The Buick Riviera personal luxury coupe attained monstrous proportions by the center Nineteen Seventies, scaling in at well over 4,500 kilos by 1976. After spending 1977 and 1978 as sibling to the Chevy Caprice, the Riviera then moved to the front-wheel-drive platform utilized by the Cadillac Eldorado and Oldsmobile Toronado, staying there through the 1985 model 12 months. The Riviera world became so much more interesting for the 1986 model 12 months, when a smaller and more sophisticated generation hit showrooms with curvier lines and electronic gadgetry straight out of science fiction. Today’s Junkyard Gem is one in every of those cars, present in a self-service boneyard in Phoenix, Arizona.
What makes this automotive such an interesting little bit of automotive history is that this dash-mounted touchscreen interface, often called the Graphic Control Center. The 1986 Riviera was the primary GM vehicle to get the GCC, which implies it was the primary production automotive in history with a factory-installed touchscreen display. This method became available within the Buick Reatta and the Oldsmobile Toronado just a few years later.
The GCC used a cathode-ray tube screen sourced from an ATM manufacturer, which ran on 120VAC power and required an inverter and dangerous high-voltage wiring contained in the dash. It was used to operate the HVAC, the radio and the trip computer, in addition to to display operating and diagnostic information. The system used quite a few bulky components along with the dash screen; I’ve extracted a few complete sets of GCC components through the years and plan to construct them right into a junkyard-parts boombox.
Because it turned out, the senior-citizen-heavy demographic of Buick shoppers didn’t feel great enthusiasm for the GCC and there wasn’t an enormous sales payoff for this revolutionary technology. That did not stop GM from introducing the primary mass-produced cars with head-up displays a few years later.
The running gear wasn’t quite as sophisticated because the GCC. The 1986-1993 Rivieras got old-fashioned 3.8-liter Buick V6s under their hoods; the one on this automotive was rated at 140 horsepower and 200 pound-feet.
In case you wanted a manual transmission in your ’86 Rivvie, you were out of luck. A four-speed automatic was mandatory equipment. Note the bizarre face-loading cassette deck in front of the shifter; the AM/FM radio was a remote-controlled unit living contained in the center console.
The MSRP for this automotive was $19,831, or about $55,691 in 2023 dollars. The higher-zoot Riviera T-Type cost $21,577 ($60,595 in today’s money), making it the most costly Buick of 1986. Those prices put the Riviera in the identical cost league as the BMW 3 Series, which began at $19,560 for the bottom 325 two-door.
The ultimate Rivieras sold were 1999 models, though the Riviera name has been used on a few Chinese-market Buick concept cars this century.
The GCC gets heavy play on this Close Encounters-inspired business.
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
