David Dunbar Buick began building gasoline-powered cars in 1899, but the Buick Motor Co. was not formally incorporated until 1903. Originally based in Detroit, the ailing company was purchased by Flint Wagon Works in September 1903 and reincorporated in Flint, Michigan in January 1904.

Buick was rescued from near-bankruptcy by entrepreneur William (Billy) Crapo Durant, who became its general manager and then president. Although Durant was no engineer, and by some accounts had no great love of automobiles, he quickly revitalized Buick's fortunes. By 1908, it was America's leading automaker, selling some 8,820 cars.

Billy Durant was nothing if not ambitious, and not long after becoming Buick president, he was already exploring the possibility of mergers with other automakers. After being rebuffed by Oldsmobile and REO, he created a holding company called General Motors in September 1908, and began selling stock. With the proceeds from that stock sale, he purchased Oldsmobile, followed in 1909 by Cadillac, Oakland, and a host of others. By 1910, GM controlled more than 30 companies, although it had accumulated so much debt that Durant was soon forced out by a bankers' trust.

Buick, now a division of GM, remained one of the corporation's most successful and profitable brands. Its cars were relatively expensive, what today would be called near-luxury models. When Alfred P. Sloan became president of GM in the 1920s, he set Buick on the second-highest rung of GM's price hierarchy, just below Cadillac in price and prestige. Buick sold well during the booming years of the Jazz Age. By 1923 it consistently moved more than 150,000 cars a year, third-best in the industry, with handsome profit margins.

The division ran into trouble in 1929. The first problem was unpopular new styling that earned the '29 model the unflattering sobriquet of "Pregnant Buick." It was a slap in the face for Harley Earl's new Art & Colour division, which had been established to style all GM cars. Earl blamed Fisher Body Division, which actually built the cars; Fisher draftsmen altered the dimensions and proportions of Earl's final designs prior to production. In any case, the result was dismal sales, dropping more than 25% from 1928. Then, in October 1929, the stock market crashed, taking with it much of the market for expensive cars.


Side-mounted spare wheels were popular with conservative buyers in the late 1930s, just as padded vinyl tops would be four decades later. They cost extra on Buicks of this vintage. Stylists abhorred them; the body-colored covers were a grudging attempt to marry the sidemounts (which dealers often demanded) with the vogue for streamlining. Sidemount wheels are often a nightmare for restorers, because their wells accumulate water and promote disastrous levels of corrosion.

No high-priced cars fared well during the early years of the Great Depression, but Buick was hit particularly hard. After 1929, it was seldom a reflection of the virtues of the cars themselves, which were attractive, well-built, and modern. The 1931 cars had a new line of straight-eight engines, better brakes, and a much-improved clutch design. The '32s had lovely, if conservative, new styling, and came in a wide assortment of body styles, in four different sizes. It also added GM's new Synchro-Mesh transmission, which allowed clash-free shifting into second and third gears -- a highly useful innovation. None of this helped: sales were down more than 25% for 1931, and a further 53% for 1932. Sales for 1933 were only 40,620, Buick's worst year since 1914. As sales dropped, Buick dealers began to jump ship. The number of exclusive Buick dealerships plummeted, dropping from more than 2,500 before the Crash to fewer than 70 by 1934. What had once been GM's most profitable division suddenly looked terminal. GM management talked seriously about liquidation.

Buick's salvation came in the form of a dynamic new general manager named Harlow "Red" Curtice, previously the head of GM's AC Spark Plug division. Curtice was 39 when he took over Buick in October 1933, young for GM, and he was, in the vernacular of the time, a real live wire. Curtice was determined to turn Buick around, and Sloan gave him a great deal of latitude to try.

Curtice's first salvo was a new, short-wheelbase model called the Series 40, introduced in May 1934. With starting prices as low as $795, the Series 40 was about 20% cheaper than the least-expensive '33 model. Customers responded; although 1934's total sales were still unimpressive, compared to its 1920s heights, they were up 93% from 1933.

Although buyers in hard times tend to gravitate towards smaller, more economical cars, the most reliable selling points tend to be the three Ss: speed, style, and snobbery. The Buick name still carried considerable snob value in those days; it was a highly respectable car, the kind a successful doctor or banker might drive. Curtice set to work on speed and style.


Restyled by Frank Hershey, the '37 Buicks were several inches longer and hundreds of pounds heavier than their '36 counterparts. This car stretches about 203 inches (5,156 mm) long on a 126-inch (3,200-mm) wheelbase, with a curb weight of around 3,900 pounds (1,770 kg). Base price of this model and body style was $1,233, and 21,140 were built, accounting for more than half of Century sales for 1937. Note the front and rear "Ventiplane" vent windows, which GM had just introduced with fanfare in 1933.

