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@aircooled , here's a video of a drive in a 1952 Buick Super. My dad's was a Special, but very similar to this.
The interior is almost identical, except for the placement of instruments on the dash. You can see the two front ashtrays flanking the radio controls. The rear ashtrays were in the side armrests. Ours was a two-door, so no middle ashtray on the seat back. Somehow, two-door owners had to make do with only four.
The wheel is the same. It was enormous for a reason. You needed the leverage against the manual steering (with that mile-long straight eight up front). Steering inputs needed to be started well in advance of a planned course change.
The car doesn't so much accelerate as gradually gather momentum, like a ship at sea. You can hear all the slippage in the transmission, getting under way from a stop. As you mention, nothing was actually 'slipping' - it was designed to work like that. The design goals, in the power train and suspension, were to make everything as smoove as possible.
I grew up in this car and for some time, this was how I thought all cars should be.
Imagine the slap up the side of the head it was for me the first time I turned the steering wheel of a 1968 BMW 1600 and felt the car - the whole car - suddenly dart in the direction I had moved that wheel. For me, that was it for anything automotive made in Detroit.
I'd like to end this with a little quiz, but Bruce, as the family member of a former Buick dealer, you are disqualified from participating.
What was the purpose of the knob just above the rear-view mirror in the video?
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