Advertising Last completed movie pages 1991 Buick Park AvenueClass: Cars, Sedan — Model origin: 
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Vehicle used by a character or in a car chase
Comments about this vehicle| Author | Message |
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◊ 2006-11-29 15:52 |
It could be 1991,1992 or 1993 as they were the same model... |
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◊ 2006-12-09 03:10 |
Clarkson says ..Forget about All the cars he's said are Bad or the worst cars in the past he's destroyed .. This is now the worst car in the World ever.! (Prat.!) ..he then demolishes two of them.! |
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◊ 2006-12-20 16:53 |
I think he says its a 1994 car in the video |
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explorer4x4 ◊ 2006-12-20 16:55 |
Why the hell does he bother testing a 15 year old Buick? |
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◊ 2006-12-20 17:08 |
I owned one of these, a 1993 Park Avenue. I'm sad to say that for once I'm forced to agree with Clarkson, it was the worst car I ever owned, possibly the worst car ever built. |
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explorer4x4 ◊ 2006-12-20 17:12 |
Yes. Not a very good time in Buick's history.. It is not fair though! He tested the worst Buick of all time! He should have at least done some respect, like test the Grand National or the Lucerne. Both of which beat all the European/Japenese sedans hes tested on Top Gear. |
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◊ 2006-12-20 18:10 |
And you must be at least 70 years old to drive one of these. (sorry, grandma!)  |
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explorer4x4 ◊ 2006-12-30 02:32 |
My brothers got a 1995 Park Avenue. I might get it sometime in the future (MIGHT). He replaced it with a 2005 Grand Am, and does not want two cars... |
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◊ 2007-01-04 18:42 |
Oh please Shut up! |
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◊ 2007-01-14 17:02 |
His opinion of the "worst car... IN the world... EVER!" does seems to change a lot. I'd still rather have this than the Yugo or the early 80s Nissan Sunny (as seen in Jeremy Clarkson Unleashed), at least it would be more comfortable. |
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◊ 2007-01-14 17:03 |
You have a point (although I'm quite sure of the context in which he judges this car), there are much better examples of American cars. |
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◊ 2007-01-16 01:28 |
Back when I worked as a mechanic's assistant I drove a 1992 Park Avenue that came in for repairs. I found it to be a securely-built and comfortable boulevard cruiser. Certainly not something for the performance enthusiast, though. |
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◊ 2007-01-16 11:04 |
See, this is why I believe it is the worst car ever built. It 'came in for repairs'. Mine did that all the friggin time. There was not a week I didn't end up with a several hundred Dollar repair bill. There was not a trip to the bloody shops down the street without something breaking or going wrong. I had a travelling occupation at the time and GM/Buick dealers are few in Europe, so I often ended up having my dealer send me parts to the hotels I stayed in and me changing them in the parking lot. You can imagine what UPS overnight does to spare parts prices. The interior had the durability of mushrooms covered with toilet paper (despite it was leather) and the chrome strips on top of the door panels didn't last through the first winter. The front fenders were plastic, therefore the clearcoat peeled and the paint reacted. After four years, the car looked like a trailer park queen, with ruined paint, worn interior, and the glass laminate coming apart in places. I'm not saying the car wasn't comfortable, but the times to enjoy that comfort were few and between frequent repairs and hefty garage bills. Mind you, these weren't cheap cars and Buick actually wanted to shake off the 'old Doctor driving 37 mph' image with them (hence the attractive Jaguar-esque styling). The car finally self ignited in my driveway after sitting there for half the night and burned to a black pile of rubble, in the process causing severe fire damage to the rear of my '61 Imperial that was parked in front of it. I had no fire insurance at that time. I never received any compansation from GM for anything that went wrong after the warranty had expired. Needless to say that I never ever bought a GM product again and am not inclined to change my opinion for the time being. |
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◊ 2007-01-16 11:31 |
What you need to bare in mind is the context of this sequence - he uses this old Park Avenue as an example of how he thinks that American cars were only built to last a few years before being replaced, thus their condition worsens rapidly. |
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◊ 2007-01-16 13:11 |
I remember you mentioning on the Sopranos page that you had a Buick that spontaneously combusted on the driveway. Was the car new when you bought it? |
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◊ 2007-01-17 15:59 |
Yes, I bought it new. I can't remember whether it was 91 or 92 though. |
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◊ 2007-01-17 16:15 |
I strongly disagree with Clarkson, as usual. Apart from the Park Avenue I had, all my US-cars were amazingly durable. While I had the Buick, I also had a '78 Caprice with over 400.000 miles (!) on it. The heads were never off the engine! The transmission was rebuilt once in all that time and the interior looked like new! When I repainted the car in 2001, I had to hammer the odd ding and dent out and grind away some surface rust, especially around the windshield frame, but I didn't have to weld a single rust hole. All the other US cars I had turned out to be similarily well constructed and racked up enourmous mileages. I'm talking about 40+ cars, so I wasn't just lucky once or twice. I can attest the same for the US cars owned by friends and club members and also to my currently owned 76 DeVille coupe, which is straight and strong, with an as-new interior. Can you now figure how diappointed I therefore was, when I bought a new US car for a change? I therefore agree with Clarkson (for once) that the Park Avenue is/was utter rubbish. I vehemently disagree with him (as usual) that all US cars are like that. |
