1937 Buick Special
 

Made in Flint Michigan. Going by the serial # it looks like it possibly was built shortly after the great sit down strike of '37.
It has what look like early 50's "Atlas" brand tires and battery. Somehow, the tires still hold air!
No-go on the battery though.. Long gone.. LOL!
Since the pics, I have done some work on the body.. No more rust, it's in black primer now.
The 248 straight eight engine turns over fine by hand, someone drained the gas from the tank, and oiled all cylinders. I will mess with that later when I have more ambition.
Thought I would have a tough go with parts, but not so.. Everything I need from tune up parts to trim can be had online. Never owned a car this old, but I am starting to like this one..!

cool car! One of my favorites. some time in the late 90s I stopped at a garage sale.. and on my way back to the car, I found a grill emblem for a car like that in laying in the gutter... kind of a strange thing to find in the street in the 1990's. My theory is it had fallen off decades before.. and been laying covered by grass along the curb, and was then dislodged by a snowplow in the winter..

That's a neat car. I've never had one, but I've always liked the old Buicks with the straight-8s.

Classy! That will be a nice car when you are done. Hope you plan to do it right and have the interior as original as possible.....200X seats and gauges in a 40's car are about as hideous as a BPC sutffed inside a roundy cabinet IMHO.

I had something like that happen in the 90's too. In the park in front of my old house in Lombard Ill. I found a 40's car handle sitting near the base of a tree....It must have been buried since the chrome was worn off. The neighborhood was supposedly the original city dump, and I found lots of 20's and older glass buried there, but since the our house was built in ~1947 I wonder how that handle got there.....It was a good 10-20' from the street.

My father painted a late 30's Buick for a customer when I was a teenager, and I've thought of that car often. It may have been the last all-over paint job he did in lacquer. I've only recently come to learn, through reading in Hemming's Classic Car, how nice these were.

The rubber compounds used in some of those old tires would really last, much more than modern radials. I've heard of many hot rodders running NOS bias plies from the 60's without a problem (with new tubes, of course.) Someday I'd like to own a late 30's/pre-war car, at least for a while, just for the learning experience.

I saved this one from being chopped up into a hot rod.. Too many people have been influenced by that gas monkey garage stuff lately.

My main concern was taking care of all the surface rust on the body panels before the cold of winter.. That's all done now.

in the early 90's I drove 1967 VW beelte. it needed tires, and the rims were not in good shape. I got a deal from a local VW garage- they had some mid 60's VW original spare tires on rims never used, original 1960's Bias ply Continental tires, I was going to get new tires on the rims, but since they seemed to drive fine, and didn't show cracking or dry rot, I drove around on 30 year old tires for several years.

That is a cool ride. I understand the idea of wanting to try "something really old", that's how I ended up with my '51 Imperial. A thirties car is my next goal... I'd like an Airflow.

I'll add to the old autoparts story. I once found a small (4") "hubcap" from they days when they really did just cover hubs. It had the Graham Brothers logo, a make that faded away in the '30s. It was laying at the curb near my house, on a street that was probably paved in the 70s. Perhaps it was in the dirt of an easement, worked it's way to the top and out of the soil, flung out to the curb by a lawn mower?

An Airflow would be cool...... Very different design for the time.....
Too bad a lot of the really innovative auto brands didn't stick around....
or should I say, be smart enough to not be screwed out of existence
by the bunch we have left today....

.

That Buick is beautiful, what a classy design

Buick was "Run" back in those days by a guy named Harlow Curtice, or as EVERYBODY called him "Red". He LOVED "The Buick", even after he got promoted to run General Motors, he still kept his eye on HIS division, to the point of "Big-Dealing" Fisher Body into selling Buick bodies for almost $50 LESS than what they were selling the OTHER divisions' bodies.. The mayor of Flint got himself a new Cadillac one year, & told him, "Red, that's the FINEST car I ever had..."Curtice kinda glowered at him & said, "George, that's WAY too much car for you..." The guy backed down, & the next day, got himself a snazzy Buick.

I have a lot to learn with this one, but am enjoying the learning process!
Funny, I absolutely had NO interest in anything older than early 60's all this time.. Then this one found me. I would see it occasionally from my neighbor's backyard garage when he would have the door open. He has the oldest house on the street from 1910, so the car fit in pretty well!
Then I found out he was selling his home and everything in it.. Well, there you go.. That was enough for me!
He would not let me near it until he dusted it off, and pushed it out of the garage.. It appeared he had a strong attachment to it!
Now I have also found out members of my family worked at the Flint plant at that time, so who knows.. They may have had some involvement with it's assembly.
She has come further as of yesterday, the new (and never installed) clutch disc and pressure plate are finally in after waiting patiently for 40 years!

Oh! And Carmine, an Airflow would be awesome, I admired those as a kid after seeing a write up in a car mag many years ago. Also found out how much crap the guys went through in that sit down strike.. But it ended up being worth it!

A beautiful Buick from the era when Buick lines were flowing, romantic, and beautiful. "When Better Cars Are Built, Buick Will Build Them". A slogan I wish GM would revive. It says what needs to be said.

The straight 8s have a wonderful mellow, 'purring' exhaust note. Totally unlike the sound of a straight-6 or a V8.

That brings back memories. My brother had a '36 parked in the front yard when I was a kid. He bought it for $25, IIRC. This was in the early 70's. Not too long after he got the Buick, he gave $45 and a used TV set for a '55 Packard Clipper.

Funny.. I sold the Buick and bought an 1955 Packard Clipper as well!

I like the Packard better, with the torsion bar suspension and load leveler.

This was a time of experimentation in the car companies. Somewhere in the deeper, darker recesses of my feeble mind, there is a tale about 1937 or '38 Buicks that to save weight, they ended the frame right at the rear axle, & there was just sheet metal past that. It worked fine, until the 1st guy who got tapped on the rear bumper couldn't get out of his car ! Then, LOTS of complaints started coming in, they did a Quick fix, but the problem wasn't really cured til they made the frame extend to the ends of the body again.

Did Packard go to a 12 volt electrical system in 1955? I know, Studebaker was still 6 volt in 1955.

Dwight both cars are great, But I agree with you. I like the 1955 Packard Clipper better. Any pictures?

Yes, the 1955 Packard is 12 volt Positive ground.