Junkyard Find: 1990 Buick Reatta

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin
The Buick Reatta is one of the more interesting attempts made by The General to steal back some North American buyers who had defected to European luxury brands. For a while, I’d photograph every junked Reatta I found, but more and more kept showing up in big self-service wrecking yards and I stopped paying attention for a while.Only about 20,000 Reattas were made, but the last 10 years have seen Full Depreciation for these cars. Still, I hadn’t done a Reatta Junkyard Find since 2012, and I spotted this shiny-looking ’90 in a San Francisco Bay Area yard a couple of weeks back, so here we go!
The E-Body Riviera served as the basis for the Reatta, which meant that this supposed Mercedes-Benz 560SL-killer got its power from a primitive pushrod V6 engine. Shifting was slushbox-only, of course.
The Electronic Control Center went away after 1990, but the ’90 model came with a futuristic-looking digital instrument cluster.
Like many GM cars of this era, this Reatta had a broken hood latch, and I wasn’t willing to tear up all my knuckles trying to pry the hood open for engine-compartment photos. If you must see an early-90s Buick 3800 V6, you can look at this car.
The Reatta’s radical styling and two seats scared away the increasingly elderly “traditional” Buick buyers, and the younger crowd preferred the R107 Benz (which outsold the hell out of the Reatta in the United States). The same sort of thing happened with the Oldsmobile Toronado Troféo.
Handcrafted luxury for two.
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Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Garak Garak on Mar 26, 2019

    Slow, ugly, impractical, leaf-sprung front-driver, what a truly epic halo car.

  • Hifi Hifi on Mar 31, 2019

    Seeing this sitting next to an Aveo, which is over 20 years newer than the Reatta, it's clear that GM has not evolved since the 1980s. In fact, GM has regressed.

    • ToolGuy ToolGuy on Mar 31, 2019

      hifi, Here are the vehicles GM cares about/makes an effort on (US market): - Fullsize utilities - Corvette - Fullsize pickups, sort of Now even judging them on just those products, they still aren't evolving very quickly.

  • Lostboy If you can stay home when it's bad out in winter, then maybe your 3 season tire WILL be an "ALL-SEASON" tire as your just not going to get winters and make do? I guess tire rotations and alignments just because a whole lot more important!
  • Mike My wife has a ‘20 Mazda3 w/the Premium Package; before that she had a ‘15 Mazda3 i GT; before THAT she had an ‘06 Mazda Tribute S V6, ie: Ford Escape with a Mazda-tuned suspension. (I’ve also had two Miata NAs, a ‘94 & a ‘97M, but that’s another story.) We’ve gotten excellent service out of them all. Her 2020, like the others before it, is our road trip car - gets 38mpg highway, it’s been from NC to Florida, Texas, Newfoundland, & many places in between. Comfortable, sporty, well-appointed, spacious, & reliable. Sure, we’d look at a Mazda hybrid, but not anytime soon.😎
  • MaintenanceCosts Something that Mercedes would never do, but that would be an extremely revealing experiment: sell both a "CLE 63" with the V8 in a ~500 hp state of tune and a "CLE 65" with the four-cylinder mega-hybrid powertrain at the 671 hp or higher level. Charge the same for them, sell both on custom order only, and see which sells more.I'm positive the V8 would outsell the four by five to one or more.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Agreed, or get the Lexus LC500 with the awesome 5.0L V8. Instead of the EV/PHEV, turbocharged V4-V6 nonsense.
  • SCE to AUX I like the Crown, but it would have to be a lower trim (like the XLE) to make sense.Despite having a Toyota dealer very near me, I don't see many Crowns on the road.
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