Classic Regal practically all original

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This article was published 13/09/2024 (569 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mike Williams describes his 1987 Buick Regal Limited as a time capsule. It has all the original parts, perfectly preserved factory paint job, and a maroon plush velour interior that he says “is like sitting in a recliner.”

And as he fires the 305 V-8 engine to life in his Brandon driveway — he points to the odometer that has 83,000 original kilometres.

“I have all the paperwork, including the original bill of sale,” Williams said. “The only thing that’s after market under the hood is the battery disconnect,” said Williams.

“Everything else is 100 per cent original as it came out of the factory. Motor undercoated day one, even the factory rad hose, because it’s got the GM part numbers on it, so if it was changed it would have an aftermarket number.”

His bright white Buick Regal with a landau roof has all the bells and whistles such as, air, cruise, tilt steering, power seats, and power trunk and antenna — just the way it was in 1987, when Williams was 11 years old.

“This is nostalgia for me, definitely,” he said. “I’ve always been part of the automotive world but couldn’t get back into a classic until recently. I wanted to get that back and feel it again.”

This is the second Buick Regal Limited that Williams has had. The first one was a used 1982 model, which he said was given to him by his parents when he was 16 years old.

“And of course, when you don’t have money invested in something, you don’t necessarily look after it as well when you’re young, right? I drove it for about three years. I was young and dumb and blew the motor, but I always regretted getting rid of it,” said Williams.

So, from his late teens to his mid 40s, getting another Buick was always in the back of Williams’s mind. But the model he wanted was a “step up from the Regal.” It was his dream to find a Grand National, he said, “which is Buick’s fancy way of building a race car that looks like a supercar, so that’s what I was looking for.”

But the way the search ended for a Grand National and landed on the Buick Regal Limited is a story that Williams said is a combination of “coincidence and kismet.”

Last summer, Williams and his wife were at their granddaughter’s birthday party in Brandon, and they briefly met their son-in-law’s grandfather, Bob Jordan, who came out from Winnipeg.

A few weeks later as Williams was scrolling on Facebook, he saw a Buick Regal in Winnipeg and noticed that he had two mutual friends with the seller, and one of them was his son-in-law.

“So, I looked closer at who was selling it — ends up it’s Bob Jordan, who is my son-in-law’s grandpa. He owned it. Wow, what a coincidence. We had just met two weeks earlier,” Williams said.

So, he sent me a few pictures of the car, but I didn’t even question it. I walked in with cash in hand and said, I’ll take it.”

“Thirty-two years later, I got my Buick Regal back,” he said.

Jordan laughed at the memory, and he said he almost drove the car to Brandon that day.

“I had debated bringing the Buick out there for a ride, it was a nice cruiser. But there must have been a forecast for rain because I never drove it in the rain. I had it for about three years and it was always stored inside,” Jordan said on the phone from Winnipeg.

Jordan has been a car guy since the early 2000s, he said, and has had other “hotrods.” He decided to sell the Buick when he acquired a cabin at Lac du Bonnet.

“I was very happy that it went to Michael because that would mean it was going to a good home and because it’s still in the family, I will probably see it from time to time,” Jordan said.

Williams has had the Buick appraised by Winnipeg’s Pat Mooney, a member of the International Automotive Appraisers Association (IAAA), an independent contractor for Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation (MPI).

“When I had it appraised, Mooney said ‘I have not seen one in this condition.’ So, he couldn’t give me a number-one rank, but he gave me a ‘two plus,’ which is as close as you can get to a no-mile, unmoved, showroom car,” Williams said.

Compliments are numerous, Williams added, whenever he and his wife are “out for ice cream” or at a Road Rebels car show. And that’s why he said he intends to keep the Buick in a climate-controlled garage summer and winter.

“A lot of people ask me if I’ve restored it and are floored when I tell them it’s all original, and then they say, ‘keep it the way it is, don’t touch it.’ I’m not planning on it.

“I’m keeping this one original and maybe one day my daughter and son-in-law would take it over quite easily because it has history for him as well, being it was his grandpa’s car.”

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

» X: @enviromichele