Along with Packard, Buick was one of the two leading proponents of the straight-eight engine in America.
Introduced in 1931, Buick’s straight eight engine replaced the automaker’s trusty inline six and then took its place as an essential part of the Buick brand identity for more than 20 years. Buick chief engineer F.A. “Dutch” Bower and crew were responsible for the design, which that first year was produced in three sizes: 220.7, 272.6, and 344.8 cubic inches, for the four Buick car lines. With eight firing impulses per cycle—twice as many as a four, and 50 percent more than a six—the engines quickly asserted themselves as smooth, silent, and powerful, elevating Buick’s reputation as a maker of high-quality automobiles.

​Arguably, Buick’s eight was even more advanced than its General Motors stablemate, the Cadillac V8, boasting overhead valves and compact combustion chambers rather than the Cadillac’s traditional L-head layout. Buick advertising campaigns sang the praises of the straight eight’s high-turbulence “Fireball” combustion chamber design: “Every spark sets off a cyclone!” Marketing labels for the inline eight over the years included Silent Oil Cushioned, Valve-in-Head, Fireball, and Dynaflash.

​While the Buick eight was continually developed and produced in a number of displacements over the years, its basic layout remained fairly constant, with the intake and exhaust systems on the left (driver) side and the distributor, camshaft, and fuel pump on the opposite side of the block. For the first few years, an updraft Marvel twin-venturi carburetor was employed along with an elaborate, driver-adjustable manifold-heating system (above).
In 1934 a modern downdraft carburetor was adopted, and in 1941-42 the senior models were equipped with Compound Carburetion using a pair of two-barrel carbs and progressive linkage (lead photo at top of page). In 1952, as the inline eight neared the end of its production life, a four-barrel was added, which Buick marketed as the Airpower carburetor. With 320.2 cubic inches, this big eight was rated at 170 horsepower.
In 1948 the straight eight was coupled to Buick’s new Dynaflow automatic transmission, which was specifically engineered to capitalize on the engine’s muscular torque curve and utter smoothness. (See our feature on Dynaflow here.) Along with Packard, Buick was one of the two great proponents of the straight eight engine in America. But nothing is forever, and in 1953 the Buick division joined the growing crowd and adopted an up-to-date high-compression V8. For its final year in 1953, the straight eight was offered only in the Series 40 Special, the junior model in the Buick line.

There’s a lot to be said for clean and simple. Let’s take a quick look back at the Biscayne, the unadorned base model of the Chevrolet full-sized line.
Here’s an interesting little secret of the Motor City’s styling studios: Car designers tend to prefer the base models of their creations over the fancier deluxe versions. In their view, the relative lack of ornamentation allows a more unobstructed look at their work. Hmm, we see where they’re coming from. Plain and simple works. Yards of chrome trim won’t make a car run any faster or handle any better. Maybe that’s one key to the gearhead community’s fascination with the Biscayne, the plainest and cheapest full-size car in the Chevy lineup for more than a decade.

​The Biscayne name was first applied to the 1955 Motorama show car above. A four-door, four-passenger hardtop with a luxurious cabin and European proportions, the Biscayne dream car (internal designation XP-37) was billed as “an exploration in elegance” and didn’t foreshadow the eventual production Biscayne in any serious way. The name was possibly inspired by the Key Biscayne Hotel in Florida, a favorite haunt of Harley Earl and other General Motors executives.

​The first use of the Biscayne name on a production car came in 1958, but oddly enough, not at the bottom of the Chevrolet model line that year. That honor, as it were, went to the Delray, not shown, which featured less chrome  trim, a plainer interior, and a $2155 base price, $135 less than the Biscayne. Two body styles were offered on the Biscayne: a two-door sedan and a four-door sedan. There were station wagons at the Biscayne trim level in ’58, but they wore a Brookwood emblem.

​In 1959, the Delray was dropped and Chevrolet arrived at the familiar Biscayne formula: Little or no bright-metal side trim, rubber floor mats in lieu of carpets, dog-dish hubcaps, inexpensive plastic upholstery fabrics, and minimal standard equipment overall. The leaner content allowed Chevrolet to list the ’59 Biscayne at $2301, more than 10 percent less than a comparable Impala. Dealers, in turn, trumpeted the low pricing in their newspaper ads to lure customers to their showrooms—and, they hoped, upsell them to the more profitable deluxe models. The Biscayne was a boon to the Chevrolet marketing strategy at multiple levels.

