Long-abandoned Buick becomes a show-stopper

Mike Young never expected to need another custom car. After all, he had a great pair of machines to drive and show.

The first was his black, flamed 1929 Ford Model A hot-rod roadster. The second was a deep candy blue full custom 1940 Ford pickup truck that had been highlighted at the 2013 SEMA (Specialty Equipment Manufacturers Show) in Las Vegas.

But then a fellow custom car buff in Texas made him an offer he couldn’t refuse on the ’40 pickup and suddenly there was a bare spot in his garage. So Young turned his attention to a sad 1949 Buick Sedanette he had found while cruising the internet.

“My search window was ’47-53, no part number, make or model,” he recalled. “I had always wanted to do a (Chevy) Fleetline, but there were so many of them around,” he explained.

“Then this popped up,” he said. The Buick Model 56 Sedanette, a 2-door sedan, had the same basic fastback styling as the early Chevy Fleetlines.

“It was kind of like a Fleetline on steroids,” he said.

The old Buick had apparently spent only 10 years on the road before being parked beside (not inside) a barn in 1959, Young said. And all those years had not been kind to the car.

“I gave the guy $750 for it and when we went to pick it up, I thought, `What have I done?’ ” he recalled. “It cost more to bring it home than to buy it.”

But he had a vision of what the worn out Buick could be and he knew that Chris Carlson Hot Rods in Mulvane could bring that vision to life. That shop created the ’40 Ford pickup and did a complete makeover on the roadster.

The idea was not to build a typical “lead sled,” but to create a lower, sleeker version of the basic ’49 Buick, complete with modern suspension, brakes, steering and horsepower.

“I try to go with stuff that will be classic, long term,” Carlson explained of his approach to the project.

To achieve that, he took 3 1/2 inches out of the front windshield pillar and 5 1/2 inches out of the door pillars, which were leaned forward to give the car a sense of motion. All the window moldings were reshaped to fit the new openings.

The rear fenders were widened and reshaped, which meant an entirely new trunk lid had to be built to fit the lowered profile, with Carlson creating the new sheet metal by hand on an English wheel.

A set of 1954 Mercury tail lights were molded into the trailing edge of the rear fenders, which had a peak added, and a new lengthened side spear was fabricated to run the length of the fender.

A stock bumper was narrowed to fit the rear end better and rechromed after exhaust ports were trimmed in its lower edge. Ogden Chrome handled all the replating of brightwork.

Up front, the fenders were extended and peaked to accommodate a set of ’56 Olds 98 headlight buckets, which received modern LED-style headlights. A new grille was designed using 25 chromed teeth from a ’53 Buick.

“All Buick grilles are similar, but we discovered they are all different,” noted Carlson. Two ’49 Buick front bumpers were combined into a single unit, in the process eliminating the distracting flat license plate mount of the original.

Young had found a set of never-used aftermarket portholes, a Buick trademark, and they were incorporated into the front fender design. The original side-opening Buick hood, which could be opened from either side by means of separate latches, was abandoned in favor of a lower, flatter pancaked hood, which swivels on a pair of all-but-invisible pins at its trailing edges.

“There must be at least 150 body mods. … I lost count of them,” said Mike Young.

Underpinning all of that body work is the center of the original Buick frame, which is connected to boxed subframe units front and rear. Total Cost Involved provided the Mustang II-style front suspension and the four-link coil-over-shock rear suspension. Wilwood disc brakes provide stopping power at all four corners.

Go-power, all 460 horses of it, is supplied by a BluePrint 383 GM crate motor equipped with an Edelbrock dual-quad intake setup. Speedway ceramic-coated headers send exhaust back through a pair of Magnaflow stainless steel mufflers.

The engine is dressed up with an Eddie Motorsports serpentine drive belt setup, Moon valve covers and air cleaner and a pair of chromed electric fans fitted to an oversized polished Be Cool radiator.

A TCI 700r4 automatic overdrive transmission bolts up to the engine and sends power on back to a Currie 9-inch Ford rear end running 3.70 gears.

The Buick was painted in-house at Chris Carlson Hot Rods, using Martin-Senour paint in a dramatic shade known as “Granite.” Martin-Senour unveiled the Buick as its showpiece at this year’s SEMA exposition.

Accenting that highly polished gray metallic finish are the distinctive 17-inch blue and chrome Circle Racing Model 9 wheels. Too many customs use either black or red wheels to invoke a vintage steel-wheel theme, Carlson explained, and he suggested the vivid Harley-Davidson blue shade to complement the gray sheet metal.

Inside, the Buick was outfitted with the front low-back bucket seats and the rear cove seat from a 1964 Thunderbird, covered in gray Townsend aviation-grade leather. The T-Bird center console was modified to accept a Pioneer sound system and a tall Lokar shifter accented by a lattice-work metal shift knob by CON2R, which supplied the other knobs and interior handles and levers.

Likewise, a custom-designed CON2R steering wheel is used atop an ididit tilt column, which snugs up to a reshaped metal dashboard, molded into the front of the door sills. Instrumentation has been moved to the center of the dash, in the form of a Dakota Digital gauge cluster; a digital clock is molded into the top of the dash. A Vintage Air heat and air conditioning unit keep things climate-controlled.

A serious fire in Carlson’s shop threatened the deadline for the SEMA show, but the Buick wasn’t damaged, as it was stored in a trailer outside at the time.

“The last 10 weeks, we were on it pretty hard and heavy,” said Carlson. “It was very well received at SEMA,” he said of the finished car.

The scramble was well worth it.

“Chris Carlson Hot Rods turned a car destined for the crusher into a work of art,” Young said.

“We wanted something we can do long distance cruises in,” said Mike Young. “Something we can be comfortable in,” added his wife, Glenna.

As a bonus, their reborn Buick has provided another perspective.

“When I am driving this, I am seeing through 16-year-old eyes,” said Mike Young.

This story was originally published December 11, 2015 at 5:22 PM with the headline "Long-abandoned Buick becomes a show-stopper."