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◊ 2007-01-19 22:38 |
Well, it was a minor repair...brake pads, I believe. I know it was only there for a few hours. And it was about 12 years old at the time. As for your 400,000 mile car, I still believe the Chevrolet small block V8 is the single most durable and versatile engine ever designed. My first car was an '84 Camaro with an LG4 305 that had 105,000 miles on it when I bought it, I sold it to my older sister after it hit around 150,000, and she now has it close to 250,000. It's required two alternators, a valve job, and a fuel pump in all that time...nothing else. My 1989 Chevrolet truck has an L05 350 in it, and it has nearly 199,000 miles on it currently. Runs great and doesn't burn oil. It had 182,000 on it when I bought it (from the mechanic I used to work for, actually, who bought it new) and the only thing I've had to do to it thus far is replace the sending unit for the oil gauge. Good truck. |
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◊ 2008-03-15 14:58 |
1994 |
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◊ 2008-03-15 21:04 |
philr said "1991,1992 or 1993", do you suggest 1994 just because they said it in the video or because something allows to identify it as 1994? |
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◊ 2008-03-18 17:09 |
From What he said on the DVD. He was accurate about the Jaguar and the Lincoln why not here?  |
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◊ 2008-04-22 16:54 |
Any idea why not? |
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◊ 2008-04-22 17:31 |
Maybe he was few years wrong on these too, but that it is not possible to very that, or that nobody checked that. Or that he just used the wrong year for this one, who knows. |
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◊ 2008-07-10 11:48 |
I generally enjoy Clarkson videos, but this one was pretty weak and his whole message of American cars being only built to last a few years before being scrapped was very ironic. I remember him saying here that "This car is from 1994 and is already fit for the scrapyard...". Well, apparently he's not had a very good look at scrapyards in the UK, as there's FAR newer cars in scrapyards here in the UK than there are in the US. For example, there are dozens of cars that are less than 10 years old with less than 120,000 miles on the block being scrapped here, while in America you'll struggle to find many cars newer than 15 years old in the scrapyards from what I've seen. American cars may use up far more fuel than those in the UK, but in the UK we're much more disposable of the actual cars than America is. Disposable to a ridiculous extent, especially considering how expensive they are new and how much you have to spend to keep them running. A good example would be: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jUW59d9XnmQ Those are all "scrap" cars that are worth nothing which this guy crushes, and look at the age of that one! -- Last edit: 2008-07-10 11:51:30 |
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◊ 2008-07-10 17:38 |
Well a lot of those cars may be insurance write-offs. |
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◊ 2008-07-10 21:43 |
@ecclefan: indeed, When you compare European junkyards, on the British ones, there is the lowest average age of the cars there. Britain is an island and the cars are RHD, the reason, because the export of used cars is not usual and popular. In other Western European countries it's different. On the continent hundreds of thousands of used cars were exported every year, just from Germany more than 500 000. The statistic says, that approximately 80% of the cars in Germany, which registration is cancelled, were exported. |
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◊ 2008-07-10 22:00 |
And where do they go? |
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◊ 2008-07-10 22:15 |
Link to "www.destatis.de" "Durchschnittswert" means "average value" And these are only the official registrated export-cars (with export-plates for example). When the car has no valid registration any more at the time of selling, it will usually not noticed by the authority. -- Last edit: 2008-07-10 22:18:40 |
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◊ 2008-07-11 14:37 |
Yeah, I've noticed the German exports. Many of the German exports appear go to Eastern Europe, western/central Asia, left hand drive markets in Africa and also the Middle East (Iraq especially). The former Soviet Union is full of German imports, particularly Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. I was in Ukraine for a week at the end of June and the number of them is enormous. Some even still have the D for Deutschland. A large number of the German imports in Ukraine consist of Mercedes W123, BMW E34, VW Passat Mk3, Audi 100 C4, Opel Omega Mk1, Ford Scorpio and just about anything that makes a good sized family car or taxi. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Bissau4.jpg The D for Deutschland is still visible on the blue Mercedes 190 on the right hand side of the road. I guess probably all of the many Mercedes in that picture are originally from Germany. In contrast, here's a picture of a UK scrapyard I took: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3156/2657766937_dda762c851_o.jpg |
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◊ 2008-07-11 16:07 |
The Iraq is a big market for used German cars, too. Some of the biggest export-dealers in Germany have good relations to there or are at least Iraqis. The whole car-export-business in Germany is in fact in the hands of Mafia's. Mainly Arabian and Russian. It's not a smooth business. Once I#ve been with a Swedish friend on the big used-car-market in the town of Essen (every Saturday morning). Thousands of car - and we've been nearly the only Western Europeans there. |
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1978Cutlass ◊ 2009-01-11 18:25 |
you're wrong the mitsubishi space wagon is the worst car ever built |
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