Lesabre/Centurion Convertible Owners

If anyone got the most recent Hemmings Motor News (February 2005) the had an article about "sleepers". Not as in the racing sleeper, but as in a collector car that is overlooked and will soon become a valuable collector car. For those of you who dont get it, here it is.

 

Who knows? It's alot of car for the money anyway.... :grin:

 

Only time will tell...here's hoping my 75 gains in popularity !! :beer

 

Good news to me :laugh:
I'm in the middle of buying an 1972 455 Centurion convertible from Arizona, red on red interiour car, 75,000 miles on it, second owner with a "like new never used top". I hope the people in Europe will understand the value of this car :bglasses:

 

Thanks Adam,

But I know about at least 3 other ragtop 1971-1973 Centurions in the Netherlands, and at least 1 in the United Kingdom. (I think I even posted an article about this car from Classic American magazine on this board ??)
And Jean-Luc owns the only French Centurion convertible I know about.
Although I saw a pristine 1971 in Alicante, Spain the other day (2 doors HT coupe)

 

Adam,

One of the Dutch ragtop Centurions is for sale right now:

http://www.marktplaats.nl/markt/autos/buick/1885.htm

Asking € 13500,- (US$ 17550,-)

 

I'm trying to dig up the article Adam, will post it again in this space :TU:

If I struck a good deal with the AZ people, I'll let you know about the VIN.

 

There is supposedly four Centurions i Sweden, there's a guy called Tiamat here on the board who owns a white one. I don't know how many lesabres, but I've seen ads for quite a few. There's also this Norwegian guy who always seems to have a new Centurion on the way to Sweden/Norway for sale, his first name is Bjarne I think. You guys wouldn't understand what a old American car following there is in Sweden, it's been going for a long long time. I'll give you a few links to projects from Sweden later, there's some quite interesting stuff there.

 

At least up to 2002, there were one 71 and one 72 in France according to the attached site: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/trombinoscar/buick/1960-2000.html.

Once Smartin will have lauched the registry, I will investigate a bit more. :laugh:

Regarding the value in Europe, seems prices here are 50% to twice the US prices for Centurions as well as most of old US cars....and average condition is quite poor.

Erik, I don't know why historically the Netherlands and Belgium offers the biggest concentration of US cars in Europe.

 

Jean-Luc

Nice link. Hey Adam look what I found on that link :shock:

You can use this link for translation :Brow:
http://www.babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr

 

Glad I could help out. There is a picture but i dont have a scanner of a Buick Centurion, it was silver but the Buick road wheels were painted to match(not the chrome). It looked pretty sharp.

 

OK, so he doesn't understand the difference between a Centurion and a LeSabre (being actually SEPARATE lines), not comparable. We can at least give him a B+ for proper taste. The Centurion, like it's predecesor the Wildcat, was an attempt by Buick to combine the finesse of the LeSabre, the performance of the Riviera, and the class of the Electra. It's cancellation was due to factors beyond Buick's control - the big motors were doomed to retirement, gas crunch causing a drop in sales across the board for large cars, big brass forcing its children to use more common parts, etc....

We always knew it was special.

 

This reminds me that the 1974 LeSabre Luxus could have been ordered with the "LeSabre Luxus Ride & Performance package". It included a 455-4 barrel engine (remember the 455-2 were also available in 74) Turbo 400 transmission, Custom steering wheel, Custom belt reveal, rear deck lid and exterior moldings. trunk trim covering, litter container, and whitewall radial tires and suspension tuned to match. The Stage 1 engine was also available with this package.

 

I wonder if anyone has the "litter container" laying around... I bet it's top dollars for it. :grin: :grin: :grin:

 

I past one up on Ebay a couple of months ago. It was a NOS brown litter container/tissue dispenser that sat on the front hump that sold for like $40.00. I did just get my long coveted rear courtesy lenses(Impossible to find) though. A company on Ebay called Originality Plus said that they have plenty of them.