I traded my daily driver 65 Fury for this solid 56 Buick Century today. The car has never had any rust-out anywhere, just surface rust and has a rebuilt 322 nail head. I had wanted one of these cars for a long time, but never could find one in decent enough shape around here. This one spent its entire life here, only having 39k miles on it. The underside of this car is very clean too.. It's been off the road since 1970. Originally a bittersweet and white two-tone exterior with a medium blue interior (an odd combination I think?) Plans are to paint it, interior, chrome work, slightly lower and drive Haven't decided if I want to keep the bittersweet color or go with the blue someone shot the firewall with already.
Talk about an automatic ice-breaker! The seemingly mismatched paint color/interior color will get 'em talkiing about your car, that's for sure. Buick's policy was to build whatever the customer ordered in those days, regardless of the customer's taste in either color or equipment. My vote would be to restore the car exactly as it was built - Bittersweet/white on the outside, blue on the inside - and enjoy the comments it draws. Toning it down with a "complementary blue" exterior paint scheme would be so boring...
The more I've thought about it, I probably will go back to the bittersweet and white two-tone and redo the interior back to factory as well. I think slightly lower and exhaust may be the only changes I make for now.
My first buick came blue and white with a red and white interior... gotta wonder what they were thinking when they ordered it. It was was optioned manual everything: brakes, steering, transmission, windows, seat.. no ac, But with a radio!
Agree 100%. If you center the wheels in the wheel openings when you lower the car it will be perfect on these cars with round wheel openings. Any more and it loses the sleek look and begins to look squashed. Also... Be sure to find a really talented muffler guy when you have your exhaust system built. In order to run the driver's side pipe he'll have to cut into the frame just ahead of the brake pedal assembly and run the pipe inside the frame until he can route it back out of the frame to join a muffer that is the mirror image of the right side. The tail pipes are a little tricky too, thanks to the panhard bar, but it's doable without much difficulty. Great project! Good luck!
I can't imagine finding a car like this in West Virginia that isn't so rusted out you could throw a cat through it. Good find!
Congratulations on your Buick. I also think the original colours would look great on the car. Thanks for showing and keep us posted.
Thanks for the info, I hadn't paid enough attention to the layout under the car, but I'll make sure whoever does the exhaust is highly reputable. I don't want anyone just chopping away at anything. It's rare, I never thought I'd ever come across such a solid car here. The car evidently was kept inside most of its life. I got a lot of documents with it showing mileage over the years. The car shows 39,xxx miles now. There's a state inspection form I got with it, showing the car had 35,912 when it was inspected in Beckley, WV on 7-18-67.
Had some free time this evening so I cleaned the car out, removed the seats and vacuumed the floor. The next couple of decent day off I get, I plan to remove the old seam sealer and matting, paint the floor with por15 and install new sealer.
No picture updates yet, but I have managed to strip some more of the trim off the car, and I've been working on cleaning the floors up. I was working 3 jobs and going to school, but now I'm down to 2 jobs and school part time so I should be able to put a little more time into getting things done to it. So far though, I've mainly been rounding up some tools I'm going to need for the project. I had sold many of my tools some years back when I enlisted and never really got anything back afterwards. I got a new Hobart Handler welder, and picked up a same as new air compressor (was planning on getting a new one until I found this one). It's a 60 gallon 13.5 scfm 3 cylinder out of a local scrap yard. Supposedly tractor supply hauled it in after a customer returned it as being defective. I got it for $175 from the scrap yard and the only thing wrong with it was a blown head gasket . Works great now! I've got a few more things to round up, then I'll be set to start on stripping the car. I've also played with Photoshop a little to get an idea of the original color combo, with a mild drop and shaved handles. I wouldn't want to run any electric poppers, so I believe I'm going to hinge a port hole on each side and run a cable for use as door handles.
The Jalopy Journal
