Conception of the Buick Reatta

Conception of the Buick Reatta

Buick honchos spent a good decade trying to come up with an exciting “image car” to spice up their line before launching the 1988-1991 Buick Reatta. It was attractive and well turned out, but market forces were at work to see that the Reatta’s run would be short.In early 1987, nearly a year before the Buick Reatta’s introduction, division public relations ace (and historian) Larry Gustin invited me and then-Motor Trend editor Tony Swan to Phoenix, Arizona, for an off-the-record sneak peak of the soon-to-come two-seater. We looked, listened, drove preproduction examples, provided the requested feedback, then hopped a plane home.

We hadn’t really known what to expect: certainly not another big-bicep Cor­vette. Probably not a high-zoot clone of the Cadil­lac Allanté. To properly fit the Buick mold, it would likely be softer, plusher, and slower than the ‘Vette; less exotic, luxurious, and expensive than the Allanté.
Correct on all counts. We were honestly surprised by how much we liked it, especially its handsome good looks, and found it more agile, better glued to the road, than any Buick before it. On the other hand, we lamented the middling performance from its 165-bhp V-6 and its CRT (TV-tube)-dominated dash, both borrowed from the 1986 Riviera on which it was based.

The genesis of Buick’s first (and probably last) sport two-seater began more than a decade before its birth. A fresh leadership team arrived in 1975 with direction to grow Buick’s product line, image, and sales. Lloyd Reuss was chief engineer; Dave Collier, general manager.

“I had specific ideas about what we wanted to do productwise,” Reuss recalls. “Our volume was not where we wanted it to be, and we were too much like Oldsmobile. So there was a major decision to move away from Olds and more toward Cadillac. We wanted an upscale, sportier image — call it ’sporty elegance.’”

One project in 1977-1978, known internally as “L-car,” explored the market potential of a sporty V-6-powered 2+2 coupe. It would be derived from and assembled with the plebeian subcompact J-car (Chevy Cavalier/Pontiac Sun­bird/Oldsmobile Firenza/Buick Skylark) but built to be more upscale, quicker, and better handling. Among its targets were eight-second 0-to-60 zip (very respect­able in that post-fuel-crisis era) and 100,000 annual volume in Buick and Olds versions.

When the L-car died for lack of a viable business case (considering its cost, volume, and profit projections), Reuss shifted his sights to an upscale, sporty two-seater, which he proposed to corporate leadership in 1978. “We told them our top product priority was a new two-place vehicle,” he says. “That was the genesis of it.”
Written by HowStuffWorks  

 

 
 

 

 

  1. Alex Gordon Says:
    April 3rd, 2010 at 4:15 pm

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    April 11th, 2010 at 10:36 pm

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    May 13th, 2010 at 6:10 am

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