Buick’s Riviera: A look back at the diesel model
Buick’s Riviera has been a popular model for more than 50 years, with its elegant design and luxury features. However, only one model in its long history had an oiled engine available from the factory. Today, we’re taking a look at that model: a vivid purple ’82 Riviera with a 105 horsepower Oldsmobile diesel under the hood that was recently found at a nice Denver-area dealership.
The Riviera was first introduced as a model in its own right in 1963, having been incorporated into several cars throughout the 1950s. Over the next 36 years, seven more generations of the personal luxury coupe followed from Buick, but only one had an engine with oil available from the factory.
Beginning in the 1966 model year, the Riviera lived on the same platform as the Cadillac Eldorado and Oldsmobile Toronado, both with radical front-wheel-drive engines that used longitudinal V8s feeding the front wheels via heavy-duty chains. However, despite the common platform, the Riviera alone retained the traditional front/rear engine configuration, making it something of a corporate oddity for the next 12 years.
General Motors then decided to downsize the Eldorado/Toronado platform for the 1979 model year, and the Riviera got the front-wheel drive platform from those cars at the same time. Sales of the smaller Rivvy were strong, no doubt due in large part to certain geopolitical events that drove up gas prices and led to rationing of fuel and gas lines.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, diesel was much cheaper than gasoline in the United States. Mercedes-Benz and Peugeot had sold diesel cars reasonably well here in the 1970s, so General Motors developed a diesel version of the Oldsmobile 350 cubic inch (5.7 liter) V8 engine. As was typical of naturally aspirated automotive diesels of the era (the diesel engine in all modern cars is turbocharged), power was miserable but torque was strong; this car’s engine was rated at 105 horsepower and 205 lb.-ft.
The 5.7 diesel first appeared in the Riviera for the 1981 model year. The base engine was a 4.1-liter version of the Buick V6, while oil-fed Olds cost an extra $924 (about $3,206 in of 2023). A comfortable, quiet Riviera with the cheap fill price and long diesel range sounded great, even if you had to line Freightliners and Peterbilts to get to a pump, but there were problems. Oh, so many problems!
Oldsmobile’s 350 V8 had been around since 1968 and had proven to be reliable and powerful. Oldsmobile engineers beefed up the 350 block for diesel service, but chose to save production costs by keeping the number and locations of the gas engine’s head bolts. Because diesels have much higher compression ratios than gas burners (in this case, the Olds 350 diesel had a compression ratio of 21.6:1 while its gasoline counterparts had over 8:1) , the stresses in the head screws were correspondingly higher. Pulled and broken head bolts followed, with engine-destructive results.
Also, the diesel of the time was of uneven quality and GM saved more money by omitting a water separator from the fuel system; this caused diesel powered GM cars to stall with depressing regularity. Oldsmobile diesels quickly gained a bad reputation, and a tsunami of lawsuits swept the company. Meanwhile, Cadillac’s V8-6-4 variable displacement engine was having widely publicized problems of its own, and the new Chevrolet Citation made headlines for recall after recall. It was not a happy time for the general.
When GM developed a V6 version of the 350, the 4.3 Diesel, it didn’t suffer from most of the flaws seen in its big brother. The damage had been done, however, and the last year for Olds diesel engines was 1985 (not coincidentally, gas prices fell around that time).
This car had some interesting and futuristic bits that somewhat compensated for the problematic engine. Those emblems on the padded top of the Landau used electroluminescent lighting, which looked cool (I haven’t been successful in finding one of these lamps in working order on my trips to the junkyard, but I haven’t given up) .
These above-the-grille indicators used fiber optic cables for illumination. Later in the 1980s, Buick would install touch screens (sourced from an ATM hardware supplier) on Rivieras.
The top of the Landau has been roasted by the Colorado sun, but otherwise this car is in pretty decent condition. I found registration papers inside that showed it had been operational a decade ago, so its owner managed to keep the 350 diesel running for many years.
The purple paint doesn’t appear to have been a factory color, but the high-quality paint on the door jambs and engine compartment indicates that a good paint shop did the trim.
The MSRP for this diesel V8 car was $15,196, or about $52,721 in today’s money. Air conditioning, power windows and an AM/FM stereo radio were standard equipment.
The original owner’s manual was still with the car.
In hindsight, the optional 3.8-liter turbocharged V6 engine seems like the better choice than the diesel.
