1970 Buick Electra Limited (not 225)

Top of the line Buick Luxury for 1970 .

Next .

Hello , this is Adam .

Welcome to my classic car channel .

Today , we have an extremely rare vehicle that you're likely not going to see any time in the near future .

This is a 1970 Buick Electra Limited and it has every factory option available in 1970 .

So the limited was the most , the highest trim of the Buicks in 1970 .

And a lot of people call these Deuce in a quarters , but the limited is actually not a deuce and a quarter .

The Standard Electra would have had badging right here that said 225 and they're called Deuce and a Quarters because for many years , they were 225 inches long .

This one is actually 225.7 inches long and rides on 100 27 inch wheel base .

So it's a little bit more than 225 inches , but they squeak by and still called the Standard model , the Deuce and a quarter .

But this is the up level limited trim .

And again , this car has every option available .

So we'll take a little bit to detail them .

But this was also the last year of this body for General Motors before they went to a new full size body in 1971 that lasted until 1976 .

So 1970 was the last year and there are some unique things about it .

It's the last year of the premium fuel V eight in 1971 all General Motors cars including Corvettes had to run no lead 91 research octane or 87 pump octane gasoline .

And again , they also changed the body and the chassis .

And in my mind , this is really the pinnacle of General Motors four door hardtops in terms of rigidity , driving this around and driving one of the subsequent generation .

It just reveals that how much more rigid this one is in terms of its construction , no shakes , no shimmies , no rattles , no quivers on Buicks for many years .

If you see the four portholes that meant you had the upper level trim , three portholes was what you would see on a lever or a lower level vehicle .

A lot of people also put road wheels on this car that is not correct .

These are the only discs that were stock even on the limited .

So this car has the correct wheels on .

It also is an interesting molding here that runs the length of the car .

Normally you see these on vehicles and they're just parallel to the ground , but this one actually goes with some of the curves of the car and accentuates it and looks , looks quite nice .

Another interesting thing about the seventies is they have a badge in the front that was a plastic badge and with it protruding so far out from the vehicle and also by its nature being plastic , it got brutal over time and cracked .

So almost all of these Buicks that you see are missing that badge .

This one has a really nice stainless steel replacement in its place because they are impossible to find .

Now , they've long since been out of production .

In terms of some of the options that are visible from the exterior .

You can see this car has the cornering light .

These have an antenna in the windshield , these two little , two little lines that you can see running up by the mirror .

That's the radio antenna .

This is the air aspirator for the automatic climate control where it sucks in some air to determine what temperature it is inside .

That's the fan style rear defogger .

And these have a really cool reverse lights .

These reverse lights up on top here when you put the car in reverse , they turn white .

But if you just have the parking lights on , they actually glow .

I believe red .

I always thought that was a neat touch on this car .

In addition , you can see the side marker light with the electro logo that came into play , I believe in 68 or nine So the inside of this car is , I think even more special arguably than the exterior .

Take a look at the amazingly thick padded seats with this extra heavy duty cloth that Buick had until 1973 I believe was the last year for that style cloth .

But this seat is just immensely thick .

It has a back pocket here , lots of room in the back seat .

The door panel has this kind of cup area where all the power switches reside .

So you can see this car has power windows , there are four power windows , six way power seat , power door locks , which on these GM vehicles , the Fords of the era often use vacuum control .

That was very quiet .

GM used the cell block , I call it door lock actuator .

So when you unlock the door or you lock it , it , it makes quite the noise .

So this car you can see has 36,000 miles on it .

Often this fake wood trim here is all cracked up and doesn't look that presentable .

But this car was always garaged and babied all the lettering and the fake wood grain , you know , looks really , really stellar .

It does have the trip odometer .

You can see which for whatever reason Buick elected to put the trip odometer , reset switch way down there .

So I have no idea why they did that , but that's where it is .

This also has the speed alert .

You can see the second needle pointer and you can see it's a speed alert .

You turn this back and forth and you adjust the speed at which it makes a wonderful dying swan noise .

I would say once you cross that speed .

So it's a nice reminder .

If you want to set it , you're going on the freeway , you want to set it to 70 miles an hour or some other speed that you're electing to drive , you just rotate the little speed alert to that speed and if you pass it , it will make a nice noise for you .

This car also has automatic climate control and it's one of the only automatic climate controls I've seen that doesn't have a temperature setting .

It just says cool norm and warm , but you move this slider bar back and forth and it does actually automatically change the temperature fan speed .

There are , there is a high and a low setting here , but it also has different blower speeds that get activated when you do activate the cruise control .

You can see there's a little cruise light .

This will glow green .

You do activate it by depressing the end of the turn signal stock .

This car also has the rare rim blow wheel where you pinch the rim and you can hear it's got the trumpet horn that was not popular for whatever reason it seems like GM Ford Chrysler all tried this rim blow wheel for about three or four model years and people didn't like going around the corner and honking the horn and it went away and this doesn't do anything .

There's no horn here in the center of the wheel .

The only way to honk the horn is to pinch the rim , but this wheel is in beautiful un cracked condition .