​With its low cost and spartan equipment, the Biscayne was a natural favorite with fleet operators, including cab companies and law enforcement agencies—for example, this ’61 two-door operated by the Ohio Highway Patrol. In volume, fleet buyers could order vehicles with a nearly unlimited variety of powertrain combinations and heavy-duty hardware. Available body styles were often limited to two-door and four-door sedans, but in some model years wagons were produced with the Biscayne emblem. For a few selling seasons, Chevy also offered a Utility Sedan, a two-door with a package shelf instead of a rear seat, and the Fleetmaster, an unbadged variant of the Biscayne that was stripped down even further, lacking even arm rests and a cigarette lighter.

​Just like the fleet operators, hot rodders and racers were quick to recognize the Biscayne’s virtues. Cheaper, and best of all lighter, than the deluxe models  but available with all the same performance options, Biscaynes were drag strip favorites in the ’60s. Baldwin-Motion Performance of New York, above, seized on the trend, offering its SS-427 Street Racer’s Special, which in 1968 featured a 425-horsepower L72 V8, a Muncie four-speed gearbox, and heavy-duty equipment for only $2998. What a deal.
By 1970, as buying habits changed and GM product platforms proliferated, it became  difficult to find the Biscayne in the Chevrolet division’s marketing materials. For ’71 and ’72, the Biscayne was officially available only to fleet operators, and now the Bel Air was holding down the bottom of the Chevrolet full-size line. (1971 Biscayne taxi shown below.) There was a Chevrolet Biscayne in ’73 through ’75, but it was available only as a four-door sedan or wagon and only in Canada.

This is the sort of thing you’ll almost never hear an auto executive admit out loud, but in his 1984 memoir, Iacocca: An Autobiography, former Ford boss Lee Iacocca frankly declared that the basic concept for probably his most famous car, the 1965 Mustang, actually came from a competitor’s product: namely, the Chevrolet Corvair.
“General Motors,” Iaococca wrote, “had taken the Corvair, an economy car, and transformed it into the hot-selling Corvair Monza simply by adding a few sporty accessories such as bucket seats, stick shift and fancy interior trim. We at Ford had nothing to offer to the people who were considering a Monza, but it was clear to us that they represented a growing market.”

​In just a few words, Iacocca nailed both the Corvair Monza’s content and its appeal. Introduced in May of 1960, the Monza included a full vinyl interior with sporty front bucket seats, deep-pile carpeting, a special steering wheel with chrome horn ring, and other deluxe extras. Although sales were a little slow the partial first year, the volume shot straight up in 1961 to more than 140,000 units—better than half the Corvair’s total deliveries. For 1962 a convertible and a wagon were added to the Monza line, and at mid-year in ’62 the Monza Spyder Coupe and Convertible arrived, offering a 150-hp turbocharged version of the air-cooled flat six and other performance enhancements.
This may seem like a stretch to enthusiasts of today, but as car buyers of the early ’60s checked out the Monza in the showrooms, with its bucket seats, vinyl cockpit, and four-speed floor shifter—complete with white cue-ball gearshift knob—they could see some Corvette flavor in the Chevy compact. (GM interior stylist Blaine Jenkins was credited with the Monza’s compelling cabin design.)  And just to make sure shoppers didn’t miss the connection, the Chevy ad people included the Corvette in the Monza’s print campaign.

​All this was carefully studied by Iacocca and the Fairlane Committee, his hand-picked task force assembled to identify emerging market opportunities. (Members included Hal Sperlich and Don Frey.) They could see that the 18-to-34 age bracket was set to blow up, that soon it would account for more than half the new car market. And clearly, the Monza had qualities that spoke to these buyers. For 1961, Ford introduced the Futura, a bucket-seat version of the Falcon, but it was merely a stopgap. On April 17, 1964, the company launched its full-scale engagement of the youth market: the 1965 Mustang.

For a brief five-year run, the Bonneville was replaced at the top of the Pontiac full-size line by the Grand Ville. ​

​From its introduction in 1957, the Bonneville represented the top of the heap in Pontiac luxury and features—the flagship of the line. Initially an extension of the Star Chief Custom in ’57, the Bonneville became a stand-alone model in 1958 and a full product line in 1959 with the addition of a station wagon. And as the biggest, costliest, and most luxuriously equipped Pontiac, the Bonneville was a consistent earner for the second-largest General Motors brand.
But for reasons probably best known to the GM product planners themselves, for 1971 the Bonneville was knocked down one notch to the middle of the full-sized line, replacing the 1967-70 Executive, which was now discontinued. (The Executive, in turn, rode in the former Star Chief slot.) The new flagship at the Pontiac division for the next five model years was the Grand Ville, a less familiar name today than Bonneville, Catalina, or Star Chief.

