The Buick Century nameplate has been used off and on since the ‘30s, with six separate generations coming and going over the years. Now, this pre-owned 1991 Buick Century is available for purchase at a dealer in Indiana, sporting a mere 5,760 miles on the clock. Alongside the surprisingly low mileage, this thing looks to be in pristine condition.
This particular example hails from the Buick Century’s fifth generation, which was produced between the 1982 and 1996 model years, with a facelift introduced for the 1991 model year. The four-door sedan body is covered in Grey paint, while in the corners, we spot wire wheel hub caps and whitewall Goodyear tires.
The cabin is awash in Light Blue materials, while the dash includes an old-school rectangular speedometer, flanked on either side by the fuel gauge and the transmission gear indicator. In the center console, we see what appears to be a cassette player, as well as a radio, with individual knobs, dials, and buttons for the volume, tuner, treble, bass, and the like.
This Buick Century also has a manual air conditioner and climate control system, plus manual hand cranks for the windows. There’s also a plastic cupholder inside the central arm rest, and two additional cupholders in the glove box. The front seat belts are mounted on the doors.
Lifting the hood, we find a 2.5L I4 gasoline engine, which looks just as clean as the rest of the vehicle. The four-banger connects to the front wheels via a three-speed automatic transmission. There also appears to be the original vehicle documentation in the trunk.
This thing is a true blast from the past, and it’s in surprisingly good condition. That said, this surprisingly well-kept Buick Century has an equally surprising asking price, currently listed at $18,595.
This Buick Century is up for grabs from Sam Pierce Chevrolet in Daleville, Indiana.
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Comments
Beautiful, but that price. Fools and their money…
But but it is an iron Duke engine!! Run forever, easiest timing chain ever, possibly best 4 cylinder ever.(for econobox cars)
$8,995 kills it.
I prefer to pay 9000 USD for this car, than any major quantity for a boring cookie cutter SUV. It´s simply a matter of tastes.
The GM A platform vehicles were as “Cookie Cutter” as you could possibly get, especially in it’s day…. Throw in the agricultural Iron Duke “Tech” 4, and you have a textbook example of a product that permanently damaged GM’s reputation and market share… I’m all for low mileage grandma cars (especially Buicks), but not at this price, The Century/ Cutlass Cierra were a staple of rental car lots and fleets, and embarrassingly produced nearly a decade past their sell-by date. This is not a collector’s item.
Blue Book is $2000, exactly what this is worth.
Probably still a usable secondary car. But a base model with a 4 cyl. is no collector.
Yes, it’s very low mileage but all of the components are 32 years old.
Will we ever see cars with a backend trunk over hang like this?
Look, I like the Century’s and have owned several over the years. Great cars for sure. But asking around what the car had for an MSRP back in 1991 is just crazy. If it was the limited and if it had the 3300 V6 and if it had more power equipment and if it came with a gas card worth $8,000 bucks, then I’d say maybe it’s worth that price. But even a bench seat, old school Buick loving guy like me could never get on board for that silly price.
I owned two of this model, both purchased new. A1983 Silver Limited and a 1989 brownish-gold (I think Buick called it “Sandalwood Metallic”) but don’t quote me on that. Anyway, the ’89 model had the marvelous 3.3 Liter V6 FI motor and it would Go, Go, Go and still deliver great fuel mileage.
So if you’re flush enough to pay $18,000 for a 33 year old car that will never be a true collector’s car then my god never settle for anything less than a Century with GM’s award-winning 3300 V6 Fuel-injected Motor.
J Ottie: That 3300 was a great engine. If I recall, it was basically just the marvelous 3800 and they just reduced it by half a liter. But where the 3800 seemed to be a little too much (back in that time) for the smaller cars, the 3300 gave them the same basic engine and boy did it make them go. I had a couple demo’s in the Century and Skylarks with it and they were really fun to drive.
Right, having the 2.5L Iron Duke would be a deal killer for me. Not that it’s a bad engine, but the 3300 V6 is a great engine. Plenty peppy for the day and the light car.
My grandparents had a Century Limited with the 3300 V6, Grandpa drove it, well like a grandpa. Went to town once with grandma, who also drove very conservatively. We hit the highway and she pulled out and for some reason really jammed on the gas. That car accelerated with gusto, and had the period GM exhaust tone, it let out a good roar. She said “Oh my God I’ve blown the engine” – I laughed and told her it was fine and we went on our way.
All my then neighbors had various GM V6 cars, and they all had the throaty V6 exhaust growl.
This car had a sticker around 14.5 to 15K with the options it does have like A/C, cassette, split front seats, cruise and tilt and the wire wheels when new. It’s not worth anywhere near the asking price or even half that as the Iron Duke A-body cars were not as desirable as the 3300 cars.
Sister bought a new 1984 Century with the Iron Duke in spite of me telling her to buy an Accord.
Needless to say, she never bought another GM product. All Hondas and Toyotas since then.
I call BS.
I sold Buick next to Honda for nearly 13 years. I never had one single Buick get bought back and yet in that same period, exactly 2 Honda’s.
I’m not buying into your age old (and inaccurate) buy Japanese because they are better. They’re not.
No BS, folks. It’s 100% true, as my sister would attest.
Have you ever driven a 1984 Century with the Iron Duke? I have!
My wife currently sells Buicks and I assure you, they are much much better than 1980s Buicks!
