The Next Project

 ScottDate: 11 Nov 2020

For those of you who know me, you know I love cars. Mainly the muscle cars from the 1960-1970's era. Well, ever since I lived in Seattle, there was a 1965 Buick Riviera that I would walk by when I went to one of my local watering holes, Coopers. It just caught my eye every time I walked by. It was at this point, I said I'm gonna get one of those one day. Since I was a graduate student at that time, (meaning I had no money) that dream would have to wait. 

Well now that I have a job, the Mustang is basically done (minus little tweaks), the Cobra is pretty much done as well (minus the upgrades and tweaks) it was time to start looking for The Next Project! Hence, I have been looking for a 1963-65 Buick Riviera for about the past 8-9 years. 

Over that time, I've slowly watched the prices for ones that are in decent shape and not needing an exorbitant amount of work creep from $8-9000 to $15-20,000. My search has been nation wide and whenever I would travel, I'd search those areas to see if any were for sale in that area. 

About 1 month ago my search was about to come to an end. I found a 1963 Riviera that was in decent shape and at a price I could stomach. It looks much like the one above with some minor differences. It does need some work, but I thought, hey after building a Factory Five Cobra from the ground up, I thought I could tackle the work that this one needed. 

I found this 1963 Riviera on a website called CoPart. CoPart sells all sorts of things, but primarily things that have been totaled out by Insurance companies. It is an auction site, so it's possible to get some good deals, if you look for them. Thus seeing this Riviera, I thought I may have a good shot at getting it at a low price and then save what I was thinking of spending in making the changes to it the way I wanted. 

Luckily, this Riviera was actually listed as a "1963 Buick Electra." Why, I have no idea but I thought that would mean less competition for it. So I placed my bid and waited. It turned out to be a bidding war between myself and someone in the UK. Luckily, I won out and had my beast delivered to me, as it was actually outside Raleigh, NC. Thus here it is in my garage, day of delivery!

I know, I know, you're probably thinking I'm nuts. Trust me, the day it arrived, my mind was racing with thoughts, "What in the world was I thinking!" Once you get by the burned hood, fenders, flat tire, completely burned engine compartment, melted battery, and...whatever. It's actually a VERY solid car. The above picture is actually my Riviera before it was burned as its a former CA car, thus next to no rusted thru panels! I've looked underneath and it is very solid for being 57 years old. Even under the hood. 

Well, there IS a lot of rust under the hood, but that's because it was, after all, on fire at one point. I did do my due dilgence in determining if this was fixable or not. My firefighter brother could tell that they just opened the hood to put the fire out. A co-worker used to work in an autobody shop and said the body damage (burned off paint) was easily fixable. I already know how to rebuild an engine and engine compartment. 

With COVID raging rapid, an at home project is about the best thing I can think of right now. It'll be time to move the Cobra to mom's house so I'll have room to work on the Riviera, so it's away we go!