Fewer than twenty years after the first-generation Buick Riviera debuted, I was induced to write a chapter on cars for the Catalog of Cool, a cultural compendium assembled by an editorial team of swingin' savants. One of the entries: "Buick's hippest move was the Riviera (especially '63-'65): two-door hardtops with bucket seats, sharp looking from every angle. Inspiration apparently struck style chief Bill Mitchell one foggy night in London town -- a coachbuilt Rolls sliced through the mist, Bill flashed, and the Riv was born." Another three decades on from those scribblings, Mitchell's divine inspiration still has us fawning. His goal to combine the formality of a razor-edge Rolls-Royce with the aggressive stance of a Ferrari stands as one of the greatest styling triumphs of the midcentury.
The Riviera -- with its expansive egg-crate grille, pontoon fenders, neatly creased formal rear quarters, and sumptuous interior -- was more successful at recalling, not mimicking, styling of the classic era than the much-vaunted Continental Mark II. It also stole the spotlight from Ford's four-place Thunderbird that had the personal-luxury segment to itself since '58.
No two ways about it, the Riv was, and is, a scene-stealer of the highest order. Southern California resident Dan Gregg has lived with one such object of adoration for the better part of his life. His father acquired the breathtaking '64 seen here around the time that the Catalog of Cool went to press and bequeathed it to his son, who undertook a thorough, although not frame-off, restoration thereafter. Upon bearing witness to its brawny beauty, strangers invariably lament, "I had one of those; shoulda kept it."
The Gregg family chariot is a '64, very similar to the first-year model but for the fact that it has absolutely no visible Buick badging. Even the stand-up hood ornament, new for '64, was a stylized R rather than the Buick shield. These details underscore that the Riviera had a look all its own; it seemed to have come from a more tasteful automotive universe than its contemporaries. Even most Mercedes-Benzes still had fins at that time.