​While the name Bonneville had at least implied performance, the new Grand Ville badge suggested… well, grandness.  The Motor City’s full-sized cars were entering their Brougham period, and this latest Pontiac model followed right along with rich velour fabrics, deep-pile carpeting, and the full complement of power accessories and conveniences. A 455 CID V8 was standard, and while the Grand Ville rode on the standard GM B-body platform, its formal roofline was shared with the corporation’s larger C-body cars. On the 1973-75 cars, among the popular options were fender skirts, an interesting throwback to the ’50s land-yacht era.
The 1975 model year brought some significant changes to the Grand Ville. First, the standard V8 was now a 400-CID version of the familiar Pontiac V8 rather than the big 455. (See our feature on the Pontiac V8 here.) Next, the name was altered slightly from Grand Ville to Grand Ville Brougham (there was no non-Brougham Grand Ville). MY 1975 would prove to be the last for the Grand Ville name, as the Bonneville regained its flagship role at Pontiac. For 1976 there would be two Bonnevilles: Bonneville and Bonneville Brougham. As things turned out, the Bonneville name would be repurposed and repackaged several more times before it was finally retired in 2005.

​Article courtesy of Mac's Motor City Garage

Here’s the story at Chevrolet for 1967, when the General Motors division proudly called itself The Number One Team.
As this film throws down right from the start, in 1967 Chevrolet was the largest car brand in all the world, dwarfing all the other General Motors divisions and many entire car companies as well. Sure, it was a tall boast, but at the time it was completely true. As we know, that would change soon enough as imports took an increasingly bigger bite out of the U.S. market and meanwhile, the car market itself was evolving. Today, the best-selling vehicle in America isn’t a passenger car, it’s a pickup truck: the Ford F-150.
But in 1967 Chevy still ruled the roost, hence the familiar slogan that also serves as the title of this original factory film: The Number One Team. Starting at around the one-minute mark, there’s a surprisingly thorough and accurate five-minute history of the bow-tie brand. We would add only one fact that, understandably, was omitted from this official narrative: Chevrolet was not originally a General Motors division. It was founded independently in 1911 by William C. Durant, then combined with GM in 1917. Also included in the Jam Handy production are some great glimpses of the design, manufacturing, and sales process, along with the 1967 product line. Video follows.

​There’s a difference between pop-up headlights and hidden headlights. Pop-up headlights, like on some Miatas and Corvettes and Opel GTs and many other cars are more about the goal of not having to break a low nose and hoodline to accommodate headlamps; hidden headlights are more about the challenge of hiding the headlamps, just for the joy of it. American designers really went bonkers for these in the 1960s, and I think one of the most surprising light setups was on the 1966-1969 Buick Riviera. Let me show you why.
When it comes to hidden headlights on American cars, there were two schools of thought: you could just cover the lights in some ornate way, but not really hide them; their location would still be apparent, but they’d have some fussy covers over them, like these mid ’70s Thunderbirds or the Mercury Marquis:

​...and those are fine, I guess, but the false grille panels aren’t really fooling anyone, with those big panel gaps and all that. The indicators are nicely hidden, though.
To avoid obvious panel gaps, you could do what Oldsmobile did with their Toronado, and just move the whole damn grille up and out of the way:

Oh, man, that’s just fantastic. The clamshell/eyelid method of opening has such drama to it! I love it! Great as it is, though, they’re not exactly hidden in the way these others are; you know the lights are in those pods, and there’s not quite the mystery of where will they appear?
Still wonderful, though.
Okay, let’s get back to our 1966 Riviera pal here. Where do you think the lights are hiding?

​That grille doesn’t seem to have any obvious panels that would be large enough to hide headlights. Those light pods at the outer edges are the parking lamps/turn indicators, so they’re not in there. Does the whole grille flip up, like the Toronado? Hmm.
Well, let’s see what’s going on here:

Oh damn! Look at that! They flip down, from above the grille, and end up hanging in front of the recessed grille! What a gleefully weird, unexpected solution! I love it!
Hold on, I want to make an animated GIF of this:

