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Rough Start: Sleepy Brown – This 1979 Buick LeSabre Is The Perfect Hustle Car


Rough Start: Sleepy Brown – This 1979 Buick LeSabre Is The Perfect Hustle Car

A Buick LeSabre of similar vintage to the 1979 coupe that we found while surfing for Rough Start finds is one of our top picks for a true sleeper. That car, a blue mirror-image on nitrous, is known to be deeeeep in the nine-second range and looks more-or-less like a late-night money hustler…provided you could convince the target that your noisy LeSabre was nothing more than a 350 and straight pipes, you could get them to line up and have them back on the trailer before they were even aware that they got hit with a bat in the back of the head. Do you really need to run nines to have fun? Ok, wise guy…we know, with the current fleet of horsepower-rich cars coming out of the Big Three, that isn’t as rare as it used to be. But here’s the $25,000 question: could you hide the power?

Let’s be blunt: the 1979 LeSabre, even as a two-door, is nowhere even close to anybody’s “gotta have it” list. If it wasn’t a GM B-body, there would be no desire to have one at all. But being on the B-platform opens up some gates. There’s suspension parts out there. There’s brakes out there. Engine choices? Pick your poison…old school or new works just fine. And on this car, we are digging the slot mags. They add just the right touch of “mild build” to the flavor. You might be a lot more sporty that the original Buick and Oldsmobile engines had any right to be, but a solid 350 even fifteen years ago isn’t anything today. I’m actually not advocating an LS swap here. We all know it can be done and can make the power. Nah…we’d say that if you wanted to go big or go home, you go B-O-P. The LeSabre did come with the Olds 403 as the top-tier engine, so why not just bite the bullet and dress up a 455 in disco duds? Hide the fun under fake vacuum hoses and an air cleaner with a flipped lid? Or, you could really hop off the rocker and go for a big-cube Cadillac mill. Keep things quiet and let the grace and grunt of the Wreath-and-Crest do the rest. Nitrous would be fun, too.

Or leave it be and enjoy it as a cruiser. Your call. But making this thing torque-heavy just calls to us…

Craigslist Link: 1979 Buick LeSabre


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2 thoughts on “Rough Start: Sleepy Brown – This 1979 Buick LeSabre Is The Perfect Hustle Car

  1. bill

    says buick on the label. why would you put any other crap in it. lot of new stuff to go fast with buick engines.

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