A scruffy online find transforms into a one-of-a-kind show-stopping 1965 Buick Riviera GS

Poke a hand into the grab bag of vintage vehicles for sale on free internet classifieds and there's no telling what you'll pull out. It could be a fistful of misery: street signs posing as floorpans, quarter panels sculpted out of spray foam insulation, or rust-ravaged frame rails stuffed with wadded up newspaper and topped with body filler.

But, there's an equal chance that you'll grab some four-wheeled treasure out of cyberspace as well. Take this month's feature car: a unique 1965 Buick Riviera Gran Sport with an interesting backstory, that was discovered and restored to better-than- new, show-winning condition. The man responsible is Andy Starr, a retired Marine colonel and lifelong Buick fanatic, who found the Riviera on Craigslist five years ago. The description didn't begin to scratch the surface of the car's significance, or say much at all really: "1965 Riviera GS, two four barrels." But, that was enough to get Andy's attention.

"I always wanted to do a 1965 Gran Sport, but it's so hard to find one that's unrestored and that you can actually salvage. There are also a lot of them out there for $30,000-$40,000 that are restored but are not show-quality cars," he said. "I started looking on Craigslist and found this car advertised in New Mexico. When I called the seller, he told me he owned a custom shop and had traded a '68 Ford for this '65 Riviera GS. All he knew about the car was that it spent most of its life in New York. He told me it looked nice, but the whole undercarriage was pretty bad."

Undaunted, Andy flew from his home in Virginia to the Land of Enchantment in hopes of being swept off his feet by this prospective dream project. What he found was anything but love at first sight.

Andy Starr purchased this 1965 Riviera GS in June 2015 after spotting it on Craigslist in New Mexico. It was a complete car but needed rust repair in many of the typical trouble spots.

"I didn't want to buy the car," Andy said. "I thought the floors were too far gone—when you looked in the trunk, you saw the ground underneath. The funny thing was, the exterior wasn't a Buick color, so I just assumed it was a really bad repaint. I remember the seller saying to me: 'Do you think this car is special?' And I said, 'No, it's just an old, worn-out Buick Gran Sport.'"

Nevertheless, Andy snapped a few photos of the car and sent them to his restorer, Mike Velek of Veleks Auto Specialties and Restorations in Mantua, Ohio. Mike assured Andy that the metalwork the Riviera needed was manageable, so a deal was struck and the car was shipped back East.

At Mike's shop, a couple of details came to light that would alter the approach to this restoration. First, aftermarket rust repair panels for 1963-'65 Riviera bodies are few and far between.

"I thought we could get metal," Mike said. "Well… we couldn't. There were a few (reproduction) panels out there, but Andy wanted this car restored to the highest standard and wanted to win at every show."

The Riviera's engine bay is correct down to the smallest details, like date-coded plug wires, a date-coded Delco battery, an NOS AC Delco oil filter and the multiple shades of black used to replicate factory finishes.

So, Andy went on the hunt for solid used body parts for the car—floors, a trunk floor, and more. "We had to harvest the parts we needed out of donor cars," Andy said. The second and most significant surprise was the car's color: There was nothing quite like it among Flint's offerings that year, yet it seemed to have been applied when the car was manufactured.

"Mike was getting into the disassembly and he called me and said, 'Andy, I just pulled the rear package tray— there's beautiful paint underneath that matches the color on the outside. This thing was painted this color at the factory.'" Moreover, the Riviera's cowl tag didn't list a typical two-letter color code—i.e., AA for Regal Black, CC for Arctic White, DD for Astro Blue, etc. Instead it said SCO-24, or Special Car Order 24. The color turned out to be a Cadillac hue called Samoan Bronze. Additional digging revealed that the car had been ordered new in 1964, by Henry "Park" Parkinson Lammerts Jr., the fourth-generation family owner and operator of Lammerts Cadillac and Buick, a dealership in Niagara Falls, New York. Of the 3,354 Riviera GSes produced that year, Park's car was the only one known to have been painted Samoan Bronze. Furthermore, according to Andy's research, Park's car is the earliest known "preproduction" Riviera GS in existence, delivered, registered, and titled to Lammerts Inc. on November 24, 1964. A UAW strike against GM, on September 25, 1964, shut down production days after Park's Riviera GS frame was manufactured (it's stamped 9-18-64), and the car's glass was dated August 1964. Manufacturing resumed on October 26, 1964, and the cowl on Park's Riviera GS was stamped 10E, which denotes the last production week in October.

