Buick Special

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Buick Special

The Buick Special was an automobile

Automobile

An automobile or motor car is a wheeled motor vehicle for transportation passengers, which also carries its own car engine or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally f...
produced by the Buick Motor Division

Buick

Buick is a marque of automobile sold in the United States, Canada, China, Taiwan, Qatar, Kuwait, and Israel by General Motors Corporation. Since the demise of Oldsmobile in 2004, it is GM's only North America-based entry-level luxury brand....
of General Motors, Flint, Michigan

Flint, Michigan

Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River , 66 miles northwest of Detroit, Michigan. As of the United States 2000 Census, the city had a population of 124,943, making it the fifth largest city in Michigan....
(USA).

From 1936 to 1958, Buick's Special model range represented the marque's entry level full-size

Full-size car

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Encyclopedia

The Buick Special was an automobile

Automobile

Buick

Flint, Michigan

Full-size car

A full-size car is a marketing term used in North America for an automobile larger than a mid-size car. In the United States, the United States Environmental Protection Agency uses "large car" to denote full-size cars....
automobile. By 1955, the Buick Special was one of America's best selling automotive series. Buick Specials are easily identified — the model range had three ventiports while senior Buicks had four.

Buick renamed the Special the LeSabre

Buick LeSabre

The Buick LeSabre was a full-size car made by the Buick division of General Motors from 1959-2005. For many years, the LeSabre was considered the entry level full-size Buick, carrying the lowest base price in the Buick lineup....
for the 1959 model year.

1961

In 1961, the car returned after a short absence of two years, but this time it was on the brand new unibody

Monocoque

Monocoque, from Greek language for single and French for shell , is a construction technique that supports structural load by using an object's external skin as opposed to using an internal frame or truss that is then covered with a non-load-bearing skin....
intermediate

Mid-size car

A mid-size car is the North American and Australian term for an automobile with a size between that of a Compact car and a full-size car. In Europe, cars of a similar size are often referred to as large family cars, or executive cars....
GM Y platform

GM Y platform

The Y platform, or Y body, designation has been used twice by the General Motors Corporation to describe a series of vehicles all built on the same basic body and sharing many parts and characteristics....
. The Special was powered by an innovative aluminum-block 215 in³

Buick V8 engine

Like its sister General Motors Corporation divisions, Buick produced its own family of V8 engines to replace Buick Straight-8 engine. These engines came in many of the same displacements as those from other divisions, but were entirely different....
V8. In mid-year a Skylark option was released with special trim, optional bucket seats and a 4 barrel version of the 215.

1962 and 1963

In 1962, the Special was the first

List of automotive superlatives

This page lists Wiktionary:superlatives of the automobile industry - that is, the smallest, largest, fastest, lightest, best-selling, and other such topics....
American car to use a V6 engine

V6 engine

A V6 engine is a V engine with six cylinder s mounted on the crankcase in two banks of three cylinders, usually set at either a right angle or an acute angle to each other, with all six pistons driving a common crankshaft....
. This 198 in³ Fireball

Buick V6 engine

The Buick V6, initially marketed as Fireball at its introduction in 1962, is a large V6 engine used by General Motors Corporation. The block is made of cast iron and all use two-valve-per-cylinder iron heads, actuated by pushrods....
was reverse-engineered from the 215 and used many of the same design parameters, but was cast in iron. Output was 135 hp (gross) at 4600 rpm and 205 ft·lbf at 2400 rpm. In their test that year, Road & Track
Road & Track

Road & Track is an automobile enthusiast magazine in the United States, founded by two friends in 1947. It is owned by Hachette Filipacchi M?dias and is published monthly....
was impressed with Buick's "practical" new V6, saying it "sounds and performs exactly like the aluminum V8 in most respects." In 1963, the Special's body was restyled. Mechanically, however, the car was identical to the 1962 model. There was also some minor interior restyling, particularly to the dash and instrument cluster. The 1963 Special was available as a 2 door pillared hardtop, a four dour sedan, a convertible, and a station wagon. Engine choices were a 198 cubic-inch V-6 with 2-barrel carburetor, a 215 cubic-inch V-8 with two-barrel carburetor, and a 215 cubic-inch V-8 with 4-barrel carburetor. Transmission choices were a 'three on the tree' manual transmission, a floor shift Borg-Warner T-10 4-spd. manual transmission, and a two-speed automatic. The two speed "Dual Path Turbine Drive" automatic was a Buick design and shared no common parts with the better known Chevrolet Power-Glide transmission. The 1963 body was only produced for one year as the entire car was redesigned for 1964. After then, the 215 engine found its way into the Rover P6

