1971 Buick Sport Wagon - Chicago

http://chicago.craigslist.org/nch/cto/4559838726.html

"It is a 1971 Buick Sport Wagon time capsule. It has the original window sticker and the protect-o-plate. It was bought brand new in 1971 and has had 1 owner all the way up til now. The car body is solid there is no holes in the floor or spare tire compartment there is bubbling starting on the quarter and the clear coat is peeling. The interior is damn near close to perfect with an aftermarket head unit. This car runs and drives good but should get a tune up because it sat for awhile. Front disk brakes as well with new line and a power roll down back window.
Great driver drove it today 20 miles no problem
Will trade call (contact info not in forum post) or text (contact info not in forum post) with cash offers or trades
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 f250 diesel 4x4"

 

Might be nice to know what engine it has. More than likely a 350 2-barrel......

 

I never could figure out why the '70, '71 and '72 Buick Sport Wagons didn't have the windows in the roof but the same year Vista Cruisers did.

 

Is that a chocolate bar in the last pic?

 

Must be a rare option with clearcoat back then

 

The clear coat option came with the candy bar...
Time capsule and original mean different things to different folks.
Also I believe if a car was ever in a barn it becomes a barn find

 

Vintage chocolate bar!

 

Maybe Bill Murray used to own the car????

 

Antioch is near Chicago. They had barns there during the great Chicago fire because a cow started the fire. No offense fat ladies! So it could be a barn find.
I'm curious. No one mentioned the price....of the wagon or the candy!
Or mentioned what engine, tranny, or the mileage. Obviously it no longer is a one owner and was left in the sun a long time.

 

Looks like a power bar to me.

mike

 

I'll bet it was a marketing thing, and perhaps there was some attention paid to the idea of giving the different GM divisions some unique things to market that the others didn't have.

Olds went without a full-size wagon beginning in 1965 and going through 1970, which is six model years. Buick was similar, but only from 1966 through 1969, or four model years. The last year for Buick's window-in-the-roof station wagon was 1969. For 1970, GM gave Buick, if you want to think of it that way, a full-size wagon again in the form of the Estate, but GM did not give this to Olds until a year later when all the full-size GM cars underwent major styling changes. Perhaps as a way of giving something to Olds that Buick did not have was to allow Olds to continue to produce the window-in-roof wagon while taking it away from Buick.

Another possibility, but I don't have the production figures for Buick, so I don't know for sure, is that perhaps by 1969, Buick's window-in-roof wagon wasn't selling as well as Oldsmobile's, so it was decided to discontinue it.

I don't know that any of these reasons are true. I'm just speculating. But I'm sure decisions were sometimes made based on this kind of reasoning rather than technical reasons or keeping-everybody-equal reasons.

 

Makes alot of sense Jaunty. I wouldn't be surprised if you were right on the money with your thinking. Lest we forget, the decision makers at auto manufacturers don't always make the right ones, ie, no Ford full size wagon after '91.

 

It's always easy to judge the correctness of marketing decisions in hindsight, but, at the time, I'm sure car companies, whether it's Ford, Olds, Buick, or whatever, did what they thought was right as far as what the marketplace was demanding. By the early '90s, the mini-van craze that Chrysler started in the mid-'80s was in full-swing, and wagons were a dying breed. Olds ended the Custom Cruiser in '92, Buick and Chevy full-size wagons went away after 1996. All the companies, not just Ford, were making this decision.

But wagons didn't go away completely for a while, anyway. Even though Ford discontinued full-size wagons in the early '90s, they continued to make a wagon version of the Taurus right through 2005. I'm sure the thinking was along the lines of "if the customer wants a full-size wagon, steer them to our Windstar minivan. If they insist on a wagon, we still have the pretty-good-sized Taurus to offer." I owned a '90 Taurus wagon, and it was a very nice car. We had three small children at the time (oldest was 5), and I never thought of it as being too small in any way.

 

Wagons aren't completely gone. They're still available more in Europe than here in America at this time, Though. I've seen a fairly new Volvo XC70 in-person (I'm not sure what year it is yet - 2012?) which qualifies as a Station Wagon, Albeit a two-seater.

 

I don't think Volvo imports the XC70 anymore to the states. I want to say they discontinued last year or the year before. Anybody know if that's correct.
A shame. I really liked that wagon.