At $5,550, Is This 1989 Buick Reatta A Boutique Bargain?
Today’s Nice Price or No Dice Reatta is claimed to have been garage-kept and straight as an arrow. Let’s see if the price tag on this rare and clean classic coupe hits the bullseye.
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Now that we’re all deep into Autumn — at least those of us in the Northern Hemisphere — it’s time to start thinking about getting all warm and cozy to fight off Fall’s chills. When it comes to cars, there’s nothing quite as comforting and heartwarming as an old Volvo wagon, and we sated our souls with one just this past Friday. The 1996 Volvo 850 GLT we looked at wasn’t just a seemingly solid contender, having only a broken odometer to sully its overall aesthetic, at just $3,600, it was also a pretty solid deal. At least that’s the takeaway from the stellar 85 percent Nice Price win you all awarded it.
The seller of Friday’s Volvo said it had been owned by an elderly couple, people who obviously had the time and maturity to keep the car tidy and in tip-top shape. The same, apparently, can be said for the history of today’s 1989 Buick Reatta, as its ad claims it to have been “elderly driven” and “garage kept.” Strong work, old people; you truly are the greatest generation.
Buick offered the Reatta from 1988 through 1991 as an offshoot of the company’s Riviera personal coupe. The Reatta was a little more personal as it was sold as a two-seater, with the cabin’s rear space allotted for storage cubbies and a trunk pass-through instead of seating. This would be Buick’s first production two-seater and one of just four two-seat cars offered by General Motors in the U.S. at the time. The others were Chevy’s Corvette, Pontiac’s Fiero, and the Cadillac Allante.
The Allante and Reatta had other traits in common, as they make up two-thirds of a spate of personal cars — the third being the Olds Troféo — that GM thought would be embraced by the car-buying public. That turned out not to be the case, and all three models were summarily abandoned by the early 1990s.
But not all were, as evidenced by this 115,000-mile Dark Blue over a color-matched leather interior example. It looks to be in excellent shape, sporting all its trim and badging, as well as its factory five-spoke alloy wheels. Wrap-around windows offer fishbowl visibility on top of an appreciably low beltline. That’s accented by pinstripes that carry from the doors to the trunk lid and down each front fender, where they stop next to another of the Reatta’s unique-for-Buick features; pop-up headlamps. We love those! All of the panels look straight (or arrow straight as the ad avers), and the paint pops nicely.
The cabin is just as nice as the outside, featuring handsome power-adjustable seats that don’t seem to suffer any wear issues. Much of the rest of the interior, including the dashboard and console, is shared with the contemporary Riviera, and that includes the ahead-of-its-time Graphic Control Center (GCC) screen in the dash. This CRT-based touchscreen controls all of the audio, climate, and trip computer functions of the car, and it just doesn’t get any more ‘’80s than its Vectrex-style graphics. Remarkably, this one seems to be functioning just fine.
Also working is the pushrod 3800 sitting cross-ways under the hood. That makes 165 horsepower and 210 lb-ft of torque and is mated to the standard issue 440T-4 four-speed automatic for unhurried and unfussy motivation. According to the ad, everything on the car works as it should, making it a turn-key classic. A clean title should come as no surprise here as well.
The asking price is $5,550, which the seller claims is “very cheap for a cool classic.” We’ll have to be the judge of that. Seeing as the Reatta wasn’t all that popular back when it was new, do you think it might be more so now? And if so, what do we make of this tidy example and that $5,550 asking price? Does that seem like a fair deal for the car’s condition? Or, at that much, will this Reatta likely not be reeling them in?
You decide!
Puyallup, Washington, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to RevUnlimiter for the hookup!
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