While some GM managers were suspicious of Harley Earl, Curtice actively courted the mercurial styling chief. One of Curtice's first acts after becoming Buick president was to call on Earl and ask him for a tour of the Art & Colour section and a crash course in automotive design. Curtice and Earl soon became friends, and Earl favored Buick with some of his stylists' slickest work. The first result was the 1936 line, whose development began shortly after Curtice came to Buick. Curtice had asked Earl for a design that would have the flair of a Cadillac, but be instantly recognizable as a Buick. Earl delivered, and the sleek, streamlined '36s were among the industry's best-looking cars.

The new Buicks were improved under the skin, as well. For 1934, Buick got independent front suspension, with coil springs instead of leaf springs, giving much-improved handling and ride quality. For 1936, mechanically operated brakes gave way to modern hydraulics, and a new, smoother, lighter synchromesh transmission was added. The '36 cars also had "Turret Top" construction, finally abandoning the wood-and-steel composite structures to which GM had stubbornly clung in favor of all-steel bodies. Under the hood, Curtice consolidated the previous assortment of engines down to two. Both were overhead-valve straight-eights, one making 93 horsepower (69 kW) from 233 cubic inches (3.8 L), the other producing 120 hp (90 kW) from 320 cubic inches (5.2 L).

The new Buicks were stylish and modern, but Curtice also wanted them to be fast. The usual automotive practice is to put small engines in small cars and big engines in big cars, but interesting results may be had from putting a big engine in a smaller car. In 1936, Buicks came in four basic sizes: the short-wheelbase Special, the medium-size Century, the big Roadmaster, and the even bigger Limited. The Special used Buick's small eight, but the Century came standard with the same engine as the big Roadmaster and Limited. Since it was at least 9 inches (229 mm) shorter and more than 300 pounds (136 kg) lighter than its larger siblings, the mid-size Century became a rather hot number. Prestigious, pretty, and fast, the 1936 Buicks were a hit. Sales climbed to almost 180,000, up over 65% from 1935, and more than four times the dismal 1932-1933 totals.


This is the four-door "Touring Sedan," the most popular Century body style; other choices included the two-door Touring Sedan, standard two- and four-door sedans, a convertible coupe, a sport coupe, and a five-passenger convertible phaeton. The ungainly-looking "trunkback" is not nearly as sleek as the sport coupe or standard two-door sedan, but it was somewhat more useful. Stylist (and future GM styling chief) Bill Mitchell, who worked on some details of this car, felt that it looked top-heavy; Fisher body insisted on an exaggerated crown to the roof, an effort to prevent drumming in the new all-steel "Turret Top" body.

The Buick line was extensively restyled for 1937, the year of our photo car. The new design, largely the work of Frank Hershey (who would later become a leading stylist for Ford), was longer, lower, and wider than the '36 -- Harley Earl's standard formula -- but still sharp-looking and modern. The big straight-eight was raised 10 hp to 130, meaning that the Century remained a fast car, despite its considerable extra girth. Unofficial reports showed the Century to be capable of 0-60 mph (0-97 kph) in about 16 seconds, and while it couldn't quite crack the century mark, it was of the fastest stock cars sold in America. Sales for '37 were up a further 25% over 1936. One GM executive remarked to Curtice that Buick was no longer on relief.


Other than the greater length and more prominent fenders, the most obvious feature of the 1937 is the divided grille with its horizontal chrome bars, replacing 1936's "fencer's mask" design. The pod-mounted headlamps were a point of contention within GM at this time. Harley Earl felt they were becoming dated, and wanted flush, fender-mounted headlights (which the Chrysler Airflows and Lincoln's Zephyr already had), but Bill Knudsen, who became president of GM in 1937, felt they were impractical. GM production cars wouldn't have flush headlamps until 1940.

Harlow Curtice wasn't satisfied with being only one of the fastest. He charged Charles Chayne, Buick's new chief engineer, with wringing more power out of the big engine. For 1938, the 320, renamed Dynaflash 8, got new combustion chambers, relocated valves and spark plugs, and a higher compression ratio, boosting it from 130 to 141 horsepower (97 to 105 kW). The new Century could reach 60 mph (97 kph) in a little over 13 seconds and hit speeds of up to 103 mph (165 kph). The supercharged Cord 810 could give it a run for its money, but the only stock cars of the time that could decisively outrun a Century were a handful of rare and expensive European exotics, like the Bugatti Type 57, Alfa Romeo 8C 2900, and Jaguar SS 100.

Curtice and Chayne had an even hotter Century up their sleeves. For 1941, larger Buicks got a redesigned "Fireball 8," with a higher compression ratio, new, smaller spark plugs, and "Compound Carburetion," a pair of dual-throat carburetors with a progressive linkage. The engine operated on the front carb in normal driving, but when the throttle was pressed down, the rear carb would cut in, as well, for a significant improvement in power. With Compound Carburetion, the big Fireball 8 made 165 gross horsepower (123 kW) and 278 lb-ft (376 N-m) of torque. Since Cadillac and Packard had dropped their big multicylinder (V-12 and V-16) engines the previous year, the Buick was now America's most powerful car, beating Packard by 5 hp (3 kW) and Cadillac by 15 (11 kW). GM testing claimed the 1941 Buick Century could reach 60 mph (97 kph) in about 12 seconds, with a top speed of 101 mph (162 kph). To put that in perspective, such speed made the Century every bit as quick as the Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight and Hudson Hornets that tore up the stock car circuit in the late forties and early fifties -- racy performance, indeed.