I don’t doubt it one bit. My dad (worked for GM) had one with the 2.5 and it was horrible. I remember talking about it years later and whole family agreed it was the worst car we ever had.
84 vs 96 almost two different car companies. GM really started turning the quality around about 1994
My dad bought a 1984 Olds Ciera Brougham with the 2.5 Iron Duke with around 70K for a good price back in 1989 from one of his co workers. It was a nice comfortable car that always ran well. Sure the engine sounded crude from outside the car but once underway inside the car it wasn’t too bad. The only issues we had with it were the typical morning sickness in the steering rack which we mostly cured with Trans X, a leaky valve cover which I corrected with a new gasket and a replaced gas tank due to a sharp object being flung up on the highway puncturing the old one. It still ran well when he sold it with 150K and our overall experience with it was positive.
Joe Y: You just nailed it. Yes, that 2.5L was not the sweetest sounding engine, but it ran very well and had plenty of power. It got very good MPG and was in so many vehicles, making parts super easy to get and cheap. In response to the others above, the Honda engine was smoother and more quiet at idle and it had slightly better performance at higher RPM, but where the Buick blew the Honda’s away was for better ride, much more quiet going down the road and (even with the 2.5L) was much more smooth when in gear and sitting at a light or stop sign. Those Honda’s were so noisy on the road and (with auto) were very rough idling when stopped and in drive. It was so bad that you could barely hold onto the steering wheel. Yet the less refined iron duke was smooth and quiet under those same conditions.
Plus (in those days) you didn’t have to go in and do a manual valve adjustment on the Buick. With the Honda’s, you had to go in every 15,000 miles and that added up over the course of 100K. And because they were going into the engine, many of the seals and gaskets were replaced every 15K. Bottom line was that the Buick was cheaper to own and drive over 100K than the comparable Honda.
Common story – heard this many times. The problem is these folks are talking their own book- they say “GM” makes junk, Honda/Toyota are awesome, simply to parrot a media talking point and reinforce their own decision.
Try engaging these folks on what exactly was wrong with GM-period cars, and they have nothing except “legendary Japanese reliability” and story after story of trading an Accord after 60K miles with never doing anything to it while having a coworker/family member “with a Celebrity that the transmission went out after 185K miles but that would never happen in a Camry”.
Took one of these types on a ride in my GMC Yukon Denali. He changed his tune about his Tundra after getting his head pushed back into the headrest from acceleration, while watching me get 22 MPG on the highway.
NUMA plant in Cali build Chevy Nova /Toyota spectrum- exact same car, exact same people built them—Toyota got accolades from CR,C&D, and all reviews painted it as vastly superior- the only differences- the tags on the trunk and the wheel caps
NUMMI also built our beautiful red 1996 Geo Prism LSi. That was a great car!
Always loved those wheel covers in the 80s.
$18,595…wow.
Someone needs to let the seller know it’s not a classic car and it’ll NEVER be one.
Just asking on a car this old and the mileage, don’t the gaskets through out this cars engine be in need of replacement , dried out? Leaking, blow by?
I had a similar vintage Pontiac 6000 with the iron duke. I never had any problems with it. But I do all my own maintenance and watch things. Granted it did not have much power but the gas mileage was decent and it never left me stranded. Aren’t all the 1980’s vintage US mail trucks still running Iron dukes?
Dave
I’m pretty sure I saw that almost all of those older mail vehicles have been retired, and they are running around with the slightly newer 2.2L versions.
Good call by both you and Dave. Indeed the Iron Duke it was in the LLV and updated to the 2.2 in later production.
For the LLV application it was almost perfect. Compared to modern passenger car engines of that era it left a lot to be desired however. Basically it’s design targets were low cost and high durability/reliability (which led them to cast iron and low tech everything else), decent FE and good low end torque (which led them to a long stroke, low rpm engine). Predictably it did have high durability but low specific output and not a very pleasant power delivery experience. Perfect for a commercial vehicle or the S10 but not so much for a passenger car competing against more sophisticated competitors.
In many ways it was an over reaction to the spectacularly unreliable sleeveless aluminum engine in the Vega. The Pontiac guys told me they named it Iron Duke just to make sure customers knew this engine was not related to that disaster.
Yes, the lady who delivers our mail uses a Grumman vehicle with the iron duke. I always enjoy hearing her crank that old beast over when she has to bring up a package to the porch, brings back memories. Good ones.
Lmao! $19k? With the a 2.5? What a joke! I had 2 89 ones with the Buick 3.3 just slightly over 100k on the clock n super clean. Paid $500 for one and $1k for the other. This person is clearly on drugs!
Granny did not even drive this one to the Piggly Wiggly weekly.
I guess some idiot with nothing better to do with 20k will buy it to relive his teenage years, maybe taking his wife to the back seat will re-kindle their relationship if they don’t pull too many muscles or blow out their backs.
Current owner loves it. Keep it. We don’t know why it was useless for 30 years.
I never have owned an import or never ever will.I don’t care how supposedly well made they are I don’t want anything to drive that’s named Toyota,Honda,Kia or any other Japanese name.Only G.M. Every manufacturer has some kind of problem.I would take German made or maybe English made,a car with a real name.Definately not a childish name.
The Two Cars That Come To My Mind When I Saw That Price Was The Cutlass Ciera International Series & The Pontiac 6000 STE Those Cars Were Loaded With Options & Had Plenty Of Power