Rover P6

The Rover P6 series is a group of sedan cars produced from 1963 to 1977 Solihull, West Midlands , England. It was replaced by the Rover SD1. It was voted European Car of the Year in 1964....
3500S in 1968, but was never sold in North America in any great numbers, a testimony to British Leyland's marketing "prowess". It also found its way into other Brits including the MGB

MGB

The abbreviation MGB may refer to:* MG MGB, a sports car produced by the British Motor Corporation and British Leyland in the 1960s and 1970s and early 80's....
-GT-V8, the Land Rover

Land Rover

Land Rover is an all-terrain vehicle and Multi Purpose Vehicle manufacturer, based in Solihull, West Midlands , England, now operated as part of the Jaguar Land Rover business owned by Tata Motors of India....
and the Triumph

Triumph Motor Company

The Triumph Motor Company had its origins in 1885 when Siegfried Bettmann and Moritz Schulte from Germany founded Bettmann & Co and started selling Triumph bicycles, from premises in London and from 1889 started making his own machines in Coventry, England....
TR-8, as well as retrofits into non V8 MGB

MGB

The abbreviation MGB may refer to:* MG MGB, a sports car produced by the British Motor Corporation and British Leyland in the 1960s and 1970s and early 80's....
s and MGA

MGA

MGA can be an abbreviation of:* Master of Governmental Administration, a Masters-level professional public affairs degree related to the Master of Public Administration and Master of Public Policy degrees....
s

The V6 Special was Motor Trend
Motor Trend

File:motor trend cover.jpgMotor Trend is an automobile magazine. It first appeared in September 1949, issued by Petersen Publishing Company in Los Angeles, California, and bearing the tag line The Magazine for a Motoring World. Petersen Publishing was sold to British publisher EMAP in 1998, who sold the former Petersen magazines to...
magazine's Car of the Year

Car of the Year

Car of the Year is a phrase usually considered to have been invented by Motor Trend magazine in the 1950s for their annual award for best automobile....
for 1962.

The Skylark

Buick Skylark

The Buick Skylark was a passenger car produced by the Buick division of General Motors. The model was made in six production runs. In each run, the car design varied dramatically due to changing technology and tastes, as well as new standards implemented over the years....
also became a separate series for 1962.

1964-1972

The Special, along with the upscale Skylark

Buick Skylark

GM A platform

The General Motors Corporation A platform was a mid-size car automobile platform. The A-bodies evolved from rear wheel drive compact cars to front wheel drive mid-size cars over the course of 32 years....
-- and marketed as an intermediate

Intermediate

Intermediate means "occurring between two extremes, or in the middle of a range" and may refer to:* Reactive intermediate, a short-lived, unstable molecule in a chemical reaction...
-sized car. The Skylark was expanded to a full top-line series that now included two- and four-door sedans, two-door hardtop coupe and convertible, along with a station wagon. The other series models included the base Special and the slightly fancier Special DeLuxe.

Also new for 1964 were engines. The capacity of the V6 engine was increased from 198 to 225 cubic inches, while the aluminum V8 was replaced by a new cast iron-block 300 cubic inch V8 with aluminum cylinder heads. This engine, produced until 1967, was based on the aluminum V8, and many parts (such as the cylinder heads) were interchangeable.

The Special nameplate was used on lower-priced intermediate-sized Buicks through the 1969 model year.

1975

The Special returned briefly to the GM A platform as an entry level subseries of the Buick Century

Buick Century

Buick Century is the model name used by the Buick division of General Motors for a line of full-size performance vehicles from 1936 to 1942 and 1954 to 1958, and from 1973 to 2005 for a mid-size car....
as the Buick Century Special. Century Specials were usually powered by Buick's own 231

Buick V6 engine

The Buick V6, initially marketed as Fireball at its introduction in 1962, is a large V6 engine used by General Motors Corporation. The block is made of cast iron and all use two-valve-per-cylinder iron heads, actuated by pushrods....
V6; a V8 (from either Buick, Olds, or Chevrolet) was rarely optioned. It ued the "fastback" roofline but was fitted with a landau roof that covered most of the rear quarter windows. The opening that was left was the same shape as the windows on the higher series formal-roof cars.