We bought this Buick around 1990. It was a very complete original car. The engine ran poorly and most of the paint was gone, but all those small parts were there -- thanks to the efforts of several collectors that owned the car through the 50's in Albuquerque. The car was last registered in 1939, and a plate on the engine indicated that it was rebuilt in Albuquerque in 1937. The car supposedly spent most of its working life in New Mexico near Tucumcari, on the eastern side of the state.
The car was well cared for, it must have been in covered storage for most of its life. There is an enormous amount of wood in these cars, and virtually all of it was in excellent condition. New Mexico's dry climate had to help as well.
The car is officially a 1927 Buick Master model 51 Brougham. Buick made two different car series in the 20's, a Standard and the larger Master. This four door five passenger Master body style was quite popular, there were about 13,000 of them made and they sold for about $1900. The Master is a pretty expensive car, compared to a Ford or Chevy which sold for well under $1000. All the 1927 Buick Master model 51's were painted two tone green with a black stripe on the beltline with black fenders and splash. Fortunately, our car had some of the original paint intact, so we were able to match it very well with modern, PPG enamel.
We have been quite thorough and accurate with the restoration of this car. One compromise was with the upholstery. A dark olive mohair material was originally used for all upholstery in the interior. We could not find new material anything quite like it after several years of looking for it. We finally decided to use a forest green mohair on the seats and a lighter green wool broadcloth for the remainder of the interior. All the pleats and patterns are exactly as original, fortunately most of the original upholstery survived well enough to copy. We have retained the original material and continue to look out for finding a reasonable facsimile.
Another compromise is the top material. Only shreds of it remained, but it was obviously a green treated canvas like material. We were never able to locate material like this in green, though we could find black and various shades of brown. We finally went with the black because it complemented the fenders so well.
The engine was rebuilt with aluminum pistons that are much lighter than the original cast iron units. This car tends to run a little hot. The fan is normally driven by a flat belt. To improve cooling, I installed a '28 fan that used a V belt which is much less prone to slipping. Extra fan blades were also added to improve air flow. Finally, a distributor from a 28 engine was used. The '28 distributor uses Chevrolet points and distributor cap, and these items are far easier to find that the much rarer '27 Buick components.
LED type lights have been added to the rear window to give is brake, running, and signal lights. This is necessary because modern traffic does not seem to understand how slow a 1927 Buick is! Cars frequently brake heavily to avoid running into us when we crawl slowly away a from stop lights.
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