Four years before I bought the Reatta, I was in charge of planning and executing preview events for magazine press for a very nice but underappreciated Buick two-seater.In 1987, after eight years as an automotive engineer for Chevrolet and GM (interspersed with a three-year stint in the U.S. Navy) and then 14 years as a busy automotive writer, I accepted an offer to set up and run the Western Regional PR and Media Relations office for GM’s Buick Automobile Division.
Although I had never worked or been trained in public relations or event management, I had attended countless media and other events and was married to a very talented automotive PR professional, which helped a lot. Using my media experience and her as a role model, I felt I could pick up the job fairly quickly and do it reasonably well. And so, I took on the new role at just the right time to plan and execute an important press event to kick off the media launch of Buick’s first two-seat sporty coupe.
My reatta
But I didn’t begin owning a Reatta until more than four years later, shortly after the car was discontinued due to poor sales and losses. Buick gave the car major overhauls for the ’91 model year, adding an upgraded 170-horsepower “Tuned Port Injection” 3800 V-6 engine and electronically controlled four-speed automatic transmission, larger wheels and tires, console cupholders, and, on convertible models, vibration isolation and a power pull-down (previously manual) top.
But as was typical for GM in the 1980s and ’90s, these improvements came too late. On March 5 of that year, GM president Lloyd Reuss (who had developed the Reatta, first as Buick’s chief engineer and then as general manager) announced that the Reatta would be canceled and replaced with a sleek electric car at the Lansing Craft Center. Only 1,520 Reattas were built in 1991, of which 305 were convertibles.

Also, the ragtop Reatta introduced in ’90 had serious problems with body vibration due to a lack of structural rigidity in its Riviera-based platform, so Buick engineers vibration tested 305 slightly beefed-up ’91 convertibles on a variety of road surfaces and divided them into three groups based on the results: those that were good enough to be sold to the public were sent to dealers, those that vibrated too much for anyone to drive were scrapped, and the middle group of (as I recall) about 100 cars were sold to employees at a reasonable price.
In my role as Western spokesperson, I’ve driven the Reatta frequently since its launch in 1988, loaned it to the media for (mostly favorable) reviews, and demonstrated and defended its unique, highly capable but slow and complicated TV-like cathode ray tube (CRT) infotainment system and the ’90 convertible’s manual top, which was quick and easy to raise and lower once you knew how. And I really liked the car for its handsome looks, pleasing dynamics, and the positive reactions it garnered in car-loving California.



So I applied for a vibration-tested “employee-good” ’91 convertible and was ecstatic when I was offered one of only nine made in beautiful claret red. The opportunity came just as I was preparing to move from Buick to engineering to become vehicle test and development manager for GM’s emerging electric vehicle group, so I could drive that beautiful car as a company car for the first three months and then buy it at a deep discount. That GM EV group evolved into the Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV) division, and after long delays that nearly led to GM’s bankruptcy in 1992-1993, eventually produced the technically superior but poorly-selling EV1 battery-electric coupe at that very same Lansing Craft Center.
First Taste
In fact, my first experience with the Reatta came nearly a year before it was released to the public, when Buick public relations officer (and historian) Larry Gustin invited me and then-Motor Trend editor Tony Swan to Phoenix for an informal preview of the soon-to-be-released two-seater. They wanted our feedback, so we drove pre-production cars and offered our opinions.
We didn’t know what to expect. If we fitted the Buick mold properly, we’d probably expect something not a competitor to the muscular Corvette or the high-powered Cadillac Allante, but something softer, plusher, slower, less exotic, and more affordable than both. Our predictions were right on all counts. We were pleasantly surprised by how much we liked the car, starting with its attractive looks. We also found it to be more agile and road-hugging than any Buick to date. We were disappointed, however, by the complicated CRT-centric dashboard and the mediocre performance of the 165-horsepower V6, both of which were carried over from the ’86 Riviera on which it was based.
I didn’t think of that day as a job interview, but maybe that was at least partially the case since it hadn’t been that long since I’d been offered a PR opportunity, and after spending the last 12 of my 14 years as an automotive writer as a hard-working self-employed freelancer, I was more than ready for a real job with actual benefits, even if it meant returning to the corporate side.

