BUICK

Riviera I

The Buick Riviera was General Motors' answer to the Ford Thunderbird, a glamorous personal luxury coupe whose crisp, knife-edged shape made it an instant design icon when it appeared for the 1963 model year. The styling was overseen by GM design chief Bill Mitchell, who had reportedly been inspired by the sight of a custom-bodied Rolls-Royce glimpsed through London fog, and the resulting first-generation Buick Riviera combined sharp creases, a low roofline and elegant frameless side glass into one of the most admired American cars of its era. Beneath that beautiful body sat a proper grand tourer: a big 401-cubic-inch "Nailhead" V8 was standard, with a 425-cubic-inch unit optional, driving through a smooth automatic transmission. For 1965 the Buick Riviera gained hidden headlamps tucked into the leading edges of the front fenders, along with the high-performance Gran Sport package featuring dual four-barrel carburettors. Although it shared GM's E-body underpinnings, the first-generation Buick Riviera felt special and exclusive, deliberately built in limited numbers to protect its prestige. Across its three model years of 1963, 1964 and 1965, a total of 112,544 examples of the first-generation Buick Riviera were built. Praised by designers and collectors alike as one of the finest shapes Detroit ever produced, the Buick Riviera remains a highly desirable and increasingly collectible classic, with the 1965 hidden-headlamp Gran Sport cars the most coveted of all.