1965 Buick Skylark 

These were some of the best looking Buicks ever made. Just the right amount of chrome, swooping lines, luxury tied in with muscle. 😎

I don't know how many times I've seen this video. But until you're able to make new videos. I'll keep re-watching the great videos you've already given us

You're the man Steve get well soon we miss you out here

Thank you Steve, For doing a Video, On this car, At 17 This was my second car, 65 Buick skylark 300 4 bbl bucket seats, 2 speed Powerglide, 7 years I owned and loved this car. In 78 I spent 3000,dollars rims rear quarters,paint, That car ,was awe-some, ,Could not Burn out, Didn't matter still love that car,Had Intermittent tail lights, Have never seen another one with That option.,I raked , mowed and shoveled a lot of snow to fix that car.

My very 1st car was a 1967 Buick Skylark, 2 door, a 300 v8, and a 2 speed power glide transmission, I bought it for $ 700, Had a lot of fun.

My grandfather cut the body off one of these just behind the front doors and made a flatbed for it to use around his farm….. it was how I learned to drive @12 years old, ripping all through the woods!

FINALLY! My all time favorite car. My dad bought one new in 65. My first car was one, with the little 300 engine. Then, in the early 80s, I bought a Gran Sport from the original owner and did a restoration on it. I had it painted black on black, it was gorgeous! The single biggest regret in my life was having sold that car. A couple of trivia facts: The Gran Sport used the heavier convertible frame instead of the standard frame. The bird logo on the fender was only used for 64 and 65 model years. In 66, it was redesigned and more "streamline". If you had the optional road wheels, the center caps featured that bird logo, but again that particular shape was used in 64 and 65 only, very rare. 65 was also the only year the tail lights went all the way across the back, a feature I thought was quite attractive.

I had a 4 door 1965 Buick Skylark with the 300 Wildcat V8 and the less than wild 2 barrel carburator lol. I got it cheap for basic transportation in college and it was an amazing car. Tires, plugs, wires, oil and new battery was all it needed to get going reliably. Actually decent on gas with the smaller carburator. Later changed the relay and exhaust. That was it for fixing. This was in the early 90's and friends thought I was crazy to drive such an "old car" as a daily driver. This car went everywhere and the engine always started. Soon we were doing coffee shop runs with everyone packed in the Buick. They nicknamed it Betty Buick. Good times.

Love it. Buick and Olds always had the best looking versions

We're all pulling for you Steve. Hope to see you soon

Great Buick! Love your knowledge of bot cars and Thermoses and luncboxes! Truly an American Renaissance man!

My favorite year for the A body Lark, clean and tidy looking, excellent proportions. Thanks Steve

Thanks Steve.

Mr. B. ! Good morning to Steve’s class ! I have a 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible and Steve got mid size, this is a fun vehicle to drive. It is a good size .

Thank you Steve,

My uncle had a gold one with white top, and spinner hub caps! Pretty car!

THE LICENCE PLATE GAME ! Yeah , I like that . I started my licence plate collection in 1965 at our family friends home in Rochester , Mass. down the street from WITCH ROCK . I still have these plates , Mass . 1915 . Like new condition . The collection consists of over 3,000 plates from around the world . I want to donate them to a FLA . museum .

Good morning Steve. That was a nice car at one time. A good vehicle to make time flying down the Pike.

Thank you

I don’t recall ever having seen that vinyl top style before, and never cared for them anyway, it’s the rare car that looks better with a vinyl top than one without it.

In 81 I bought a 65 A body Buick with a 310 v8/2 speed auto. I was in Hawaii at the time. This car had NO heater! Truly a tropical car.

