1977 Buick Electra Limited Park Avenue: A Cheap Classic Car That’s Hard to Beat!

Today we're going to take a look at another great value classic. I'll call it a classic car that you can pick up for a relatively cheap price and one that you're really going to enjoy driving and that is this 1977 Buick Electra Limited. This one sold on Bring a Trailer a little over a year ago. It only had 17,000 miles on it and it sold for a little under $8,000. That was a bargain. I have to say I'm really mystified by this generation of General Motors full-size cars and the values associated with them because there have been on Bring a Trailer some mid-80s Buick Electras that have similar mileage and they've sold for $25,000 plus. So the latter model years, it's effectively the same car. And I think it's actually a worse car in a number of ways because you don't have the engines that these had at the beginning of their run in 1977. And yet for whatever reason, they bring more money and it's effectively the same car. So why not get a better version for a cheaper price? And that's what my opinion is on this 1977 Electra Limited. Now, as I mentioned, for 1977, all the General Motors cars were new. The full-size cars, I should say, were new for 77. The Electra, the LeSabre in the Buick portfolio, as well as the old 88 and 98, the Pontiac Bonneville, Catalina, the Chevrolet Impala and Caprice, and the Cadillac DeVille and Fleetwood. So the whole lineup was new. Gone were the hardtops. And now you can only get a two- or four-door sedan, and obviously this car has a B-pillar. So no more, let's say, windows-down cruising without B-pillars. That's kind of a shame, but it did add to the structural rigidity, which was certainly not a strong point of the previous generation. Now the wheelbase had also been downsized by this point the 77 Buick Electra rode atop 119 inch wheelbase still a big car but it was previously atop a 127 inch wheelbase from 1971 through 1976. So it was historically a big car by the way this was no longer a deuce and a quarter Electra That Electra 225 that you would have heard about all the way through the early 1970s was 225 inches long, that's where the name came from, and obviously that was no longer true once the bumper standards came into being in 1973 in the front, 1974 in the rear, and the cars would become over 230 inches in length, or at least longer than 225 inches. Now, with respect to the styling, the 1977 full-size General Motors cars displayed what GM designers would call the so-called sheer look. And that was this crisp, sharp-edged look with very sheer sides, unadorned. And imagine if you took the body-side molding off of this car and the door edge guards as well. How relatively simple the body side would look. It does have beautifully sculpted fender arches, but there's really not much to the rest of the body side. And that was the intent. These cars humorously were inspired by the very, let's say, tightly designed and crisp European cars of the early 1970s, of course, translated into a much larger body here. And it was a great success. These cars lasted for a long, long time. The Electra would go front-wheel drive in 1985, but the rear-wheel drive Caprice would last all the way into the 90s, same with the Cadillac Fleetwood, and they were very well received. Now, you'll notice that the Electra up front has that egg crate grill, as you know, if you've been watching the channel. Egg crate means luxury, for whatever reason. Here, you've got a texture within a texture, though, so it's not just the standard egg crate grill. It's got a little bit of this rectangular theme, and then the egg crate's within the rectangles. That's kind of cool. And I love how these Buicks of this generation, they have kind of that portion of the front. header panel it slants back with the headlamps so the grill sits proud but if you look on either side of the grill that header panel just slants back and kind of reveals the headlamps and that was a Buick trait on this particular generation through the last years of it. Of course, you have the four portholes on the side or the ventaports, as Buick technically called them, to denote that this is an Electra. You have that belt line that kind of dips from the fender, the top of the fender near the cowl, dips downward. Very GM trait that would continue on into the front-wheel drive cars. That enables the vehicles to have more glass area. Remember, they wanted these cars. Despite the fact that they were smaller to feel roomier on the inside, and indeed they really did have a lot of room despite the fact that the package externally was significantly leaner and trimmer than the previous generation cars. Now, if you take a look at this side profile, you'll see a couple other very GM-y things of the era. The first is this very gently arcing roof line, and notice how the roof at the C pillar is lower than it is up at the A pillar. That was something that was very typical of GM cars, despite the fact that this car has that sheer look and the relatively, let's call it architectural styling, somewhat slab-sided. You have some curvature and you have some various design cues that would be inherent in a GM car and not a Ford. Fords tended to have flatter roofs. They didn't quite have that arc to them. The other thing that you see here is a slight taper front and rear. Notice that the trunk kind of tapers as it goes rearward. The hood tapers as it goes forward. Again, a very GM-y trait. If you contrast this versus, let's say, an 80s era Lincoln Town Car. You've got very flat