Dan: Glad you're keeping the Stage 1, not easy to replace and survivor cars are few and far between. Buick didn't use the Firestones on the 70 GS cars. It was Goodyear throughout the lineup. I've never seen any documentation otherwise. My 70 GS455 conv. still has the original G70 x 14 Goodyear Polyglas spare that has never seen the ground. Still has the little rubber nubbin's on it (that really is a word............ :grin: ) I bought the car from the original owner back in '81. My car was a Dec 69 production. With 15's you got the Polyglas GT tires (G60). Are you familiar with another 70 Stage 1 4 spd car in MT that is owned by a guy named Jim? I don't know if he wants his name dropped. He is the original owner and was a member of our NW GS club years ago. He ordered the car with the 15" chrome plated rallye's but it came with the 15 x 7 painted steel wheels with trim rings and poverty caps. Was told by the dealer there was a delay in production of the rallye wheels and to prevent a delay in delivering the car the factory installed the painted steel wheels.
Dave-- I don't know about any other 1970 GS cars, but the original owner of my car told me again this last Saturday the same thing he told me in 1976 when I bought the car from him: The Firestone tires currently on my Stage One are what the car was delivered with from Buick. I guess the date codes will go a long way to verifying this. As I recall, 1970 was kind of a recessionary year, and weren't there some strikes at GM factories that year (and maybe at some of the tire manufacturers)? Firestone tires were usually associated with Ford cars because of the family relationship between the Ford family and Firestone family. However, as we all know, many things happened on the assembly lines that aren't consistent with the books and magazine articles. Anyhow, your second point is of equal interest to me. I don't know Jim, but I am assuming he is either from Missoula or Kalispell. I'll do some asking around, and between Adam Whitman and me, we should find out pretty soon. It would be extremely cool to find one of these cars still in the hands of the original owner. Do you remember the condition of the car and the years he was in the NW club? Finally, perhaps this is a question for Marco. I had understood that there were gaps in the records available to verify 1970 cars. Did I misunderstand, or what is the status of the records for 1970? Dan
Hm, hadn't heard of another stage 1 4-speed. I did know (and probably Dan too) of a 71-2 Stage car in Helena. The original owner's widow willed it to the neighbor boy whose father forced him to mow her lawn for years after her husband had died. He pretty much kept it in storage until he needed money to buy a home and sold it to a friend of his father's in the Missoula area about 5-years ago.
Hmmm....now I know why Mrs. Luxan wouldn't sell me that Gold '71 Stage One car---she needed her lawn mowed, if I'd only known..... When I knew the car, it was an all original 35,000 mile car, original paint, etc. Dan
Just stopped by the board at lunch here, and although I had not viewed this car or thread, anything with 80+ posts in this forum typically means a heated discussion is going on. I though I would bring a couple of points to mind, from my perspective here as a restorer, racer, and lifelong Buick fan. Keep in mind that I have not read all these posts, but skimmed it enough to get the jist of what is going on here. First off, this car looks to me to not be out of line in price at all, for what it is. Regardless of any ebay fooling around, it is a very rare bird indeed, and the owner is smart to hang onto it, if he intends to stay in the car hobby. I am well aware of what it takes to turn the average #4 car into a number 2 or 1 car, and this price would just about do it, if you already owned the car. Just about.. :eek2: I am always torn on the value issue, as part of me is really pissed that I didn't buy a 4 speed STG 1, GSX, stage 1 ragtop, or one of the other rare cars back when you could pick them up for almost nothing, but at that time in my life, I was more interested in drag racing, and for the money I spent doing that, I could have bought a fleet of them.. I am sure that most of you guys can say a similar thing, at a point when you could have spent the money on a car, it was more important to put it somewhere else in your life. The other part of me is happy that our cars are finally receiving the recognition they have always deserved, and the prices are beginning to reflect that. About damn time, I say.. And with the parts prices going thru the roof, the car prices surely will follow, there has been a poor correlation to the parts prices vs car prices in the past.. example, at one time you had to buy a $2500 71 grill, to put in a car that might bring 30K, after you stuffed 50+K into restoring it... that made no sense at all. That fact hurt our Buicks for a long time, as there were few folks who would go that path.. only the guys who had the disposable funds to "invest" hoping that someday they would not be quite so "upside down" in the car. They did it for the love of the car, not the money, but it's nice to know that should they for some unforeseen reason have to sell the car, they could recoup the investment at least. And for a great many of you, now that the cars are starting to increase in value, and as we all get older and have more disposable income for our toys, the idea of a frame off restoration is in the realm of possibility, and no longer the playground of the super rich collector.. To bring that to a point, it's much easier to convince yourself, let alone your wife, that you should invest 75K in GSX or other rare car that you already own, because it will be worth twice that when your done.. ------------ The point I think a lot of us are missing is directly related to that condition chart I posted a while back.. I see some cars being sold in number 4 and 5 condition, for, in my opinion, way too much money, that need 75K stuck into them. While there are certainly those "one of one" cars that will command that price, in any condition, that's not the majority of the cars. Too many of us are getting caught up in the "well that one sold for 125K, this one has to be worth 75K... but the reality is it's apples and oranges.. a number two car, with a rare option package and desirable colors, is worth many times what a number 5 car is.. that multiplication fact is determined by the specific cars.. There is a STG 1 4 speed GSX that is on ebay, and has been discussed on the board here.. I viewed that auction and the car, and my first thought was "nothing there I couldn't fix for 75K, that's a number 5 car, stripes and all.." My hope is that whoever buys that car will do it with the intention of bringing that piece of history back up to a level and condition that will elevate the status of all our cars. And add yet another "wow" car to fold here. The reality is that guys like me, are happy with the cars we own.. I personally have a 68 400 ragtop that I have had since I was 15, two 70 STG 1 auto cars that need a whole bunch of work, and then a really nice 70 GS clone that is a toy to play with.. I just bought that clone, it's a super solid rust free California car, Fire Red with a Black top and perfect interior, that I paid $4K for.. so the hobby is not going toward the super rich, you just have to wait, and look harder, and the deals do turn up. And it's not likely to be on ebay. I know of several such private sales recently.. STG 1 cars, needing some minor work, that went in the 20K price range. 455 cars that sold privately in the teens.. these are cars that were sold with the condition of the vehicle at the heart of the price issue, and not with one eye on ebay.. While there are sales of the much rarer (and nicer) cars that are bringing some big dollars, they are still well outside of the "norm". I think it's a bit early to say that we are going the way of the Mopars. It's my belief that we are reaching a more comfortable zone for the majority of us in the hobby.. you can get a decent fun car and not have to mortgage the house again, or you can step up and bring a car back to show condition, date coded glass and all, and not be throwing the money in a black hole. That covers a wider spectrum of the folks in our hobby. I could go on and on about this subject, because I live it every day.. as most of you know Buicks are not a hobby to me.. but there are a few of these rare 'super cars' as well as a few "fun cars" about 20 feet away from me that demand my attention. And lunch, and my :Comp: time is over.. JW
Lets not forget that most of us are probably guilty of being dreamers in the sense that you want that one special car so bad and you can't afford a nice one. You then convince yourself to buy some POS thinking "it can be fixed." Then, either after you add the cost of all the work up, or you finish writing the check, you then realize that you just invested the amount of money, and more work, than what you thought you could afford to put toward a nice example in the first place. I think that is what makes the #5 cars Jim referred to more inflated in price than the better cars; there's always more folks on a budget with dreams than the opposite case.