I just finished a restoration on a 1967 Jeep with a 225 Buick V-6, and even that has the heart warming, soul satisfying rumble of a nail head!! I love it. Kaiser/Willys bought the rights to the V6 from Buick to install as an optional engine in the 66-71 Jeep vehicles, and what a great engine that "Dauntless V6", as Jeep called it, turned out to be in Jeep vehicles. They used a very heavy flywheel to mask the odd fire shake and that allowed the engine to lug and have torque that defied it's small size. By 1972, AMC owned Jeep and wanted to use their straight 6, so the rights were sold back to Buick and became the engine base for the turbo grand national and the 3800.it had a long life and legacy. People always think the little dauntless in my Jeep was a transplant and are surprised to find it's actually the original engine to the CJ. When I was building the Jeep, I decided I did not want to keep the non-syncro 3-speed, so I adapted an aluminum case Muncie passenger car 4- speed to the Jeep. The V6, 4-speed and 3.73:1 gears make it a blast to drive.

Steve brings up an important point, that the American full size cars were having their sales dominance eaten away by the compact and mid-sized offerings. Some buyers felt that cars were getting too big. A '64 Chevelle was the same size as a '55 Chevy. (the '55 was taller though). The full size cars would continue to lose market share throughout the '60's. And it wasn't just boomers, it was the slightly older generation that led the way. Boomers were born in 1946-1964. Not a lot of these people were buying new cars in 1965 Most didn't even have a drivers license !! 🤔

Though all GM divisions shared the same platform, each was distinguishable from the other. I SOO LONG FOR THOSE DAYS!!!

Nice, I had a 65 special drop top 300, 2 speed red with black interior .. loved that car , had it storage and it was towed & sold before I knew what happened

That's Lennie Kennedy's B/S '65 Gran Sport at the top of the page lined up against the big '65 Riviera GS which ran the Super Wildcat 425 nailhead with 2 four barrel carbs. Buick Gran Sport - Fast With Class. I own a 1969 Skylark Custom convertible, Buick 350 with 2 barrel carb which I've owned since 1978. Not particularly fast, but plenty of good usable torque. Buicks hide in plain sight, a big name in American automotive circles but if you go to your local car show, you will only see maybe 1 or 2 amongst a sea of Chevelles, Mustangs, and Camaros. But Buicks get in the blood. This car which is the subject of Steve's show today was once a very beautiful machine with many unique styling cues and I'm proud to still have my old Buick sitting in my garage, waiting for me to get in and turn the key. Thanks Steve!

I had a 65 with the 300 4bbl. I read differing specs on the compression anywhere from 10.25 to 10.50. But even with the power glide and highway gears it moved out fairly well. Also the halo trim also allowed for 2 tone paint.( mine was maroon with a white top) thanks for the memory Steve… I loved that car

Hi Steve, great show and I really like you're model show. When I was in my late teens I worked for a Buick dealer and had the opportunity to drive GS 400 4spd ,black with red interior a really good looking car and I couldn't believe how quick it was. I had and still have a 65 Malibu SS L-79 4 spd and this Buick would give me all I could handle. Real nice ride. I'm glad I had just bought my Chevelle and could not trade it. I am a Chevy Guy .Plus I watched them unload my Chevelle when it was new and I always wanted to buy it and when the time come I sold everything and bought it.

This takes me back. My first car was a 64 Skylark with the 300, Black vinyl interior and bucket seats. I found through my exuberant teenage driving that the small block Buick engines had inadequate oiling for hard driving and subsequently blew up a couple of them. I also discovered that the back window of the A body tended to leak which led to the floor in the back seat as well as the body mount both rusting out. Even though mine was a 64 I liked the styling of the 65 better. I would not mind having another even today.

Always loved skylarks

Buick was always the Unsung HERO at the Racetracks back in the 1960’s & 1970’s. The Original Hemi Hunters!!! 😮 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

where else can you learn about cars and lunchbox/thermos' and hubcaps too! very interesting!

I remember seeing one of those Buicks as a teen with my dad at a Buick dealership at 135 Street and Broadway in NYC. I think it was green with black interior. Thanks for the memories 😢

Luv 2 have breakfeast with this guy. I used to work I had a car wash after school and the guy used to rent convertibles skylarks.... Gorgeous. VEHICLES. CAR WASH OWNER PAPAS

A very informative crawl, great job! The license plate 'fix' was an era proper repair too. Back when you got new plates every year, the old ones were a free source of metal. Some pop rivets or sheet metal screws and you had a much better repair than screen wire or wadded up newspaper to support the Bondo! LOL. These repairs, shoddy as they were, allowed many cars to survive until they could be properly restored. Or maybe just re-repaired and flipped to an unsuspecting buyer!

