78,000. Next he issued a simple challenge to Harley Earl, GM's design chief, who always drove Cadillacs. Curtice's challenge: "Design me a Buick you would like to own." The result was the 1936 line which added Roadmaster and other successful names to the Buick stable: Special, Super, Century, Limited. That year production was close to 200,000. Buick, said a GM executive, was "off relief." Buick continued to break ground in styling and engineering until it turned to World War II military production Feb. 2, 1942. During World War I, Buick had built Liberty aircraft engines and Red Cross ambulances (the division today displays a letter of thanks from Great Britain's then minister of munitions, Winston Churchill, to Durant for war production). In World War II Buick helped make Flint an "arsenal of Democracy" by building aircraft engines, Hellcat tank destroyers and other military hardware. Buick was awarded more than 30 separate military contracts and Buick-built material could be found at virtually every fighting front. After the war, Buick expanded its facilities under Curtice, who in late 1948 became a GM executive vice-president, a job that led to the GM presidency a few years later. But despite the fact his responsibilities now included all the car and truck divisions, he never really left Buick or Flint. He maintained his home in that city and never owned any other make of car but a Buick. For a more detailed history please go to the following page: |
The Buick from 1950 to 1959
This page was last updated on May 11 2007
A
very special 1954 Buick Skylark
This car was owned by Thomas McGrath for 48 years.
| My father owned a Buick Dealership (1948-1957) in a small town 110
miles east of Seattle, Washington State. When the 1956 Buicks were
introduced in the spring (dealer Showing) of 1955, I just fell in love
with them, and I could hardly wait till April 30, 1956 when I would be
16 years old and abel to drive the 56's legally.
I even dreamed that my father would give me a new 1956 Century Convertible for my birthday, perhaps the one he was driving. I would help out after school and on the weekends doing odd jobs around the dealership for my dad and his men, that was my life. I learned all the different jobs as I was going to go into business with my dad someday. As my birthday came closer I just knew that he would give me the 56 Buick Century Convertible he drove, I could just feel it. The reality of it came clear on my birthday as he gave me an old used car that he got from Buick in the fall of 1953. The old car was his 1954 Buick Skylark. I was so disappointed, it did not even have portholes. By then, the Skylark was the car that my dad would loan out to customers
while his dealership repaired their car.
When my father died in 1992, and the kids were gone I decided to
sell the car. My wife and I decided that I no longer needed
to baby-sit my "dads CAR, as the family referred to it" and She said" go
ahead and sell the Skylark and get your self a 56 Century". Now this
car will really be mine.
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| This car is owned by Steve Holt | |
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| This car is owned by Hans Lammers from the Netherlands
He imported the car from South Dakota to the Netherlands. It was very rusty and in very bad condition. This Buick Roadmaster Convertible has powersteering. I restored the car during the period of three years daily from 9 till five and six days a week. Beginning with the complete chassis provide with powdercoating . The body restauration was hard working and endless hours but I am gratefully because the car became more and more originality. Engine revision and bodyoff restauration with new convertible top. New interior and windshields and new complete RVS exhaust. This car is in show condition. |
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( 20 miles north of Nogales Mexico ) Arizona USA |
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| This car is owned by William Scott, Grand Haven, MI | |
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| This car is owned by William Scott, Grand Haven, MI | This car is owned by William Scott, Grand Haven, MI |
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| This car was owned for 48 years by Thomas McGrath
BCA # 1102 |
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was submitted by William Powell. |
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submitted by William Powell. |
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The picture was last May 2006 during the Club's annual May Tour. Yes, it was raining a bit, wasn't it! The day before on their way there, they were sitting in 35 degree heat in Osoyoos. |
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