1975 Buick “Free Spirit” Pace Car

(Edit added 6/7/2007: UPDATE! Buick found and bought! Restoration begins once she arrives!)

(Edit added 3/27/2006: I stated in this post that the car is a Regal. It’s not. It’s a Century, or to be more precise as “Century Custom Series” according to what Buick officially called it originally. However, if you placed a ‘75 Regal next to a ‘75 Century, the cars look almost identical to each other even though they’re different models, oddly enough.)

Sheesh.. been writing a lot of car things lately.. whatever. ;-)

I was fortunate enough to find some decent photos of the ‘75 Buick Indy Pace car (shown above) so I’m posting them here for reference. My father owned one of these and it was the family car for several years.

My Pop’s car met an untimely demise due to the passenger side door being bashed in by an 18-wheeler truck many years ago. This was before those “Wide Right Hand Turn” signs were put on rigs.

I’ve been searching for this car for many years. What I know about this ride is this:

• This is a heavily modified ‘75 Buick Regal. Buick as far as I know outsourced the Regals to a company to have the doors cut for the t-tops and there were some other modifications done.
• To the best of my knowledge there were no more than 2000 of these cars made that were actual pace cars.
• Many dealerships (at least in New England) that sold the car new purposely “demodified” the car first by removing the stripes and Indy-specific trim because evidently it made the car sell better…? This means that if you’ve ever seen a ‘75 Regal with glass T-Tops, it was probably a pace car.
• Some pace cars had the “Official Pace Car” decal on the doors, others did not. My father’s didn’t.
• Some pace cars had a thin chrome stripe across the grille, others didn’t.
• The only engine offered with the small block GM 350.
• The speedometer was round and racing style – not rectangular like most cars of 1975.
• The car had a ticking clock. Seriously, it did. I distinctly remember that clock in my Pop’s Buick.
• Wheels were standard GM steelies painted white with deep dish chrome trim rings.
• Automatic transmission was the only one offered to the best of my knowledge.

If there was any car that I would buy on the spot (assuming it was repairable and in good shape) – this would be the one.

–edit–

Found anoher photo, adding…