There’s something about a European coming to the U.S., seeing a car that many of us find boring/perhaps take for granted, and lamenting its doomed fate. In some ways, Jonathan is appreciating a car that hasn’t received enough appreciation over its lifetime, and I respect the heck out of that. “I thought this was a bit too sad not to share,” Jonathan says in his email titled “Pristine Buick Lesabre I found in a junkyard.” He then explains that he and his brother spent some of their vacation in the U.S. hitting up U-pull junkyards in Colorado springs and Denver to snag parts for the imported American cars the brothers drive in the U.K. “At the yard in Denver, we happened across this sorry sight: A practically factory fresh 1989 Buick LeSabre,” concluded the intro paragraph.
Let’s See This Minty Buick
Let’s have a close look at this 1989 Buick LeSabre — a phrase most people haven’t said in many, many years. (Because the LeSabre has for years been a car that fades into the background.
Shoot — look at the paint! The body panels! The chrome bumpers! The wheels! Hell, even the whitewall tires! This thing actually is clean!
Oh and that red, wood-trimmed interior; this thing IS mint!
Sitting under the hood is the unkillable Buick 3800 V6, leading me to wonder what Jonathan was wondering: What’s this car doing in the junkyard? This really is an injustice, and it doesn’t take a Brit who wears rose-colored glasses when it comes to American cars, which are rarer where he lives. Even I, a Detroit-based man with crazy access to much more interesting American iron, see the tragedy in this situation.
Jonathan and His Brother’s American Cars In The U.K.
Thank you Jonathan for what has to be the most beautiful eulogy that any Buick LeSabre has ever received, and for helping me (and hopefully some readers) appreciate the forgotten and under-loved Buick LeSabre. It really does have a bit of coolness to it these days, especially when it’s in good shape.
It hasn’t been totally flawless though, but I have an eye for detail when it comes to important stuff. Such as a transmission fluid leak that I learned about when my car slipped out of gear at a light. Having drained and filled the fluid, it’s been shifting flawlessly ever since. The leak has also since been addressed as it was due to a crack in the radiator that the previous owner never bothered addressing from a front end collision that went unreported in the carfax.
Also, and the unfortunate blemish on its otherwise perfect driving record; the MAF sensor completely died while driving one day and basically KO’d my car. Would crank all day and start but wouldn’t run for longer than a second unless I unplugged the sensor. $210 I replaced the sensor with an OEM Toyota one and the car actually runs better than when I bought it. Didn’t realize how crappy that old sensor was until I noticed a smooth and steady 800 rpm idle the car wasn’t able to achieve otherwise.
Regardless of those two things, it’s the best damn car I ever bought for 4 figures.
Out of all 677k crushed cars? 190 LeSabres (1984, 1985, and a single 1987.) More 1992 Roadmaster sedans – SEDANS! – were crushed than all years of LeSabre combined.
LaCrosse? I thought it was a LeSabre.
I’ve resuscitated 3 older cars (a 1967 Pontiac Firebird, a 1973 Volvo 1800ES and a 1980 BMW 320i) that lived life exclusively in the arid West and all of them leaked substantially when I started.
Engine, transmission, brakes, differential, fuel lines, etc. Anything old and made of rubber or made to be flexible is suspect. Even wiring insulation drying out and becoming brittle can cause problems.
While it seems wasteful to destroy what appears to be a perfectly good car, there are many people along the chain (many of them experts who deal with this sort of thing daily) who had the opportunity to “save” the car but elected not to.
The original owner was the first to pass on the car. Maybe this was someone who inherited the vehicle (a reasonable assumption when talking about a Buick) who just didn’t need another car or it simply wasn’t their cup of tea. It’s not unreasonable that that person would choose to sell the car even if it’s in fine working order.
So they’ll take the car to a regular dealer. I don’t think the likes of Carmax or the other big used car franchises sell anything this old, and it’s rare to see something like this on the used lot of a branded car dealer. That’s pretty reasonable to pass as well. So the dealer would have sent it to a wholesaler.
The shady buy-here/pay-here lots can get some of their inventory from wholesalers. The fact that no BH/PH dealer wants anything to do with it raises an eyebrow. With vehicle inventory shortages still going pretty strong, cars that run and drive (regardless of age) are still pretty valuable commodities. If quick easy fixes were all it would take to make it roadworthy, such a dealer would eagerly undertake those and flip the car. That leads me to believe that the mechanical condition of the vehicle isn’t nearly as good as its cosmetic condition.