Had a 65 buick special, 300 and two speed. A nothing fancy 4 door. Nice car. Really miss it.

Wow - that thing is now closer to being “earth” than it is to being a “car”………😂 Hope it enjoyed it’s few days of pampered glory in the mid-60’s……..👍

when new that was a beautiful ride

Thanks Steve. 🙏🏻😎

Beast of a Video

That was my first car, same engine. Bought it in 1975 for 400.00. Was good transportation

First car I bought as a 17 year old was a gold 1966 Skylark with the 340ci 4 bbl 275 Wildcat V8. A large landowning farmers hire hand kept removing the stop sign on the road that crossed the old highway I was driving on as we lived off that highway. Well one morning on my way to work I’m entering the intersection and was hit broadside by that hired man and nearly killed. My poor Skylark was completely totaled. Totally mangled. Being friends with the insurance company people and the no show of the police to the scene I was blamed as the cause of their broadsiding me during my right of way being on the highway and his running a known stop as it crossed the highway meant he or his boss wouldn’t have to replace my automobile. Still kinda torqued over the wrongness of it all.

Good morning from Montreal Canada 🇨🇦 Great video once again 👌 I do delivery of tires for a NAPA franchise and one of my customers has a ‘65 Buick Wildcat GS sitting in his car bay getting worked on and it has the 401 BB.

Hi Steve another great video. I always liked the 60s mid size Buick. Had a neighbor that had 65 or 66 it was maroon with black interior and it road like being on a cloud. Since you mentioned it i do remember an engine lope from that car. So one night my friend (their son) 'stole' the car and we went cruising the county rds. The rain, after 2-3 days had just stopped. It was early spring. He went down this long hill with an even longer gentle curve at the bottom. We went into that curve flying and dude lost it. When we hit that curve he sort of just drove straight into the curve and off the rd we went. So when the car came to a stop we couldn't open the doors. It turns out we 'landed' in the middle of a freshly plowed field and the car had suck in the mud. I remember hitting the power window switch and getting out only to land up to my shin in mud. Neither one of us had a license and had no idea how to explain how a Buick ended up in a plowed field. When I got home no one wondered why my feet were muddy but my friend on the other hand I can only imagine what was said. I would have loved to have been at that field the next day watching them pull that Skylark out. It had to have been about 200ft into that field. Thanks Steve. Namaste 🙏🏼

Wow what a duration! Thanks for the info.

Love this era of buicks! Had the thermos with the glass liner. Had it all the way to adulthood..then it broke. A whole batch of coffee ruined!

We had a '65 red Skylark with a white painted top

thanks. I had a '65 Special...with the 3 speed column shift. 225 cid. Clutch 'equalizer' linkage failed; got one out of corvette... that's what Sal told me.

I remember the thump thump thump. Driving around with my Uncle in His Skylark. Thanks for the memories.

H Steve, I like the fact that you mentioned the "body on frame" construction on the car that you profiled. The GM "B" body (GM Mid-size) came out in 1964 and it featured a full perimeter body on frame Vs. an "X" frame or unit built. This was a new innovation, that over time, replaced the all the "X" frames on GMs Full-size car line(s). Ford also did the same thing on the Full-size Ford-Mercury line replacing there "X" frame starting in 1965. The unit built Ford Thunderbird and Lincoln Continental would not receive a full perimeter frame until later on. Chrysler on the other hand replaced there "X" frame Full-size cars with a front sub-frame under the unit build body. The full perimeter is a lighter frame with a stiffer body shell and softer rubber body mounts, that provides more support, better handling, smoother ride, quieter ride and less harmonic vibration into the passenger compartment. Ford also used cross-flow radiators in the early 60s on there Full-size cars with a low hood. You are correct in regards to the transmission in the car you profiled. It is not a 2 speed Chevrolet Powerglide. It is a 2 speed GM Turbo 300. The Powerglide was normally fluid cooled, but was air cooled on some 4 cylinder cars, I.e. Chevrolet Nova and Chevrolet Vega. The Turbo 300 was normally fluid cooled, but was air cooled on some 6 cylinder cars, I.e. Pontiac OHC 6 and Buick V6. Please reply. Dave...

