The Buick Super is one of the Buick entries the open record knows by name and by date — in 1930, and by little else. That is not nothing: a name in the catalogue is where a car's story starts to be recoverable. The shape is credited to Harley Earl.
How it came about
The Buick Super is a full-sized automobile produced by Buick from 1940 through the 1958 model years, with a brief hiatus from 1943 through 1945. The first generation shared the longer wheelbase with the top level Roadmaster while offering the smaller displacement engine from the Buick Special.
The Super prioritized passenger comfort over engine performance. For several years, it was called the "Buick Eight" or "Super Eight" due to the engravement on the grille while all Buick's since 1931 were all installed with the Buick Straight-8 engine with varying engine displacement. Super returned as a performance trim level on V8-powered LaCrosse and Lucerne sedans from 2008 until 2011.
Under the skin
The record carries the layout — and the layout: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The engine, output and weight have not yet reached the open record, and MotorJury does not guess at them.
Family and rivals
In the Buick line-up the Buick Super has a clear place: it replaced the Buick Standard Six. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Panhard CS, the Cadillac V-12, the Hispano-Suiza type H6 B convertible coupé de ville. Its Buick stablemates include the Buick First Call and the Buick Funeral Car.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Buick Super — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.