So then it gets sent to a junkyard. Sometimes cars are worth less in total than the sum of their parts. Scrap metal isn’t particularly lucrative compared to selling car parts, so a junkyard will “part it out” before crushing the car and getting only scrap value for the metal bits. Maybe that’s already been done — I can’t imagine there are a ton of 1989 LeSabres remaining on the road, so there’s probably not a lot of demand for parts.
That leaves the two Brits mentioned in the article. If they liked the car so much, I’m certain that they could have made an offer to the scrapyard slightly higher than scrap value and taken it home. Scrapyards are businesses, so if (retrieving numbers from my rectal database) scrap value is, say, $200 and they were to offer $250, that’s a decent return. Of course, it looks like it’s missing a tire in one of the pictures, it probably doesn’t run, it’ll need to be towed away, rubber items like belts and hoses may be dry-rotted if it’s been sitting a while, some other issues might be found, etc. Those little things add up, and pretty soon you’re knocking on the door of the $825 “low retail” value that NADA is reporting. It’s just not worth it.
tl;dr: There were a LOT of people (including the two Brits in the article) along the way who looked at this car and said: “Nah, it’s not worth it.” I am not arrogant enough to think that I know better than all of them or can somehow do it better than them. There’s a reason why this car is where it is — even if that reason isn’t readily apparent.
So it was 1-877-Kars4Kids, or some other charity that is always asking for vehicle donations, running or not. The person on the other end entered the info (likely 152K for the miles) into the computer and it’s program said send it to the wrecking yard based on the age and the fact that it didn’t run. So it went directly to their partner wrecking yard. Depending on the state’s laws once they take possession of the vehicle they must surrender the title to the state. If wrecking yards are allowed to sell salvage vehicles, the wrecking yard needs the proper license to do so, and not every yard finds that worth their while. If they did sell it the buyer would get a salvage title, which might be a drawn out hassle, increasing the work needed to save it and lowering its potential value.
Yes that person who got the job to deal with it could have saved it by putting it on craiglist or wherever. That was probably their plan when they thought they could drive it home and sell it as a running vehicle. But once they realized that they weren’t making it run with 15 min of work, the time and hassle of meeting someone at grandma’s house just wasn’t worth the few hundred bucks they thought they could get for it.
Then after a couple of months my company Hyundai had to be returned and the guy at the desk said “your new car is a Chevy Impala, here are the keys”. I was so excited! I had all these images in my head about how cool it was going to be.
This was around 2007ish, and it was by far the worst car I’ve ever driven. Just dreadful.
But her old LeSabre just sat in the garage for the next 16 years until granny finally bit the bullet.
Had not been started in years, gas in the tank turned to varnish, wont start. Nobody in the family wanted to spend the $$$ to get it running again, so it found its way to the bone yard
I would bet multiple dollars that those tires are not “like new”
While it may look ‘minty fresh’ on the outside, they were extremely prone to fractures and invisible rot out of the main crossmember and engine subframe due to poor design. Which instantly totals out the car on these. Period. This is an H-body not a G-body. The severity of either was high enough that we literally would not let owners drive the car at all if we found them broken. Because not only does it carry the engine, it carries the steering gear and suspension mount loads. And the rot problem was so bad, that cars this clean were frequently condemned because water would enter openings on the top of the cradle, with nowhere to drain.
And engine cradle replacement was NOT a cheap job, even back then. The parts were extremely expensive and OEM was mandatory since it was collision/crash, IIRC labor was 14 hours because you have to remove engine and transmission completely (and had to go out the top,) it often required body mount replacement as well, and that was before you found the other damage caused by the broken subframe. And many times, it was severe enough that we would refuse to attempt repair because of liability risks. In short, if your 1989 LeSabre had a broken subframe in 1999, you would be looking at a $3000+ repair bill if you could even find a shop to do it. A brand new 1999 LeSabre stickered at $23k to $27k.
These days, I doubt any shop on earth would touch a subframe job on one of these. I certainly wouldn’t. There’s just way, way too much liability risk.
The area it is located in is not know for the kind of undercarriage rust that rots out the sub-frame and granny obviously kept it garaged and likely stayed at home when the roads were at their worst.
That being said, I bow before no man in my love for American cars and have in the past owned a ‘71 Plymouth Duster 340, an ‘83 (I think) Fox body with a boat anchor 3.3, an ‘84 IROC Camaro and a ‘79 Thunderbird. My best friend has in his current fleet a Cadillac Allante. The LHD isn’t really a problem (apart from at the drive through, tolls and ticket on entry car parks).
The fuel costs are another matter entirely…….
Based on my experience with British-market cars in the US, I’ll extend that list to include (1) passing and (2) making a turn across traffic from a center lane while facing an opposing car that’s also waiting to turn.
I do like the term “bootlace ties” for bolo ties, though. That’s a new one for me.
