Dear Walt, Loren, Wheelz, and mid-60s Buick lovers,
I bet the perpetrators are going to be in for quite a shock when the hi-dollar 'Chevelle SS' they thought they got turns out to be something that is going to be very difficult to get rid of.
It is interesting how a lower production and higher quality vehicle like our Buicks has less interest and overall top end value then the belly button cars.
Good for us in one way, not so in another.
Sadly it reminds us that part of the collector car game is nostalgia and what cars got
"remembered." Chevy and Ford so dominate the market that they shape popular culture in a way other brands fail to do. The difference between Chevy and GM has never been that large and it is growing smaller. My sister's 2009 Chevy Cobalt as a GM logo on the side and doesn't have a lot of Chevy branding. Does GM really believe in its divisions or not?
In the 1960s GM did want each division to find its market niche, but even then upper management wasn't being even-handed so that every division to seek out that niche. I suppose GM assumed that guys who started out poor and could only afford a Chevy would nonetheless
"gravitate" to a Buick if they were successful. Had this happened all GM divisions would have thrived. I think instead a sizeable fraction of first-time Chevy buyer would remain loyal to Chevy not just GM. People who switched brands might jump ship completely to Ford, Mopar, and the rest. So it took a rare bird to be loyal to a brand like Buick. There just aren't enough people with memories like that to drive the nostalgia about classic Buicks.
Strange how a bit of sociology ultimately drives the very hard-nosed business of car prices.
Cheers, Edouard
