Buick is the oldest automotive brand in the United States and one of the oldest in the world. David Buick, Buick Motor Co.’s founder, produced the first Buick in 1899 and incorporated his company in 1903.
William Durant became a controlling investor in Buick and formed General Motors in 1908 with Buick becoming the first General Motors brand. By this time, Buick was the largest automotive manufacturer in the world. David Buick sold his interest in his company in 1906 and was a very wealthy man but died 25 years later with just modest means.
In the General Motors lineup, Buick was one notch below Cadillac and one above Oldsmobile. Buick has built some beautiful cars over its long history, and many would agree that the Buick Riviera was their greatest achievement. The Riviera is a personal luxury car produced by Buick from 1963 to 1999 except for 1994.
The Riviera name had been used as early as 1949 as a Buick series name but not as a distinctive body shell. The name “Riviera” is Italian for “coast” and was selected probably to suggest the luxurious French Riviera, the affluent crowd that visits there and how good those people would look driving a Buick Riviera. There have been eight generations of Buick Riviera with 1,127,261 of them produced during the model’s 36-year run.
To me, though, the first two generations (1963-1965 and 1966-1970) were really Buick Rivieras and the rest were just nice Buick hardtops or convertibles. The second generation of Buick Rivieras,.