It offers special features and has a U. Olympic team logo with five interlocking rings on the tail lamps and floor mats. Buick has offered Olympic editions in the past, and this model is a continuance of that tradition. Among the special features are a power sunroof, Gran Touring suspension and eight-speaker Monsoon audio entertainment system with steering wheel-mounted controls.
Even though it's a mid-size, the Regal has a full-size trunk - One feature I always like in a sedan is a large trunk that will allow my wife and me to take all the luggage and goodies we want when we're visiting the kids. In our family, that's the biggest trunk possible.
For , Buick has added a trunk entrapment handle to the inside of the trunk that can be used by anyone who's silly enough to get locked inside. I have always wanted to test these handles in some of the cars I've driven, but I'm too big to get in the trunk in the first place.
Now if I could just get my wife in there. Buick has been doing something right for a long time and wisely hasn't tried to change the formula. Buick has a solid customer base and is working hard not to erode it. The limited-edition Regal limited to as many as Buick can sell includes Abboud's name on the lower doors, Olympic insignias on the taillamps, and—here we quote faithfully from the press release—"color-coordinated console shifter and steering wheel," the latter, one supposes, to differentiate this Regal from Buicks whose steering wheels are shamelessly rendered in Stewart tartan or in Glaswegian paisley.
That's right. Young Woods, who would seem to most Americans only slightly less likely to drive a Buick than, say, Muammar Kaddafi, now spends his spare hours contemporizing Regals. But we digress. Who are we, after all, to question a Buick whose supercharged V-6 and four-speed transmission are miraculously made more lustrous via tenuous proximity to unnamed Olympic athletes, a year-old African Asian American golfer with an overbearing father, and a New Yorker who designs bathrobes for Don Imus?
Where, in any of this brand magicianship, does evil lurk? Nowhere, is where. In fact, let us join your cross-marketing reindeer dances. Let us grow your businesses, leverage your opportunities, and maximize your synergies.
Consider our selection of vehicular marketing strategies, each as yet untapped:. The two were sold alongside each other for several years, making the W-body sedans seem like more of a four-door version of the existing personal luxury coupe models than a replacement for the A-body sedans.
Was the W-body originally intended to be strictly a coupe to replace the G-bodies, and the sedan was added later? Or was there always a plan to introduce a sedan in a second phase? Were the W-body sedans originally seen as replacements for the A-body sedans which is what they turned out to be at Chevy and Pontiac , or as four-door versions of the personal luxury coupe concept, in light of falling demand for personal luxury coupes? The Regal in 73 was sort of a pseudo Cutlass Supreme for Buick, it had the small opera window roofline instead like the Cutlass Supreme instead of the big open window like a LeMans or Chevelle coupe.
Later the W-body sedans were kinda positioned, like you said, as sort of upscale personal luxury semi-sporty midsize cars, you could get the 4 bucket seat option on the Pontiac, Olds and Buick sedans, not to mention the STE, International Series and GS versions of the W-sedans. Then Chevy had no mid-size coupe at all for the model year the Celebrity coupe was also dropped, due to slow sales; by this time Chevy had no full-size coupe anymore, either.
These leave another question open, though: what was GM going to do to replace the Monte Carlo? Given that there seems to have been some trend in this era towards Chevrolet not sharing designs with the other divisions e. Perhaps the Lumina coupe was orignally intended when it was proposed to be a companion to the H-body to replace both the Monte Carlo and the Caprice coupe? If I had been an adult male back in those days who had the money for a new car I would have been sorely tempted to purchase one.
If any of you all want to see where these Regals still rule the roost, come to the San Francisco Bay Area where they are endlessly popular. A lot of them went from being perfectly maintained cars of the currently dead to popular for customization of the living, particularly in Oakland. And the GS ones can be quite fun to drive. Holden based; sold in the Middle East and China.
Tons of these still rolling around Los Angeles. Many look to be on their last owner. I absolutely remember those commercials. I was 13 when these commercials ran, and even at that age I remember thinking how completely bizarre and out-of-character it was for Buick to market to young, active families — I almost thought it was some sort of joke. Young families drove either SUVs of some sort or Asian sedans. Not one young family drove a Buick or even considered it.
Turns out her mom bought a brand-new LeSabre with cloth seats. I find the new Buicks extremely appealing cars, as do many of my peers. Times they are a-changin. My utiimate W-Regal would be a clean 90 or so coupe in either Limited or Grand Sport trim with the full digital dash option, with the of course.
I remember driving a 92 or 93 Regal GS sedan, white with burgandy leather 4 seat package and the chrome luggage rack only a few cars looked good with this luggage rack, the Regal GS, the Bonneville SE 87 and the Grand Prix SE couple It was a dealer demo that my Grandmother was thinking about buying, trading in her 87 Grand Marquis Park Lane ewww for it. I must have just gotten my license, and remember driving her over in my mothers 89 STE.
So she could see how the ride was. From memory, it drove pretty similar to the STE other than the back end felt a little lighter and it felt just a little larger. This brings back memories of the Olympic Edition Buick Century. I still remember seeing that car for the first time at the NY auto show that year. IIRC, it was off-white with a tan interior and odd combination of the T-type alloy wheels with whitewalls.
A Custom coupe. Customs had some sort of plastic oak that was especially putrid alongside the blue mouse fur seats in the car I used to bomb around in. But the interior of this car could have just as easily been in a Lumina. Numb controls, cheap plastics, mushy seats, even had the same junky sound when I closed the door. Good riddance to the W-body. I always wondered if the unique front clip fenders, hood, lights and bumper of the Regal coupe could be installed on a Regal sedan giving it a slightly more chiseled front end.
For example, the Roadmaster sedan and wagon front clips are totally interchangeable with each other and even with Caprices of the same vintage. All new for 88 W-body cars had digital instruments standard with even more digital goodness optional, the Regal and Grand Prix had standard digital speedometers, with an analog fuel gauge and idiot lights, the Cutlass had a full digital cluster, with an optional cluster with full digital gauges and tachometer, similar to what the Regal offered.
Ah the Olympic Edition Regal… so you can fondly remember the Centennial Park bombing and the glory days of domestic terrorism! In fairness, I suppose they were in the difficult position of trying to figure out a balance between not alienating the significant legions of GM diehards who gobbled this crap up and attracting everyone else who had found greener pastures.
Now FWIW, in function — it was not a bad ride at all. Most Regals were appointed very nicely and the W-Body chassis was a good compromise between comfort and agility. The Buick version was most commonly found with the I think the 2.
This example is amazingly pristine… surely the prized possession of some dead geezer! No matter how risque and self-destructive the behavior inside that car was, it looked terminally unhip to the outside world… just please ignore that plume of grey smoke emanating from the rear window, Mr. Count me among those turned off by the beltline dip. I also never saw a front end design on a W-body Buick that I liked.
But the overall design, especially in the upper trim levels of the later years, was pretty. Had a European feel to it. Why does everyone want a rear-wheel drive car? Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Posted June 29, at AM. Tom Klockau. Posted June 29, at PM. Regal View. Posted February 8, at AM. When did it become called the W body? I can relate to this article on two levels. Laurence Jones. Stainsey Stainselstein. Those hp numbers are from a 4 banger in a new Regal, so yeah, thats progress. Posted June 30, at AM. Posted August 26, at AM. Brick B-Body. Posted June 30, at PM. Sean Cornelis. Drew Wescott. Posted July 1, at PM. Paul Niedermeyer.
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