Junkyard Find: 1979 Buick LeSabre Limited

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Last week, we admired this fine slab of Oldsmobile Broughamitude, and the very same Denver wrecking yard also boasts the 88’s Buick B-Body sibling. It’s no Brougham, but it is a Limited!

The LeSabre got smaller in 1977, but it was still quite a substantial machine.

I didn’t shoot many engine photos, and LeSabres came with a mix-and-match assortment of Buick, Olds, and Pontiac engines during the Malaise Era, but the front-mounted distributor seems to indicate that this car has Buick 350 power. 150 horses of Buick 350 power.

The ’79 LeSabre may have been a bit underpowered (especially if it came with the base V6 engine), but observe the luxury!

Silver-faced gauges. Actually, these look pretty good.

I might have to come back with a source of 12 volts and test this clock, because it would be a nice addition to my collection. There’s about a 3% chance that it will work, but I’m willing to take a shot.










Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Biggreencar Biggreencar on Sep 04, 2012

    ...i still drive one of these, it's sort of a light green color, and the clock still works. it has almost 300,000 miles on the mostly original motor/trans./diff. the motor is the 350 buick engine, maybe they did have bad oiling, carb. troubles etc. but mine is running fine. i put an auburn true track 3.23 posi. diff in it and it gets up to 80 mph pretty fast. the fuel economy is about the same as most SUV's, and it will haul around whatever i want. i bought it from the first owner who drove it for 24 years, then i took over. it has the 15X7 chrome wheels and the limited pkg. it didn't come with power windows or door locks, it does have tilt, cruise and 60/40, well maybe 55/45 dual control power front seats. mice ate the bottom out of the passenger side when i was living in it up in idaho, so i put the seat bottom/foam/pans from a '77 delta 88 royale, matchs pretty good, and i kinda' like the drivers side seat belt coming out of the seat cusion instead of between the seats. also put what olds. called the FE2 rally suspension in it, with some big a** rear sway bar from a caprice taxi cab. recently i had someone put a AGR 12:1 steering box in it and someone may be surprised how well one of the road couch's will handle, it's basically the same chassis as the early 70's "a" body olds/buicks/chevys. then i pieced together the 4-core rad./7 blade fan/air seal kit. i've driven this car all over the west in all sorts of temps. without any problems. also has some big coil overs i pulled out of a 79' pontiac catalina i have parts on this car from all the GM divisions .for durability/dependability/economy and availability of parts these tanks are hard to beat. i paid $900.00 for mine and it had over 200,000 miles when i got it. i hope to get another one, if someones interested i'd suggest getting one with the standard front disc breaks not the HD 5 on 5 wheels. it makes using stuff off my 76' cutlass simpler, bye.

  • Moparman426W Moparman426W on Sep 09, 2012

    Anyone with the slightest amount of knowledge on buick engines knows that one could never make it to 300k with the crummy oiling system that they came from the factory with. Many didn't even make it to 100k. If one was rebuilt properly and one of the redesigned oil pumps/timing covers made by poston or T/A performance was installed then you just may get 300k out of one if it was babied and well maintained.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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