1996 Buick Roadmaster Limited Estate Wagon

Both myself and Fred have been searching for my 'perfect' wagon for a couple years now. I have never seen but really want to find and own a light blue (Light Adriatic Blue or LAB for short) wagon in Limited trim with heated cloth seats. Now in an ideal world this would be a wood delete (WB4) car with a blue cloth interior as well as all of the options available on the last great American station wagon. Tow package, limited slip rear, CD player, and of course the heated seats option. Heated seats were only available on Limited package cars and even then it was an extra cost option.

I say I've never seen one, this isn't entirely true. I've seen two LAB wagons with Limited and heated cloth seats. Both were woodies. One I saw on eBay and the second Fred had. At the time I was unable to buy either. I've never seen such a car in wood delete form. I've seen a few WB4's but none were light blue. As rare as these cars are I pretty much decided that when I found a heated cloth WB4 car that wasn't white or beige (I don't care for either color) I would try to get it.

So, now that you have a little background we can 'fast forward' to Sunday, 3 February 2008. I take a look at my cell phone in the morning to see if I have any messages. The little display says '1 voice message'. So I call in to check. It's a brief message, less than one minute in length. It's Fred from North Star Auto. He leaves me a somewhat cryptic message stating he found a MAB (Medium Adriatic Blue) Roadmaster with Limited cloth. Naturally being Super Bowl Sunday, I figured returning his call that evening when I had a few free minutes would be futile. So Monday afternoon, I call Fred's shop to get the scoop.

Turns out that it's a Connecticut car. I immediately see flashes of a rusty undercarraige in my head but Fred assures me it's not a rusty basket case. After a couple days of talking and after he's had a chance to really check the car out, I agree to purchase it. This car is 95% my dream car. The only thing to make it 100% would be the LAB color and a cream puff low mileage Arizona car. As I figure my chances of finding that are about zero this will do just fine.

So here we are, 10 February 2008. I have but a few pictures of the car so I'll post what I have. I am planning to make the journey to visit Fred and my 'new' car in March. We will see how things proceed.

My first look! Rear gate and 'd' pillars being painted here.

Love those gorgeous heated cloth seats!

Apparently the previous owner had some fun painting things here.

Not a perfect undercarraige, but still respectable.

While getting my car ready, Fred found that the mufflers were a bit rusty. So I purchased a set of Summit Turbo mufflers and had them sent to his shop.

Due to the bit of scale on the underside. Fred and his body guy spent some time cleaning the rust off and putting some paint on the underside to keep it from getting worse.

The publicity shot! Fred handing me the keys to my new wagon!

Fred cleaned the carpets before I picked up the car, much cleaner.

Naturally, I couldn't leave the car as it was. 400 miles can make a car dirty!

A bath and a coat of wax makes a huge difference.

For some unknown reason, the air dam corners were painted light blue. The center was missing. Took a spare center dam I had, painted it and the corners satin black using SEM dye. Looks brand new now.

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