They had a tight quality feel to them, my brother had an emerald green colored 65 that I drove a lot & rode in. That was the original steering wheel with the cracked plastic housing, my brothers had a crack too in the same spot this was back in '78 pretty low mileage car when he got it like 40k.

"Whats in the Box?" Now why can't that be a game as well? Much more interesting than the Hubcap game.

Love the Skylark. I’ve owned a 63 convertible, a 68 convertible and a 69 Skylark Deluxe (4dr hardtop). All were V-8s, all automatics and the 69 had a locking diff and A/C.

Body by Fisher was always my favorite logo on my father's Oldmobile 88 - it seemed so FANCY, even if it was just the name of the factory

I'd say the majority of small block Chevys didn't come with 2.02 intake valves. They were only on the high performance engines. Most had 1.94 or 1.72 inch valves.

Get well soon Steve.

I have owned a '64 Skylark 4-door sedan with the 300, a '65 Skylark 4-door sedan with the 300, and a '66 Skylark 4-door hardtop with the 340. I also had a '67 Skylark 2-door hardtop with the 300, but the nailhead design was gone by '67. Interesting to note that the '64 through '66 models called out the TORQUE rating on the air cleaner, NOT cubic inches. The 300 with 2-barrel was the "Wildcat 310". The 300 with the 4-barrel was the "Wildcat 355" and the 340 with the 2-barrel was the "Wildcat 350". These cars all had a tremendous amount of torque for the weight. My 340 had brutal acceleration! Even more amazing with only a 2-barrel and a 2-speed Super Turbine transmission with a 1.765:1 first gear!

That dog says: "I don't always stroll casually through someone else's video, but when I do, it's Steve Mags!"

I remember my thermos doing just that.. lol. You were out of luck with your beverage when that happened!

Do enjoy your expertise and enthusiasm. What is a revelation to me is just how hard New England winters are on steel. I refer to oxidation. Rust. Depressing in a way, but much like our own bodies which give it up over time and cannot be prevented despite everything.

I use to cry when I broke my thermos , I loved my lunch boxes when I was a lil boy. Munsters was my favorite

Steve, not to be picky, but the radiator was indeed two rows.I owned, operated and repaired thousands of GM radiators over 20 plus years. I did a lot of custom work and on the header plate, you could get 4 rows of tubes on that 2 3/4 inch header for a "Max Cool" effect.

You really know your stuff pal!!

Just a note Steve, the "Gran Sport" emblem was actually up on the c pillar of the car. I recently bought a '65 GS that's been parked since 1977.

'67-'70 big block GSs had standard finned aluminum front drums. Had them on my '69 GS400. Worked great.

I had an uncle that owned a Buick dealer in Torrington Ct. back then, I remember my aunt driving a convertible one of these. Nice car it was.

Interesting story on the 401 c.i. valve sizes & what gives them their sound. The G.S. Buick & the 442 Cutlass W30 pkg were my favorites from the era. Very torque cars & you didn't see them everywhere plus they were a souch more luxurious. Thanks for the review big Steve!

My Brother had a 70 Skylark GS. It was a neat car with decent power.

These were called in the V-6 wee called Buick's Fireball V-6 3.8L and then in late 1987 they kicked off the Buick 231 FWD 3800 Pre Series I started on 1987 went to 1991 then they went to Series I 3800 from 1991-1995 Series 1 supercharged 1991-1994 and then in 1995 went to series II and Series II Supercharged they lasted until 2004 and went to the Series III Supercharged in 2004 and N/A 3800 Series III introduced in 2005 and both lasted until April 28 2008. This engine lasted 47 years.

