After doing a search of the board's history, I've gotten some good insight into this, but I'm not completely sure, and want to be particular. I'm paying off the last $150 of a 1956 2-door Special. I know I need to replace the bottoms of the passenger side sheet metal all along the car (fender, door, rear quarter. I can probably use cheater panels on all this, but I'd like to clarify what, if any, are the differences in body panels between a '56 Special and Century. I understand that the Century was Buick's attempt to put a bigger engine in the Special's general frame latout. Both are supposed to have the same wheelbase, the same width, etc. I must admit, aside from the number of portholes, I have trouble telling them apart from a sideview. Was there really any difference between the panels, or did they just drill one more hole for a ventport and call it a Century fender? Was the Century really just a Special with different trim package, an extra vent, a bigger engine, and a different interior? From what I can gather, they're the same body with different trim and mechanicals. Which means, theoretically, I could take a door or fender from a Century with the same number of doors, and it would match up perfect. Does anyone know if this is true? Any people out there with experience trying this? Thanks are in order for those who've posted information on mid-late 50s Buicks before. I got a lot out of reviewing old threads on here, and I'm feeling more optomistic about restoring a Northeastern-owned car into a nice hot rod. - Mange P.S. Appy-polly-logies if the formatting in this post looks odd. Madedit tends to insert character breaks for writing computer code, not normal English.