This car also does have optional disc brakes .

The buick aluminum fin drums were standard , which was a Buick exclusive .

Uh , they have a aluminum outer shell that dissipates heat really quickly , but a cast iron liner that the shoes ride in .

But this car does have disc brakes also has AM F M two speaker radio .

While other G M divisions , you could get a four speaker radio .

Buick only allowed you to get two speakers .

It does have the power seat on the passenger side and it also has a really interesting headliner which is original to this car , these hugely thick sun visors with I love that slogan on there .

Buick .

It's a beauty too .

But this as opposed to the later G M mouse for headliners , I call them is super , super richly padded and this one thankfully is not sagging or drooping because this car was always garaged and in really nice shape .

Car also has the factory eight track player and it has the remote trunk release in here which I think I have to have the key on for .

No , no , I'll pop the trunk manually , but in any case , lots of cool details wonderful gauge cluster and a great view over the hood .

The amazing thing about this car is the distance from the top of the dash to the top of the windshield is really not that big in the 71 to 6 generation .

This glass wraps around more has more plan view and this distance is also bigger .

So you get a bigger feeling of airiness , but cars just unfortunately don't drive as nicely .

So let's take a look at the cavernous trunk and you can see another option that this car has .

That many people are going to be surprised by it , but it is stock .

No , not the chairs , a space saver spare tire complete with the sticker on there .

So this is the same space saver that Corvettes had and some of the sports cars it was optional in the Buicks and this car has it .

So I don't know if that's good or bad , but you can see it's a B F Goodrich space saver spare cavernous trunk .

And if you need a bigger trunk than this , you might as well get a suburban .

This as I mentioned is also the last year of the premium fuel V eight .

This has Buick's premium fuel 455 the only year for the 455 in its premium fuel form .

So the Buick before this had a 430 cubic inch motor that was introduced in 1967 .

So it was a 4 30 67 8 and nine .

And then they went to this 455 in 1970 only for one year was it the premium fuel ?

Before in 1971 it became a regular fuel V eight .

It's rated at 300 I think it's 373 175 horsepower and £510 feet of torque .

So it moves this car along really well .

In spite of this car comes stock from the factory with a 256 rear end in it .

So super tall highway cruising gear , this car does have the posit traction rear axle , which you can identify by the tag on the rear end .

But in spite of the really tall rear end , this car gets up and goes .

It's amazing if you really stomp on it on the freeway , it will kick down and it will hold second gear until 85 almost 90 miles an hour and has great passing power .

I might have mentioned in another video , but for those of you who have a GM car and you want to set your points in your distributor .

One unique thing to GM is they have this little window that you open and you can stick an Allen key in there or a flat blade screwdriver .

Now , as many of them and this one are set up to use and you just have to get the car running , you get a 12 m and you adjust the points that way you don't really need to gap them other than by , uh , then by eyesight , so long as you can get the car running to start , this car also has automatic level control with the compressor .

That's right there .

This is not a electrical compressor .

It's all run off a vacuum and you can see this is the hose that goes to the rear , but here's the vacuum hose that snakes all the way up to the back of the motor and that little port that's there .

This does have a quadrajet carburetors which is 750 cubic feet per minute .

So a lot of people will put , you know , 600 C F M Holley on or 6 50 C F M .

Holy or the quadrajet actually , for many years was 750 C F M and then it was enlarged 800 C F M I believe in 1971 .

So it's a big , big carburetor .

Um , plenty of performance power .

This is the cruise control set up .

The GM used for many years .

Let's start it up so you can hear the wonderful noises of a view of wonderfully smooth .

What a great noise , nice , cool air conditioning .

It's really hard to beat these cars for overall drive ability .

You can also see on here .

Let me see which side is best .

Probably this side .

This is the torque box right here .

That attaches the body at the firewall to the frame .

And it's really , really beefy on this generation of General Motors vehicles .

And on the 71 to 6 , it is spindly by comparison .

And that contributes to this , I'll call it jiggly feeling that the next generation had .

And my guess is that that next generation that came after this , it was so jiggly that if you look on a lot of these cars , including my 71 Grandville , you'll see a brace that runs from the firewall up to the wheelhouse here to take some of that tor away from the body and displace it on the wheelhouse .

This car is much more rigid and does not have that .

I believe Buicks even had a bit thicker frame than the other G M divisions during these years that went away in 71 .

But I'm pretty sure that since 1970 they still had a slightly thicker frame than the other divisions .

We'll take one last look .

Absolutely beautiful car , high attention to detail .

You know , everywhere talk about a road trip vehicle doesn't get much more comfortable than that .

And I love these belt buckles and you can almost assault somebody with how heavy this thing is or burn yourself on a hot summer day .

I'm sure many of us remember getting into one of these when we were younger and you go to touch the key and start the car , which is also metal and you burn your finger trying to start the car .

Thankfully later , they made those out of plastic .

One thing that was probably good to be made out of plastic , nice detail too on the mirror with the Buick logo .

So I hope you enjoyed this 1970 Electra Limited .

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