![]() ![]() The car set the identity and direction of Buick design for the next decade or so, but none of these later cars had quite the look or pleasing proportions of the original. The tapering nose and tail, lack of GM’s ‘formal roofline’, and rather tasteful detailing like the waterfall grille were more Coventry than Cleveland I mean, maybe not exactly a Jaaag but easily one of the nicest looking Buicks released in years. Buick took the 1989 Park Avenue Essence show car and kept the production model surprisingly close to the initial concept. Whatever you say about it being a car for matrons cruising to bingo or Cracker Barrel in, this later Park Avenue is really quite a nice looking design. Stephen’s 1994 Park Avenue Ultra is the second generation built on this platform, a much more curvaceous body that was one of the last projects that veteran designer Dave Holls worked on at GM (along with the more angular but still attractive 1992 Cadillac STS). Still, boxy shapes convert to pickups more easily. Passably Janky- Your girlfriend deems it acceptable to actually ride in for short distances as long as her friends won’t see her.Īs I just mentioned, the first significant challenge of such a conversion is that the Buick in the Facebook picture is the boxy front drive 1985-1990 C Body style, the one that was often held up as an example of Roger Smith’s era of identical looking General Motors sedans that got crucified by the critics and public, especially when the Audi-looking aero Fords appeared. The way I see it, doing such a conversion could be handled with two distinctly different approaches:Ĭoncours- The end result will be analyzed by chin-scratching judges in sport coats with paint depth gauges on a country club lawn. Nothing says ‘drive to church’ like a Buick, does it? And why not? The whole idea of a ‘ute’ is to offer utility when you need it and the ability to drive to church in it on Sunday. However, there were never any variations even suggested from more upscale GM brands. When the first El Camino was introduced in 1959, there was a Pontiac version prototyped that never went to production: While General Motors embraced the whole ‘ute’ concept down under, in the United States, General Motors only ever offered the body style as the Chevrolet El Camino and identical GMC Caballero, the last one being the 1978-1987 model: Bring A Trailer, Bring A Trailer Whatever the case, here’s what we were thinking. But where’s the challenge there? Plus, we’re not doing CAD virtual stress tests or whatever on this thing, so wouldn’t you rather chop away at a sacrificial lamb first to learn what would work best before ruining a pristine example? ![]() Oh, but save your typing energy on one thing- we’re well aware that you can get good condition similar cars for only $4000-6000 or so all day long. ![]() It was obvious to us that we’ll certainly want the great hive mind of Autopian readers to offer expert bodywork advice in the comments below. (For the record, we do this during our breaks). also labors in the corporate salt mines for at least nine or ten hours a day, so we naturally wasted our employers’ time and money briefly discussing how he’d like to turn the $400 remains of a used land yacht into a pickup truck. We have priorities, right? Steven’s level of excitement for this project-that-I-didn’t-know-was-a-project seemed to kick into high gear. I had a design proposal for a store display program that I needed to get together for work that day, so of course I dropped that and immediately did the more important task of a quick photoshop of what this car/pickup mashup might look like. His 1994 model is of the much different later generation, a more organic looking car (filled with very organic fungi from a blocked sunroof drain). The ever-enthusiastic Stephen seemed quite inspired, even joking about doing that same type of work to the currently-refusing-to-start Park Avenue he rescued. Gossin owns a rather moldy and currently non-functional big Buick sedan he calls the Swamp Thing, I shared it through our infamous Slack channel. Knowing that our own beloved shitbox-saving staffer S.W. ![]() You see, the other day my Facebook feed coughed up an image of an eighties Electra Park Avenue that some person had decided to turn into a sort of El Camino ‘ute’: From third generation Corvairs ( which some people seem to think are real) to Tesla ride on mowers, it’s possible that the best thing about my concepts is that there is no chance of these atrocities ever coming to life. If you actually waste any time reading posts authored by “The Bishop,” you will be familiar with the rather inane “what if” automotive scenarios that I propose. ![]()
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