I'm curious if anybody has any pictures of a 70-72 Skylark or GS with painted bumpers. I'm considering painting my 72 Skylark black and might paint the bumpers black also. I've seen some A body Oldsmobiles with this look and I think it looks cool. I might eventually consider putting a GN drivetrain into the Skylark and think the blackout look would be interesting. Mike
Personally I think this is a trend that has passed, while cool in the 1980's it just looks dated now. The exception would be if you had fibreglass bumpers and didn't want to paint them silver so that the whole world knew you were running fibreglass bumpers. Chrome adds character to these cars and a slick black buick with bright chrome bumpers is a look that is hard to beat. The olds that came from the factory with painted bumpers were the w-31s, which used body stripes and other trim pieces to add character to the car. It was different for the time and still looks good today, but most of the time when I see a car with painted bumpers I just think that the owner was too cheap to spring for rechroming.
In the late 80s there was an original Stage 1 4-speed GS at the Nats that was all blacked out, painted bumbers, and the GS badges replaced with "Gran Sport" badges that looked like GN badges--don't know what thery were off of. He was from Rochester, NY, but I can't remember his name. Sorry, I don't have any pics of it. The painted bumber Olds were Rallye 350s, not W-31s.
I don't have any pix of my car,but I did have the monochromatic look for 3 or so years.It looked good at first but I tired of it in the end.Back to chrome bumpers and the car looks much better.I found in particular that the rear of the car needs the chrome bumper to give definition.The paint takes away from the "classy" look so befitting a Buick. Rod
yeah, the rallye cutlasses looked good with painted bumpers, but as someone else said they had other stripes to give it more character. i personally dont like most painted bumpers on the older cars...it makes me think that someone spent alot of time on a car to get it the way they wanted it, then cheaped out on the chrome at the last minute. i mean no offense to those who like painted bumpers, they are just not my personal taste.
There used to be a guy in my neighborhood with a 1970 ss396 chevelle. He didn't have a lot of money to blow on the car but he was a pretty accomplished mechanic and body man. The car looked great body wise, it was white with black ss stripes. However he really didn't have the money for chroming on that car so he painted the bumpers white, and I came over and looked at it and we both agreed that to just made the car look like one huge lump of white. After that somebody gave hime a set of fiberglass bumpers which he painted black. Now the white car with blakc stripes and black bumpers looked really good - better than I thought any car with painted bumpers would look - but it no longer looked like a classic muscle car but more of a mean down and dirty road warrior (especially when he ditched the stock rims for a set of black wagon wheels with white letter tires). So there are exceptions, but the monochrome thing has passed and to be honest I never really liked it when it was around.