Meet the two big new V8s for the 1958 Edsel in this original Ford Motor Company television spot.
When the Edsel was introduced by the Ford Motor Company—on E-Day, September 4, 1957— its mission included two ambitious objectives. First, the Edsel was designed to be fresh and new in every way, starting with its unusual styling (weird might be a more accurate term, some would say). Next, the Edsel attempted, as much as possible for one car make, to be all things to all car buyers. The broad product range featured four model lines, with the junior Pacer and Ranger based on the Ford passenger car platform, while the deluxe Corsair and Citation were built on the larger Mercury chassis.  And there were two new V8s, each one based on an entirely different engine family. The Edsel was “the most beautiful thing that ever happened to horsepower,” the ad writers boasted.
As this original Ford spot briefly explains, the two new Edsel V8s were the E-400 and the E-475, each named for its lb-ft torque rating. The E-475 was built on FoMoCo’s MEL engine architecture (read more about the MEL V8 here). With a bore and stroke of 4.20 inches by 3.70 inches, it displaced 410 cubic inches and developed 345 hp. The E-400, a member of the more familiar FE engine family of 1958-76 (which included the famed 390 and 427 CID V8s) displaced 361 cubic inches and was rated at 303 hp. With a 4.05-in bore and 3.50-in stroke, it was essentially the Ford division’s 352 CID V8 with a .050 overbore.
But as things turned out, both engines proved to be one-year wonders. When Edsel sales sputtered and fell far short of their target in 1958, the product line was radically downsized to just two models for ’59 and the two Edsel-exclusive V8s were discontinued, alas. “To sensibly test the potential of these high-torque engines is something no man should miss,” the announcer declares. Video below.

Join us in the Ford Motor Company’s anechoic chamber in Dearborn as we check out the full-sized Fords for 1970. 

Ford had a new tagline for its big-car line in 1970: “Take a quiet break.”  The slogan was used across the board in both the print and TV materials that year, and it was a notable departure from the muscular Total Performance theme of the previous decade. But on the other hand, the new messaging recalls the memorable 1965 campaign in which Ford bragged that its cars were quieter than a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. (See the famous Ford commercial here.) Of course, the property of quietness in a car also plants two more desirable attributes in the minds of potential buyers: quality and luxury.
​
To sell the quiet concept in the spot below, Ford took the cameras to a “quiet room” at the company’s engineering facilities in Dearborn. A more technical name is acoustic anechoic chamber, and essentially, it’s a space designed to deaden reflected sound waves so that direct sources of noise can be identified and studied. And yes, the anechoic chamber is still an important tool for the automakers today. Featured here, naturally, is the very top of the Ford full-size line for 1970, an LTD Brougham 2-door hardtop. The LTD badge was a solid winner for Ford at the time, accounting for nearly 375,000 sales that year—close to half the full-size production in ’70, which also included the Custom, Galaxie, and XL. Video below.

​The 1955 Chevrolet is celebrated today for its revolutionary V8 engine, but in fact, the entire car was an important leap forward for GM’s best-selling car brand.

​When the 1955 Chevrolet was introduced to the assembled press at the General Motors Milford Proving Ground on October 12, 1954, it was described (yawn) as “all new,” but in this case, for once, the public relations people weren’t stretching the truth even a little. This car truly was all new. The fact was that Chevrolet’s engineering had grown dated by the early ’50s, and the updates were a welcome change. As hard as this would be to imagine a few years later, Chevrolets before 1955 were not known for their performance or advanced design.
The numerous improvements included a new box-section frame, redesigned front and rear suspension, tubeless tires, and a 12-volt ignition system—a necessary upgrade to support the high-compression 265 CID V8. As we know, it was the exciting new V8 that came to dominate the Chevrolet story for 1955. But actually, there were a number of interesting developments that are worth a closer look.

​This view of the undercarriage above shows off the new ladder frame, which used sturdy box-section rails from front to rear. Meanwhile, a set of 14 carefully calibrated rubber body mounts tied the chassis and body together while isolating the passenger compartment from road shocks and noise. But if you look more closely at the illustration, you may notice something unusual: The frame has no crossmembers between the front and rear. Where did they go?

​In this new Chevy, the cowl and firewall assembly doubled as the center frame crossmember, as shown above. A heavy-gauge stamping of double-wall steel construction that formed a natural arch, the cowl assembly added rigidity to the frame and to the front of the body structure as well. Chevy engineers called this piece a “plenum” because it also housed an integrated heater and air-conditioning unit, a feature introduced at GM by Pontiac in 1954. The unitized packaging allowed Chevrolet to offer optional air-conditioning at a more realistic price ($565) for a car in the low-priced field. Previous factory A/C systems used a bulky and costly trunk-mounted evaporator unit.
There was no transmission crossmember, either. Instead, the engine and transmission were supported by a tuned rubber mounting system at the front of the block and the sides of the bell housing (above). This allowed the engine to roll on its natural axis of rotation a limited amount rather than transmitting the rough motions into the chassis structure. In this regard it was similar to Chrysler’s Floating Power system of the 1930s. And with the transmission supported at the bell housing and free at the tail housing, its noise and vibration were isolated from the passenger cabin as well. All ’55-’57 Chevrolets used this  mounting system in all engine and transmission combinations, six and V8. Convertible models employed a familiar X-member in the frame for added chassis rigidity.

