Dear Brian and mid-60s Buick fans that could be "North of da' border" . . . .
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Hmm, very interesting. The "junior Buick" of the house (a 2000 Buick Century) is a Montreal built car. I understood that GM was building similar cars for Canada and the United States as far back as the 1960s, but in those days, cars were strictly intended for their respective country.
Did Buick build a Canadian version of the GS? Anybody know?
Cheers, Edouard
Here's some interesting reading about Canada's automobile production back in the early 60's.
http://policyoptions.irpp.org/issues/kyoto/the-auto-pact-forerunner-of-free-trade-book-excerpt/It is important to note a couple of things:
1 - New cars cost as much as 50% more in Canada as the exact same model did in America. This likely contributed to very few upper echelon cars being sold here. Most people could not afford anything more than basic transportation, ie Chevy's, Pontiac's, Ford's, Dodge's or Plymouth's. My father used to say Buick's Cadillac's, and Lincoln's were for doctors and lawyers, not working men like him.
2 - You saw some weird configurations up here, such as full sized (wide track) Pontiac's built on narrower Chevy frames and running Chevy engines.
3 - Buick and Oldsmobile kept their own engine/trans combos, but we just didn't see many in my neighborhood. My father did have two Oldsmobile's though, a 62 Super 88 and a 64 Dynamic 88.
4 - I have no idea if Buick built any 65 Gran Sports in Canada, but my gut felling is not likely. However, who knew for sure. Perhaps that Bamboo Cream convertible in question was imported by a Buick executive for his personal transportation and given Canadian provenance. Stranger things have been know to happen.... After all, Ford claimed they never built a Boss 302 with factory AC, until one surfaced a few years ago which was specially built by the Ford engineers for an executive who absolutely had to have one with AC.