Then, as we were planning the media preview, we figured that the Reatta — which is essentially a shorter, lighter version of the Riviera “personal luxury” coupe platform that offered a better-handling T-Type model — would please reporters on California’s winding two-lane roads, but would be underpowered going uphill. So we held the event in beautiful Santa Barbara, down the coast from LA, and spent a lot of time exploring the roads around there, carefully selecting the ones that would look best on the Reatta press car. Creating the driving route was fun, the rest was hard work. But the event went well, and we got mostly good reviews.
As I’ve written here before, Buick’s sporty two-seater was conceived over a decade before its creation, primarily by then-Chief Engineer Lloyd Reuss. It was proposed in 1980 by Reuss (then Buick’s General Manager), product planner Jay Qualman, and strategic planning manager Lynn Salata. The plan to base the car on a shortened, front-wheel-drive “E-car” (Riviera/Olds Toronado/Cadillac Eldorado) platform and powertrain would keep investment costs down.

Originally scheduled for release in 1983 as a 1984 model, the Reatta was delayed for more than four years due to a complex reorganization that combined GM’s five marketing and engineering divisions into the Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac (BOC) and Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada (CPC) “super groups.” Constrained engineering resources also meant that Cadillac agreed to complete its two-seater Allanté first. When the car was finally ready for public release in January 1988, our PR challenge was to ensure that the media understood that this completely different new Buick was not a competitor to the Corvette or Allanté and would write favorable comments about it.
At $25,000, the Reatta ended up being more expensive than originally planned, due in part to the rising cost of E-body components, but it boasted just about every feature imaginable as standard equipment. The only options were a power sunroof and a 16-way power driver’s seat. Just 4,707 were built in 1988 and 7,009 in 1989, but sales slowed as the price rose to $26,700 and initial demand was satisfied.


The 1990s saw the arrival of a vastly improved instrument panel, with electronic analog gauges replacing the CRTs, as well as the long-awaited convertible. Because the E-Body was not designed with the top being removed, it took nearly two more years to strengthen the Reatta’s ragtop structure, which was shortened by 9.5 inches. The convertible was praised by the media for its beauty and individuality, but also received criticism for a somewhat unstable body and a complicated manual top design that narrowed if it fell into the recess under the hard tonneau cover. Other changes included the addition of a power steering cooler and a driver’s side airbag.
This was the Reatta’s biggest production year, with 6,383 coupes and 2,132 convertibles assembled by the Lansing Craft Center team. But Buick’s luxury two-seaters proved difficult to sell in a soft market that was cold towards cars with a generally impractical image, and the high costs, low production volumes, and dedicated factory meant that the car lost a lot of money. Still, prices were raised to $28,335 for the coupe and a whopping $34,995 for the convertible. After production was cut back for the 1991 model year, production in the next four years was 21,750, with 19,314 coupes and 2,437 convertibles.

I loved my beautiful dark red Reatta convertible and owned it for many years, storing it in the farm barn next to the ’67 Corvette that my wife and I bought in 1990. I enjoyed driving it every now and then, with the doors open when possible, and it had the potential to become a collector car down the line, but eventually I needed the money and had to sell it.
The Buick Reatta was a sleek, well-equipped, fun-to-drive two-seat sports car (with an actual trunk) targeted at a narrow demographic of buyers with disposable income. It was also widely misunderstood; some expected a Buick “Corvette,” while others expected a lighter, cheaper sports car than it actually was. In reality, it was a luxury tourer that was half the price of a Mercedes SL (or Cadillac Allante), and had no direct competitors other than Maserati’s tragic, short-lived Chrysler TC. It was, again, a very cool car that I would have liked to have someday, but I wanted it in the same mint condition that I had when I reluctantly let it go.