​In another major departure from traditional Chevrolet practice, the ’55 chassis abandoned the tried-and-true torque-tube driveline, adopting Hotchkiss drive with an open propeller shaft and Hooke’s joints front and rear. The modernized setup offered improved wheel control and reduced driveline noise. Meanwhile, the rear leaf springs were moved outboard from the frame rails and the shock absorbers were splayed out as far as possible as well. This design, which the Chevy marketing folks branded “Outrigger Suspension,” offered increased roll resistance but without stiffening the spring rates and thus making the ride suffer.

​The front suspension was thoroughly overhauled as well, with upper and lower ball joints replacing the previous kingpin setup and the addition of a new recirculating-ball steering gear. Chevy engineers also took the opportunity at this point to dial a sizable amount of anti-dive into the front suspension geometry (above) to improve driver control under deceleration and braking. While seemingly subtle, these details front and rear provided a major improvement in the car’s handling. (And they may help to explain how the ’55-’57 Chevy chassis became a favorite on the short-track stock-car scene for decades.) While the new ’55 Chevy V8 engine was a hot performer, the new chassis was a performer, too. And it didn’t take long for the news to spread that Chevrolet was now in the performance car business.

​This American Motors ad (above) draws the obvious parallels between the Javelin and the Mustang. Obviously, the Javelin was aimed squarely at the hot-selling Ford product and its pony car competitors. In features and pricing the two cars were quite similar, but AMC, true to form, claimed the Javelin had the edge in practical details like trunk space and legroom. It’s interesting to note that the Mustang and the Javelin were created pretty much the same way. Just as the Mustang shared its basic platform and components with the compact Ford Falcon, the Javelin owed much to the Rambler American underneath.

​The Javelin rode on a unit-construction chassis with a 109-inch wheelbase, three inches longer than the American, while sharing the American’s coil-tower front suspension and Hotchkiss drive at the rear with open driveshaft and parallel leaf springs. Exterior sheet metal was based on two AMC Project IV show cars of 1966, the two-seat AMX and four-seat AMX II, with the concept originating as a two-place coupe by AMC designer Charles Mashigan.
The Javelin was offered in but a single body style, a coupe with a sloping roofline that split the difference between a fastback and a traditional two-door notchback. There was no convertible. At midyear in ’68 AMC brought out its two-seat variant of the Javelin, the AMX. (See our feature on the AMX here.) That’s the reverse of the original product lineage, interestingly enough. In the AMC styling studios, the two-seater came first. Naturally, the four-seater offered far more potential sales volume.

​Two key elements of the pony car theme, as pioneered in the Mustang, were upscale interior appointments and a wide variety of drivetrain choices. Following that template, the Javelin’s cockpit was fairly luxurious, for a Rambler anyway, with bucket seats, embossed vinyl, and full-pile carpeting. For $105, the optional SST package included upgraded cabin materials and twin beltline stripes on the exterior.
Powertrain options included a 232 CID inline six with your choice of three-speed manual or three-speed automatic transmission, while the eight-cylinder options included a pair of 290 CID V8s engines (with two or four-barrel carburetors) and the 343 CID mill with 280 horsepower. The V8s could be matched to a Borg-Warner T10 four-speed manual gearbox or the Shift-Command three-speed automatic with console or column shifter. The big 390 CID V8 from the Ambassador with 315 hp became available at midyear. But meanwhile, check this out: When Car Life road-tested a 343-powered Javelin SST for its December 1967 issue, it reported a quarter-mile time of 15.4 seconds at 93 mph. That’s impressive performance for the smaller V8, aided no doubt by the four-speed gearbox and sporty 3.54:1 final drive ratio. This was no granny car.
Javelin production for the inaugural 1968 model year totaled a little more than 55,000 cars, barely a drop in the bucket compared to the Ford Mustang and its 317,000-plus sales that season. But for tiny American Motors and its total model-year production of not quite 273,000 cars in ’68, the Javelin was a solid hit, and the company began planning a second-generation pony car for 1971-74.