Hey, Happy Halloween everybody! The day when we try to scare the crap out of ourselves and send our offspring out to demand candy from the locals, which we then confiscate and consume, using thin pretexts of being concerned for safety, like that thing about razor blades in apples, knowing full well shoving a razor blade in an apple is one of the best ways to guarantee no kid will encounter it. Carmakers have flirted with abject fear and terror before, and while Our Modern Age gets lots of feces about how all cars look so aggro, this isn’t really new. That’s why I want to show you the 1959 Buick, from the time when Buick decided they wanted their cars to scare the shit out of everybody.
I mean, look at the face on that thing! It’s not just aggressive, it’s actually malevolent. It’s not just grimacing, it’s making a lurid sneer quad-eyes locked on you, reveling in your fear, drinking in every terror-pheromone your body is pumping out, moments before it leaps upon you to drink your lymph.
It’s so incongruous-looking in these pictures, the top one, all Hello, Dolly-looking, and yet that looming, colossal black Buick is there, watching, waiting. Or in the picture just above here, a woman leaning happily against the car with her bouquet, unaware she’s bait for whatever poor soul walks within pouncing range of that Buick.
Things didn’t improve much as the car drove away from you, either. Look:
The rear has an evil visage, too, with angry red demon-eyes, moving away, but with an unspoken promise to be back. When you least expect it.
Even painted in butter-cream-yellow can’t hide the sinister nature of this thing. What were these designers thinking? Is there any other way to look at these things other than a huge machine that wants to watch you hurt?
In this brochure, they even use the tagline THE CAR, predicting that famous horror-car movie from 1977:
Honestly, the Buick is scarier than The Car.
Happy Halloween! Beware of the Buick!
I always thought a 1960 Buick looked like someone at GM left a wax model of a 59 in the sun a little too long.
It looks like it’s disappointed in me.
So, just like everyone else. You’re not THAT special, Buick.
my dad had a ’59 Impala, which had to be the same body as these Electras. It was long, yes, but not as lonnnnnnng as they appear in Torch’s ads on my browser. Because dem Buicks are lonnnnnnnng
TCM had “Christine” on recently, and of course I watched it. The Buick stock front reminds me of Christine near the end with the open maw wanting to devour the heros. Take out the middle two rows of that grill, and it’s baring teeth!
Being an old fart, I roamed the earth (well, the neighborhood) the same time these beasts did. I thought they looked nice and swoopey, not malevolent. But I was seven years old. What did I know about evil?
Not that the T-Bird from that year was any nicer looking. I guess people were feeling mean in 1959.
https://robbreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/webster-thunder-road1.jpg
The 1959 Buick, a car so gigantic it’s literally within reach of two out of three new car buyers.
If you’re lucky, you can make it home in lymph mode.
“You better watch what you say about my car. She’s real sensitive.”
Love is kinda crazy with a spooky little car like you.
Spooky!
My great grandfather, John Wilmarth, last car was a 1959 Buick Electra 225. The 225 signified 225 inches long. He bought it new in the summer of 1960. It was unsold and the local Buick dealer was desperate to get it sold. There was a recession going on, and the new compact cars (Corvair, Falcon, Valiant) had just hit the market.
As a fresh high school graduate in the summer of 1962, I drove it a bit. HUGE, wallowed in the corners, and the Dynaflow automatic transmission adsorbed most of the acceleration (401 CID nailhead V-8).
My high school auto shop teacher restored cars in his spare times and I spent part of a summer helping to disassemble a ’59 Buick Special with him and catalog all the parts as a donor. The one thing that sticks out in my head is just how heavy every component was. This was the era before plastics were widely used so I recall being shocked at how something as basic as an ashtray weighed way more than I expected.
I owned a ’59 Buick LeSabre flalttop sedan for over 19 years, and it was the most fun I have ever had slogging around curves in squishy comfort. The car had so much presence. I highly recommend getting your hands on one some day.
The scariest video I can imagine is a close-circuit camera view of that Buick trying to squeeze into the parking space next to my car.
Horror-movie prophecy aside, the design of the that brochure is brilliantly minimalist. The silver car (how often would you see that in a ’50s ad?) against the gray background, the simple font, just the right splashes of color. Very nice.
Good call, I hadn’t noticed that! And that background alone does look fairly sinister.
The rear to me is much more jet fighter than demon. Which I’ve always loved, and respected that GM returned to that ethos in the 21st century through Cadillac. Though funny how it doesn’t translate nearly as well to SUVs in my eyes.
Modern cars are more ‘super-guppy’ than jet fighter.
The Caddy sedans still have a decent amount of the original 21st century stealth fighter look I think, though the SUVs less so.
I agree with you, though I think the direction they are heading is unclear. To my eyes, the Celestiq is trying to be both jet fighter and luxury cruiser, and doesn’t really hit either.
Agree esp on the “unclear” part. The curves are sculpted right now, sure, but they could easily get ’90s-jellybean again. The 2000s sedans were like nothing else on the road, you could (and still can) ID them easily in a sea of sameness.
That leviathan would make an amazing road trip car, provided you stick to a route with no more than 100 miles between gas stations.
Well … 20 gallon tank and let’s say 12 mpg so maybe 200.
Buick LeSatan?
While this is a mean-looking visage, it doesn’t hold a candle to the 1970 Dodge Coronet-R/T-Super Bee. The twin loop bumpers in that triangle shape just scowls at you with extreme anger.
If it had a voice, it would definitely sound like 1970’s-vintage Jack Nicholson. “Heeeeere’s Buick!”
I love those era of GM design. My first car was a ’60 Chevy El Camino, so that may be the source. But the grill on that Buick is perfection.
The 1959 Buick is such a lean, clean machine. Not as overwrought as 1958, not as fussy as 1960.
I guess it’s “lean” in the same way an anaconda could be described as being lean.
When you’re pushing almost 20′ long, I don’t think any of those diminutive adjectives really apply. This thing looks like a monster.