Alas, Compound Carburetion was short-lived, offered only in '41 and the truncated 1942 model year. The engine's 7.0:1 compression ratio was really too high for the octane rating of contemporary gasoline, the smaller spark plugs were prone to oil leaks, and keeping the dual carburetors properly tuned was troublesome. Drivers also found that using the ample power had an alarming effect on fuel economy. During the war, when most drivers were rationed to three to five gallons (11.4 to 18.9 liters) of gasoline a week, many dealers converted customers' cars back to single carburetors. In 1945, when civilian auto production resumed, Buicks reverted to a single, dual-throat carburetor and a slightly lower compression ratio, cutting power to 150 hp (112 kW). The dual-carb engine was impressive, but it had proved a bridge too far.

So, too, did another of Curtice's efforts. Hoping to boost Buick's image even further, he had made a deal with the coachbuilder Brunn & Company in Buffalo, New York to offer custom-built bodies on the big Limited chassis. Only a handful were sold, and Curtice was warned that he was treading too much on Cadillac's toes, so they were discontinued by 1940.

Despite those minor missteps, Curtice's revival of Buick was an overwhelming success. By 1938, the division had climbed from seventh place in the industry to fourth, just behind Chevrolet, Ford, and Plymouth. It would remain in fourth place for much of the next two decades, occasionally reaching as high as third. Even better, Curtice's efforts had restored the faith of Buick dealers -- the number of franchises grew from 67 in 1934 to almost 3,000 in 1941. Each of those dealers enjoyed higher average sales than any other make sold in the United States. The division's fortunes were further swelled by a lucrative series of wartime contracts, including aircraft engines and the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer (whose transmission provided the basis of the postwar Dynaflow automatic).

In 1948, Curtice was rewarded for his efforts with a promotion to executive vice president, leaving Buick in the hands of Ivan Wiles, his former comptroller. In 1953 Curtice became president of General Motors, a post he held until his retirement in 1958. He died in the fall of 1962.

Buick's fortunes would rise and fall over the subsequent decades, reaching its greatest success in the early 1980s. (Its best year was 1985, the only year the division's sales ever topped one million.) Although it could never seem to shake its stolid, middle-class image, Buick made several other stabs at high performance, including the formidable Gran Sports, the turbocharged Grand Nationals of 1984-1987, and the fearsome, limited-production 1987 GNX.


The rare 400 cu. in. (6.6L) Stage 1 engine, seen here in a 1969 Buick GS400. This dealer-installed option, which included forged pistons, a hotter camshaft, and higher-compression heads, was ostensibly good for a five-horsepower boost over the standard 400-4V engine, but it was certainly stronger than that. It was followed in 1970 by the monstrous 455 (7.5L) Stage 1, which was conservatively rated at 360 horsepower and 510 lb-ft of torque.

By the 21st century, Buick had fallen on hard times. Its 2007 sales were down to about 186,000, the lowest since 1946, and only 90 exclusive Buick dealerships remain. Although Buicks are also sold through more than 2,700 multiple-franchise dealers, the average vendor moves only three Buick cars a month.

At the time this article was originally written, it looked like Buick was bleeding to death, sustained only by the brand's popularity in China. With the demise of Pontiac and Saturn, however, it has become GM's sole midsize brand, and it is now receiving new products, intended to position it as an American alternative to Lexus and Infiniti. It's too soon to say how well that strategy will work, but it appears that GM's oldest brand may enjoy at least one more renaissance -- including some surprisingly sporty sedans. We find that heartening; Buick's ignominious demise would have been a sad ending for the automaker that was the foundation of General Motors -- and that once made some of the fastest cars on the road.

# # #

Our primary sources for this article included Chapter 7 of Dave Holls and Michael Lamm, A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design (Stockton, CA: Lamm-Morada Publishing Co. Inc., 1997), pp. 84-118; the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide, Encyclopedia of American Cars: Over 65 Years of Automotive History, (Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, 1996); Josiah Work, "Depression-Bred Beauty: 1932 Buick 60," Special Interest Autos #128, March-April 1992; Tim Howley, "SIA comparisonReport: 1938 Buick vs. 1938 LaSalle," Special Interest Autos #126, November-December 1991; and Michael Lamm, "driveReport: 1941 Buick Phaeton," Special Interest Autos #6, July-August 1971. The SIA articles are reprinted in Terry Ehrich, ed., The Hemmings Book of Buicks (Hemmings Motor News Collector-Car Books) (Bennington, VT: Hemmings Motor News, 2001).

This article's title was suggested by the song "Beauty of Speed," written and performed by Tori Amos. It appeared on her 2007 album American Doll Posse.

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