Oddball Muscle Cars

[Dan Bennett]

Originally Posted by Paul Ceasrine

WJ,
The Checker may have it over that Chicken Truck by a 'Beek'.. Sounds like a good name for a restaurant in northern Massachussetts, to take your family; 'Chicken N' Checkers'..
OK, back to an ODD-BALL,, 1970 Buick Riviera GS 455/370HP,,the boat weighed in at 4400lbs. Once you got it going, how the hell could you stop it.. Probably 17.00's in the quarter..Anyone know how long it would take to stop it..about a minute...
Paul

The Riv was a pretty good bracket car when most of us drove our racers to the track. I bought a used one in 73 or 74 and it worked pretty good on the local 1/8 mile track. It would spin the tires two or three times on the launch and kept the revs up (more or less) but by 400 feet was pulling pretty hard. It must have been a hard car for the others to judge since I won more races than my level of skill should have produced.

I always wondered about the car. Almost every other one I saw had fender skirts which made them look even more boat-like. Mine had some "mini" skirts which were only a couple of inches thick and made the car look much better. It wasn't a GS and I never could find an option for them.

As far as I know, the 455 in the Rivieras was the same engine as the non-Stage 1 GS Skylarks.

Back to a car previously discussed, that same local track had a regular who raced a Studebaker Lark with a small block Chevy. Since he was bracket racing, I never knew whether he swapped the engine into it or if it was built that way. I remember him having problems with the rear end/axles and I think he finally put a Mopar 8 3/4 in it after a while.