fenders, very flat quarters, significantly flatter than what you see here. And again, that was just a styling difference between GM and Ford as an example. Again, it's really a bit of a shame that this car has that body side molding and the door edge guards. I think it would look so much cleaner without them. But alas, it is what it is. It does have this interesting little character line on the lower portion of the doors that carries through. Pretty much the entire car length from behind the bumper up front all the way to nearly the back bumper out in the rear. And I think that that character line would just look better if this body side molding were gone. But people tended to order, or their dealers tended to order the body side molding because they could charge a little bit more for the car. You also notice there's no fender skirts here. And that was kind of anathema to some buyers because they love the fender skirts and the look of them. But the 77 GM cars, when they first came out, really didn't have the fender skirts. And they kind of got fender skirts as they went along in time. I think that they probably were eliminated for a cost savings move. And then maybe people complained. I don't know who would complain about the lack of fender skirts. But I think the car looks great. And I love the wheel arches and the sculpture of the wheel arches. They're very pronounced. I think it's very fitting for the car. Now, I should point out that while this car doesn't have the fender skirts, the Olds did it and the Cadillac did it either, but the Pontiac actually did. Why Pontiac kept the fender skirts and everybody else didn't, I don't know. But like I said, they would return on more models as the years would go on. So for whatever reason, customers must have complained that they really wanted those fender skirts because certainly GM didn't put them back on because they cost more money. For whatever reason, somebody wanted them back. Out back, we have an interesting blend of styles, shall we say, but one that was distinctly Buick by this point. What do I mean by that? Well, you notice that the quarters have a distinct vertical shape and vertical form, despite the fact that there's no tail lamp integrated into them. There is the side marker light but not a tail lamp. This car has wall-to-wall tail lamps as you can see and that was really a result of Buick trying to emulate Cadillac and that vertical theme associated with the rear end of Cadillacs. Of course Cadillac would often have the tail lamps in the so-called fins or something that resembled a fin for many many years. But here Buick was just giving the buyer a little bit of that look out back and That was one thing that differentiated the Electra from the LeSabre. The LeSabre had a completely different rear end that was devoid of that vertical theme and had kind of this kink in the trunk that you can see here. And I'll call them boxy tail lamps. Here, the Electra has this beautiful wall-to-wall tail lamp theme that will continue on for many years, even all the way through to the Riata. And beyond on Buicks. I'm not sure why Buick thought that that was, you know, their trait, this wall-to-wall tail lamp theme. But on the high-end Buicks, you had it for a number of years. Even when the Electra went front-wheel drive in 1985, you had it. So that's what you saw in the Electra is this vertical theme, the wall-to-wall tail lamps. And it gave it not only an identity that was Buick, but an identity that was high-end Buick. Different from the LeSabre. And, you know, it's kind of similar to the front where you had a different grill texture between the LeSabre and Electra. But interestingly, the rear was actually a more pronounced difference between the Electra and the LeSabre versus the front. And as we transition to this photo one of the things that you can see is how the designers really had that deck lid come up well pretty high and pinch that rear window so that it was a bit smaller. Notice how the belt line kind of scoops up around the c-pillar and you have the deck lid that's relatively high so that squeezes the window to be smaller. If you didn't have that this rear window would be But it gives you a little bit of that privacy look. This car doesn't have a Frenched-in window or anything like that out back, but I think it does have a very stately appearance, particularly in this color combination, which is the black exterior with the red interior. If this were a slick top, I think it would look even better, but that was a true rarity on these vehicles, is to find one with a slick top. So if you find one, great, pick it up. You've got really a great looking car. If I had one that was a slick top like this, I'd have to take the body side molding and door edge guards off. I think it would just look awesome. But alas this one is what it is. Now where this Electra Limited shines is on its interior and that's because this is an Electra Limited Park Avenue edition. So this is the absolute top of the line in terms of Buick luxury for 1977 and take a look at these seats and the door panels ultra comfortable, ultra puffy, ultra I don't know cushiony whatever adjective that you want With this crushed velour, it's... Absolutely over the top, vulgar, kitschy, whatever it is, I don't care. I love it. And you should too. And you couldn't get this particular interior by the time this car was in its waning years, like in 1984, 1985. They did have nice interiors. But this, I thought, was really the pinnacle in terms of the interior for this generation. And it