page_title: Buick Riviera
section_title: Debut as a personal luxury car
hierarchical_section_title: Buick Riviera / Origins / Debut as a personal luxury car
caption_attribution_description: English: The 1963 Buick Silver Arrow at the Sloan Museum at Courtland Center in Burton, Michigan (United States).
context_page_description: The Buick Riviera is a personal luxury car that was marketed by Buick from 1963 to 1999, with the exception of the 1994 model year.
  As General Motors' first entry into the personal luxury car market segment, the Riviera was highly praised by automotive journalists upon its high-profile debut. The ground-up design that debuted for 1963 was also Buick's first unique Riviera model, and it pioneered the GM E platform.
  Unlike its subsequent GM E platform stablemates, the Oldsmobile Toronado and Cadillac Eldorado, the Riviera was initially a standard front engine/rear-wheel drive platform, only switching to front-wheel drive starting for 1979.
  While the early models stayed close to their original form, eight subsequent generations varied substantially in size and styling. A total of 1,127,261 Rivieras were produced.
  The Riviera name was resurrected for two concept cars that were displayed at auto shows in 2007 and in 2013.
context_section_description: In the late 1950s, GM lacked a personal luxury car to compete with the highly successful Ford Thunderbird—a uniquely styled, two-door that had dramatically increased in popularity when expanded from a two-seater to a four-passenger car. To fill this gap, an experimental Cadillac design, the XP-715, was created, dubbed the "LaSalle" after a former GM luxury marque. Its angular look was reportedly inspired by GM styling chief Bill Mitchell's visit to London during the period, when he was struck by the sight of a custom-bodied Rolls Royce. He later said that "knife-edged" styling was what he wanted for the new model, but with a lower profile. The design itself was penned by stylist Ned Nickles.
  When Cadillac passed on the venture in 1960 the project was thrown open for competition by the other GM Divisions. Buick, desperate to revive its flagging sales, won the competition by enlisting the aid of the McCann-Erickson advertising agency to create its presentation. Initially referred to as the "Buick LaSalle" and later "Buick Riviera" concept cars, the finished design was adapted to a shortened version of Buick's existing cruciform frame. It was again introduced as a concept car in 1963 called the Buick Riviera Silver Arrow.
caption: 1963 Buick Silver Arrow concept car
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