"I think it was the first one off the line, but I can't prove it," Andy said. "The only earlier one could've been the car used in a Road & Track test report. In its day this car was the iconic symbol of the Lammerts' dealership—this Buick Gran Sport in Cadillac colors."

The car remained at Lammerts for nearly 20 years and served as transportation for the Lammert children. Over the decades it survived a blown engine that required a replacement block, as well as a collision with a horse that necessitated new front-end sheetmetal.

The realization that this was a one-off Riviera GS made its restoration more meaningful, but Andy and Mike had set an ambitious goal for any top-to-bottom build. The restoration kicked off in the fall of 2015 and the plan was to finish it by March 2016 for the first big show of the season: the International Show Car Association/Summit Racing Equipment, I-X Piston Power AutoRama in Cleveland. "We turned that car around in four-and-a-half months from junk to what it became, a show winner," Mike said. "I focused on that one car for seven days a week, 12-hour-minimum days. We wanted to introduce it in the beginning of the (ISCA) show season."

While the Riviera was in tough condition, it retained many of its original pieces and hadn't been disassembled previously, which helped expedite the process.

"For being in the shape that it was in, pretty much everything was there," Mike said. "When someone serviced it, they put all the parts back on. They didn't take stuff off and lose it. This helped, because it wasn't a car I had ever restored before and its oddities make it one of the more difficult GM cars to restore."

When the Riviera was partially disassembled and the original hue uncovered, Mike called his paint rep to come to his shop and scan the color so that it could be matched to Samoan Bronze. Then the car was torn down completely, the body shipped out to be chemically stripped at Restoration Specialists Inc. in Franklin, Wisconsin, and the chassis sent out for sandblasting.

"I bagged, tagged, and labelled everything, took hundreds of pictures, and sent the body off to the dipper, while the chassis went out for sandblasting," Mike said. Once the chassis was stripped, Mike was able to ascertain what needed to be done and got busy resurrecting the Riviera's foundation.

"The front half of the frame was in fantastic shape due to engine leaks that kept it from rusting. The rear section of the frame had its fair share of pits but no rot, no weak spots. For being a car in the Northeast, it really was not in bad shape," Mike said.

The frame and chassis hard parts first received an application of Evercoat Rage extreme body filler. After sanding that out, Mike followed up with Spies Hecker Raderal spray polyester and more sanding. For the final finishes, he used custom blends of Spies Hecker Permacron Acrylic Urethane Rally Matte Black to replicate the various shades of black Buick used. During the reassembly, new stainless fuel and brake lines were added, the brake backing plates were replated in gold cadmium, replicating the original, and the car's factory finned drums (aluminum front and cast iron rear) were restored and reinstalled.

The Riviera's 425-cu.in. Super Wildcat V-8 went to Anton's Hot Rod Shop in Haram for a factory-spec rebuild, while the transmission went to Abruzzi Transmissions and Torque Converters in Youngstown for its makeover. When the Riviera's body returned from being chemically stripped, Mike began the labor-intensive job of stitching in the new sheetmetal.

Creature comforts abound in the Riviera's cockpit. The only options the car lacked when new were a four-note horn and Guide-Matic Headlight Control (automatic high-beam dimmer). The restored interior sports fresh upholstery, refurbished door panels with new wood veneer and more.

"The body showed years of rust damage, and we sourced pieces from cars across the country," he said. "The trunk floor was a combination of two floors that I welded together out of the car.

Both halves of the interior floorpans were replaced almost front to rear. Not from one donor car, but multiple donor cars. All the welds were butt welds so once you hammer and dolly it out, grind it and file, it's like one piece."

The car's outer body panels were solid, with the exception of the lower portion of the quarter panel aft of the rear wheel and a small portion of the inner wheelwell. Something interesting to note about the Riviera's body: Its outer door skins are bolted on, rather than hammered and spot welded at the edges over the door frame. At first blush, it seems like a great idea, but Mike was less than enthusiastic.

"There's no way of servicing the power window motors without taking the outer door skin off and that leads to paint damage," he said. "It's kind of a nightmare."

Once the metal was in shape and the filler work completed, Mike applied four coats of polyester primer and dug in for hours of block sanding, which gave the Riviera's body a uniform smoothness. That was followed by three coats of Spies Permasolid Spectro Surfacer which was wet (block) sanded, then reapplied in two coats as a sealer.

For the final finish, Mike applied four coats of Spies Hecker basecoat series 295, then topped that with four coats of Spies Hecker high-solids clear.

After the finish was given time to cure, Mike wet sanded the clear with 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, then Trizact 3000 grit on a double-action sander before buffing and polishing with a three-step 3M system.