looks great in red, this black on red color combination. I think, like I said, it's just fantastic. Now, you also have the very European, let's say, round gauges up front. And I don't know that they're very European in any other element of their nature than that. There's no tachometer here. You couldn't even get a tachometer optional in the Electra. So you just kind of made do, and the engine puttered along just as it should. These were not race cars by any stretch of the imagination. We'll talk about the engines in a second and another reason why I like these vehicles. But this interior was certainly a luxurious place to be, and it looks like this car even has a CB radio, so that's pretty sweet. And in this photo you can not only see the cool CB radio but the automatic temperature control. So this car is pretty well loaded. It also has this big pod on the passenger side of the IP for the clock. And I guess the driver doesn't need to know the time because that's clearly out of his or her line of sight. But the passenger will always know what time it is. And you'll also notice the Park Avenue script underneath the Buick script on the passenger side dash there. Now, you can also check the area underneath the instrument panel for the Buick-style accelerator. Buick did have its own unique accelerator pedal during this period of time. YGM thought that it was something that, let's say, Developed brand character in the car, I don't know. But Buick had a different accelerator pedal from Olds, different from Pontiac, etc. Even on these cars, the 1977 generation, that were downsized and had a lot of common parts amongst all of the divisions. Lastly, take a look at this door panel and how ornate it is. This is all fake wood, fake plastic trees gave their lives for this. But the casket style door pull, that very ornate. Engraved fake wood that surrounds it, the two pillows, the armrest I believe is shared with other divisions in that lower portion of the door panel but the upper portion was unique to Buick so that was a nice way to get some visual differentiation, share the armrest, share the door handle, share the light there in the door and the power window switches and lock switch and mirror control but have a different door upper or door panel upper I guess I should say. And now we transition under hood. In this 1977 Electra you could get two different engines. There was the Buick 350, the Buick Source 350, and this Buick engine dated back to the 1967 model year. Of course by this point there was no longer a big block Buick V8 that would go away in 1976. But the 350 was still a good engine. You can identify it by the front mounted distributor. Of the GM vehicles by this point, Cadillac had the front-mounted distributor, Buick did as well, but the Chevrolet V8s, Pontiac V8s, Olds V8s all had the distributor in the back. And the Buick V8 made 155 horsepower, 275 pound-feet of torque. Not a lot of horsepower. But when you compare it to the later variants, like in the mid-'80s, the 1984 Buick Electra, the same car, the standard engine by that point, was a 4.1-liter V6, which made 125 horsepower. There was an optional 5-liter V8 at that point, which was the Olds 307 V8. Which made 140 horsepower, but it only made 240 pound-feet of torque. So here, the standard engine, you've got more horsepower and considerably more torque than that Olds 307 that would be under hood of a lot of these cars later. And you could get an optional Oldsmobile-sourced 403 cubic inch V8 that made, I think, 180 or 85 horsepower, 320 pound-feet of torque. So you get a lot more powerful engines in this particular variant than you could in the latter years. And these engines were backed by turbo-hydromatic 400 transmissions, extremely reliable and durable. As opposed to the 200 4R, some people call it the 200 R4 transmission, the four-speed automatic that began life as a Chevette transmission and then kind of found its way into full-size vehicles. Here, in my opinion, you just get a much better powertrain in these. Not only do you get a better value, as I was mentioning at the front end of the video, but you get a bigger V8 and a better V8. The old 307 was a good V8. It just didn't really make much in the way of power, especially trying to push around big cars like this. And the turbo-hydromatic 400, I mean, I would challenge people. I don't think there was a better transmission built. Sorry, Ford lovers, I love my C6s as an example, but they're just not quite as good as the Turbo Hydramatic 400s. Even the 727 torque flights, I don't know that they're quite as good as the GM Turbo Hydramatic 400s. Oh, well, that's my little bias coming into play there, admittedly. So you got better engines, and as you saw in the interior, certainly very comfortable interiors. So what do you think? I don't understand, admittedly, why, as I said, these late 70s era GM vehicles, the 77 to 79 variants, seem to really be very underappreciated in the market. I would want one of these versus the latter variants. I'd much rather have a 1977 to 79 Cadillac Fleetwood with a 425 underhood than a 1985 Cadillac Fleetwood So let's say the old 307 or, well, even worse, an 82, 83, 84 with the HT 4100 under hood. That would be the worst in terms of power. So these are some great values, in my opinion. And I hope if you're looking for one of these cars, they drive great, too. They really do. They're quiet. They're comfortable. They're maneuverable. They're just great vehicles, so if you find one at a good price in good condition pick it up. Thanks again for watching