Mirrors on buicks

I just bought a 72 buick skylark. I noticed that some skylarks have just one mirror and others have two. What is the reason for this? What determines how many mirrors the car has?

 

The right mirror used to be an option back in the day

 

cool. I had no idea. Sometimes I wish I had a passenger mirror, but maybe I will just embrace it haha.

 

Werlcome to the board as well ! Is this your car in the avatar ? Look like Carousel red/hugger orange ! Very nice :TU:

 

Back in the 60s/70s many items that come standard today were a la carte. Look to see if both mirrors were an option. We own a 63 MOPAR and they were both optional. For Buicks it may have just been the left remote and the right manual that were optional. I recall heaters were optional up to around 1968?. I know heaters were an option through 66. A padded dash was optional in the 60s etc.

 

Sometime in the mid- '60s mirrors became required, I don't remember when. BUT, iirc, heaters and defrosters became required around 1960. Can you imagine a car without defrosters? How crazy is that?!? Back in the mid-70s, I worked for an auto repair shop. The boss had me follow a customer back to his house to pick him up, so he could get his second car, that we were working on. I got ahead of him, and pulled over to let him catch up. Because the car ('58 Ford wagon) had neither heater nor defroster, and it was raining cats and dogs, I had the driver's door window down (the inside was steamed up). Another car (several, actually) drove by and drenched me and the interior of the car. I never did see the guy pass by. I got out and walked back across the street to the shop and told the boss to go get his customer in a real car, and crawled back under some other POS, to fix it. In the rain, outside. I was low man, and didn't rate a hoist or an inside stall.

 

In Canada - heaters, front window defrosters were mandated back in the 50's,
rear defoggers came in about 1970. my dad owned a 1951 chev that had a driver's mirror. i do know that a passenger side mirror for a 1970 chevelle was a dealer installed option.
for the buick a-body in 1972, standard mirror was a driver's side chrome. optional was a remote chromed driver's, a chromed passenger mirror or optional painted sport mirrors. i have sport mirrors with driver remote.
In 1971, for a monte carlo, u could order remote chromed mirrors for both driver and passenger.

 

Heaters/ defrost delete was available into the late 60s for sure. I have seen many of them. There was a GM code for this as I recall.

 

That was the period when GM listed something as standard but would give you the option of deleting it to reduce the price. That's how you get cars with heater delete, radio delete, carpet delete. The smart folks deleted everything and then selected the biggest baddest drivetrain as the only options. Those cars usually got wrapped around trees about 2 miles down the road from the dealership which makes them so rare today.

My 73 Electra has power everything, a/c, and the hidden antenna in the windshield, but still doesn't have a passenger side mirror. I don't think the passenger mirror became standard until around 1980 or so.

 

Probably parts of the famous RPO Z49

 

I still remember all the used car ads in the early 70's when the guy would rapidly list off all the equipment the car had.... radio, heater and automatic transmission in this fine 1964.......