Mike did the interior work on the Riviera as well, using a combination of reproduction and restored original parts.

"I covered the seats, but the covers were made by Clark's Corvair Parts and the door panels were remade by Clark's. The dash pad was in fantastic condition, but it needed to be dyed because it had some weird staining. All the plastic interior parts on the car were like five different colors. The gold of the center console wasn't the same as the upper gold trim. The dash was a coffee brown, the armrests were tan that matched one part of the interior and the kick panels were another tan that matched a different shade. This is where having a car that was unmolested came in handy, because when I removed a piece I was able to get perfect color matches off sections that hadn't been exposed to the light. When it was finished, the interior detail really popped."

Since the car was destined for the show circuit, the brightwork inside and out had to be perfect. Andy scoured used parts sources nationwide for replacements where needed, a process that turned out to be costly and time intensive.

"The lower rocker moldings, for instance, are three pieces and aluminum," Andy said. "I looked at 200 sets before I found a set that we could restore."

The car's stainless trim was turned over to John Shawdel, who carefully wet sanded and buffed every piece. All of the chrome-plated parts, exterior and interior, (more than 130 in all) went to Paul's Chrome in Evans City, Pennsylvania. The attention to detail continued right down to the tires, which are custom-made tri-band whitewalls by Diamond Back Classic Tires.

At the Riviera's first outing in March 2016, at the ISCA Summit Racing Piston Power show in Cleveland, it scored first in class (restored 1958-'67) as well as honors for outstanding restoration. It went on to grab top honors in the ISCA series and was named 1958-1967 Restored Class Champion of the Year. It also won first in the American Muscle Car class at the Hemmings Motor News Concours d'Elegance in 2016 as well as numerous ISCA victories through March of this year.

"I was blown away by the reaction at its first show," Mike said. "It turned out so fantastic. Judges have nitpicked that car to within an inch of its life, but it's won everywhere it's gone."

Andy, too, was pleased with the total renovation of his rare find.

"We went beyond a concours restoration—this is really a handbuilt car," he said. "At the time the car was 50 years old and there are parts that are just not available. But we proved that this car could go up against any make or model post-World War II."

OWNER'S VIEW

Car owners should restore their cars to their desires and not to the standards of a club or national organization. In the end, you want to be happy with what you built with your own funds and desires. There's no such thing as a perfect car, and no matter how hard you work at it, there will always be a few dissenting opinions. This was one of the most challenging cars to restore as well as one of the most expensive, based on parts availability and the amount of pot metal trim pieces that needed to be chrome plated. But this car shows that a big-body Buick can compete with popular muscle cars and be just as credible as well as desirable. —Andy Starr

1. The body wore a color that Andy knew wasn't factory and just figured it was an incorrect respray, but it turned out that the car had been special-ordered in a Cadillac color, Samoan Bronze. The Riviera's original owner was the proprietor of Lammerts Cadillac Buick in Niagara Falls, New York.

2. Mike Velek at Veleks Auto Specialties and Restorations in Mantua, Ohio, tore the Riviera down and sent the major components out for stripping. The chassis was sandblasted, then Mike began performing bodywork on the frame. Here, he's filled imperfections and begun sanding the body filler.

3. After bodywork, priming, and more sanding, Mike shot the chassis components with custom blends of Spies Hecker Permacron Acrylic Urethane Rally Matt Black and replicated bare metal finishes where appropriate. The brake backing plates received a gold cadmium finish.

4. The Riviera's body was sent out for chemical dipping, then Mike attended to the sheetmetal repair. The floors required significant work. As pictured, solid original pans from a few donor cars have been welded in place.

5. Mike took great care to finish the underside so that the repair work would be invisible when complete. As shown, he's applied filler and sanded portions of the underside. The welder ground clamp is attached to a repair panel fabricated for the rear inner fender.

6. The inside of the car was finished like the exterior would be, in four coats of Spies Hecker basecoat topped with four coats of Spies Hecker high-solids clear.

7. At the time the Riviera was restored, a replacement gas tank was unavailable, so Mike spent hours welding up holes in the original, then applying filler, polyester primer, and sanding it all out before spraying it with satin silver. When a new tank became available, the original was replaced.

8. To ensure perfect gaps and arrow-straight panels, the car was assembled on the frame for bodywork and sanding, both by hand and with a straight-line sander. Before paint, the panels would be pulled off and shot individually.

9. The interior trim pieces were color-matched, then interior dyes were blended to replicate the multiple shades of brown and tan used throughout the Riviera's cockpit.