Neither Buick nor General Motors had ever built anything quite like the 1963 Riviera. Buick had offered its limited-production Skylark convertibles of 1953-54 and Cadillac had been producing various Eldorados since 1953, but all were based on existing full-size models.
Buick Takes A Chance With A Personal Luxury Car
The mid-size 1963 Buick Riviera broke new ground. It resembled nothing else in the Buick line, a courageous gamble on the division’s part in that the Riviera might have succeeded in sales and in generating showroom traffic or might have failed because of its uniqueness.
Buick had determined quickly that it was right, since the 1964 Riviera was virtually unchanged and the next year’s version was merely cleaned up. The 1965 Riviera’s biggest improvement was at the front, where hidden headlight produced a wonderfully elegant grille, but the car was still essentially the 1963 Riviera.
The 1966 Riviera
When Buick unveiled the second-generation Riviera, it was almost as radically fresh as the 1963 version had been three years earlier. Much of the originals angularity was gone, as was its slightly boxy quality. A less-upright greenhouse went a long way toward making that change in the car’s appearance and not incidentally, it eliminated the first generation’s vent windows.
A seemingly small difference, it was welcomed by some for the visual improvement it produced and blasted by others for the impracticality that resulted; with no vent windows, the only way to get a slight amount of breeze into the cabin was to lower the main window
The 1966 model abandoned the previous forward-leaning look – although that theme would return with a vengeance in 1971 on what would become known as the boat-tail Riviera – and at each end, the bumper was now integrated into the body and followed its lines perfectly. The front-end treatment was particularly successful, as the stacked dual headlights that had hidden behind bulky retractable covers on the 1965 model were replaced with horizontal duals that flipped up and back to disappear into the 1966 Riviera’s grille.
The redesigned Riviera measured just two inches longer than its predecessor overall, but the new styling was closer to a fastback and made it seem much longer. Another illusion was that the Riviera was still a one-of-a-kind car, something that was no longer true; Oldsmobile had introduced its revolutionary Toronado for 1966 and that car shared the Riviera’s basic body. The Olds used front-wheel-drive as opposed to the Riviera’s then-conventional rear-wheel-drive layout and was styled differently enough from the Riviera to disguise the common heritage, but a careful look at both will reveal the similarities.
Only A Buick V-8 Would Do For A Buick Riviera
From the start, Buick hadn’t been shy about giving the Riviera ample power. After all, it was a fairly expensive personal luxury car and those who spent enough to buy one deserved to be rewarded, so it was introduced with a 401-cubic-inch V-8 rated at 325 horsepower as its base engine.
For 1966, the Riviera used Buick’s 425-cubic-inch V-8 and while the car was no lightweight at just over two tons, that engine’s 340 horsepower proved more than adequate. And since the Riviera was a personal luxury car rather than a muscle car or a sports car, it was available only with an automatic transmission.
Riviera Production Rewards Buick
With 40,000 sales, the Riviera did well in its first year. Not surprisingly, sales dropped somewhat in 1964 and again in 1965 when it was no longer a brand new car. In 1966, though, the number jumped to 45,348 before again falling slightly on the nearly identical 1967 model.
The Riviera continued on a mostly successful course before beginning to fade in the mid-1990s. The final example was built in the 1999 model year.
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