Love your content Steve, so informative my brotha!

The skylark is my favorite A-body. Thanks for the great vid! Motortrend might have only made one mistake, but it was a huge one. I even loved your vids during the lockdowns showing your models.

Forget turtles, I love Buicks!

I’m pretty sure the GS400 designation didn’t appear until 1967.

Random Doggie comes cruising through just to say hi & get on camera , nice ! Thanks for all the great videos guys........

It's pretty amazing that the materials that basically came from the earth disintegrates when exposed to the elements.

Had the 64 Special wagon as my first car. (Family hand me down). Very similar to the 65 Skylark I always admired. The wagon Special seems to be rare. Not many around.l

I hope you're doing well God bless you Steve

They came with the Buick Pontiac style 8.2 rear with bolt in axles. Buick housing had the single rib while Pontiac had 2.

One of my Dad's coworkers had one, it was Red with a White roof and White interior bucket seats A/C and power windows . I remember riding in it when we visited his Jersey Shore summer home . It was a gorgeous car and I got yelled at for playing with the power windows .

If memory serves med correct the 1965 & 1966 model year was referred to as "Gran Sport" the "GS" came in 1967 with the new 400 cui engine...

Thanks Steve! I’d have thought that was a ‘regular’ nailhead. (Cool engine, by the way). The bird logo is definitely a slick and subtle touch.

Oh no attack of the junkyard puppy 😢

The 300 morphed from the 215 aluminium engine. People would use 300 iron heads on 215's for the bigger valves if I recall. Minus two cylinders got you the 3.8 V6 which still shared some stuff, front cover, oil pump? with the 215 at least on some models till Rover changed things. The Australians did their own unique 4.4 aluminium V8 version, the cars weren't very successful but the jet boat crowd ran them for years.

All told there were about a million A bodies sold across the GM brands in 1965. That’s a lot of cars!

I always liked those cars, looked like the seats were outside next to the car, i like how the sheet metal is all rusting away, but all the glass and chrome strips are doing just fine, thumbs up

Great video Steve! My coworker brother had a Buick gsx stage2. Man that car was a beast! It was yellow with the black stripes, also had the munsie 4speed manual! That was back in the early 80s, I wonder if he still has it!

When you get the tag, you can brag, and go all the way, don't you say? 02B for the second week of February 1965 production, 65 for 1965 model year, 44437 for Buick Skylark V8 hardtop coupe, FB for Flint, MI assembly, 158 for black interior trim, C for Arctic White exterior lower paint, the 2 should mean an accent color up top, W for tinted windshield, X for ST300 automatic transmission, P for backup lights, W for deluxe front seat belts with retractor. No VIN, can't win, but easy to figure out, no doubt: 4 for Buick, 44 for Skylark V8, 37 for hardtop coupe, 5 for 1965 model year, H for Flint, MI assembly and the rest is the production sequence. Most of the GM intermediates didn't get a special VIN code (GTO, GS, 442, etc.) until about 1966, although some got it in the cowl tag by some sort of body series code or in the accessory section of the tag.

Hey, it's Uncle Rico's van!

I had a 65 2 door hard top with a 300 4 barrel with super turbine 300 2speed trans.

My favorite cars. I bought a 1973 gran sport stage I. I got in lots of trouble with that car. My dad always had Buicks.

Too bad the Tail Lights and Panel are missing... They were the best looking tail light assembly available in 1965! They even won styling awards for the look.

Body by fisher , carpet by cha cha chia pet. Floor pans were Bluetooth

Drop a 396 in that beauty!

I had a maroon one with bucket seats. 300 and 2 speed automatic

Random Dog: Scuse me, just passin through.

That car originally came with a top tank radiator.

I got a 66! With a 350 chevy in it haha

Lol hard tops had the grand spot on the c pillar , the convert had it on the quarter panel. Just a note .

Shame to see it rotting away 😢

a 300 is not a nailhead the way to tell the difference is the distributor on a nailhead was in the back and the 300 was in the front the 300 was a higher deck 215 and later got to 340 cu in