I’ll admit it: I’m wacky for Buick stuff. I’ve owned five in the last dozen years, including my current 1996 Roadmaster Wagon, and a cool ’68 Riviera I sold a few years back. I’ve always thought they represented the best of what GM had to offer in the 1960s and early 1970s: great power, tons of torque, but a little class and sophistication, too. A muscle car for grown-ups. So when I saw this ad in Craigslist this week, my trigger finger got itchy:

“1972 Buick Skylark – 73,000 original miles, $5,000 (Location changed to protect the innocent, but rhymes with ‘Row Diland’)”

I know everybody likes the 1970 and earlier, but I don’t care. I’d take a ’72 in a minute. I also don’t care if it’s a GS or not, so a low-mileage Skylark for five grand that I don’t have to schlep halfway across the country for seemed like something I’d be all over.

The lead photo shows a shot of the odometer, with those 73,000 awesome miles…

….aaaaaaand then I looked at the second photo. Oh, it’s a $5,000 Skylark with two doors too many, sprayed primer black and sporting a set of wheels straight out of the Montgomery Ward catalog.

I’ve got no major issue with four-doors, provided they’re $850. Geez, why stop at five grand, pal? Why not eleventy-million?

There isn’t any possible situation in which I can see a four-door Buick that isn’t bone-stock mint that’s going to change hands for $5,000, even if you had $1,500 in cash stuffed in the glovebox.

Please, sir, step away from the paper bag you’re huffing spray bombs out of.

Thank you.