Buying from America Part 2 - Guy Glovers 1969 Buick Riviera
2 years ago we told the story of how we had bought and imported our 1981 Corvette to the UK. The article, which is on the web site, finished with my wife Lesley yearning for ‘something big’ and this is the result.
While scanning the ‘world wide web’ as I am sure many of us do, I had come across a very nice looking ’69 Buick Riviera in Florida on E-Bay which was too expensive for me. It had an interesting history – 25 years with a bank ferrying important clients etc and then 11 years with one owner who also had 3 Rolls Royces and a fabulous Caddy. I contacted the owner, Don, who gave me all the details and was very helpful.
I forgot about the car for a while but then it re-appeared, as it had not reached its reserve, a few weeks later. The new ‘buy it now price’ was just about reachable with the dollar nice and cheap provided I got BTI classification for a historic vehicle ( 5% Vat ) so I started a long conversation with Don and put a bid on the car. The car was great – all history etc and just what I wanted. Then ‘wham’ the Customs rules changed and the car was liable to 10% duty + 17.5% vat. It was now no longer affordable. I called Don and explained and he was very understanding as he definitely wanted the car to go to a good home. He pulled the car from E-Bay as he was not happy with the people bidding on the car – they had not even contacted him to ask anything about the car.
Christmas came and went then in January there was the car again. I phoned Don who was very happy to hear from us. The car had originally been bought in Seattle, they moved to Florida and now 11 years later were moving back to Seattle and needed to sell the car before their 4th Feb departure. I was already happy about the car, so we agreed a price and I was the owner of a 1969 Buick Riviera. Don sent the manuals, history, bills and other stuff via FedEx to keep me entertained while the car was shipped.
I arranged hauling the car to Jacksonville and shipping to Southampton myself in the US and saved myself a few extra pounds. The car was picked up from Dons home by flatbed on the 2nd Feb, picked up by me a month later from the QE2 dock and driven to the Isle of Wight via the Isle of Wight Ferry.
Once on the island we had to start to clean and polish her to get the shine back. She passed the MOT test but did have some play in the drag link so that was replaced with one from Rare Parts.com. Once done the car drove like new.
Our first trip was to the AACUK spring show at Kettering. She made the trip fine but did seem to be using a little water, also I did not realise that one of the main points of interest of this car are the vacuum headlights which did leak a little ( I had been told about this ) and so would not stay up. These needed doing rapidly !
Once back I fitted 2 new vacuum actuators from Classic Industries and did the inlet gasket and head gaskets ( they had been done 10 years ago when the car had a head job). The water had been leaking through the inlet manifold gasket.
She is now running great and I am looking forward to the Summer shows both on the island and the mainland. I would love to hear from 66-69 Riv owners – see reps page.
The collection in the garden - That is definitely it !! ( for now….)