THE NEWFOUNDLAND BUICK

JIM MANNING sent in a copy January 3rd. of the 1956 Newfoundland Buick advertisement (part of the ad is shown above). Buick was sold here by Terra Nova Motors (and still is) and in the ’50s and ’60s the dealership was located at Fort William, St. John’s east, where the Bell Aliant Building is now. Jim said on his email that he thought this “would be of some interest to you and your readers” and he’s right. A lot of interest in The Newfoundland Buick was generated near four years ago in this column. In early June, 2014, we wrote, that this brand was certainly a curiosity:

“General Motors must have endeared itself to the Provincial Department of Highways at the time to even suggest that this young province needed a specially engineered version of a successful North American car! That must have been a knock in the head for the department, suggesting as it did for one thing that our roads needed better-than-average suspension.”

The copy of the ad which we ran in June 2014 appeared in The Daily News and was sent to us by reader Gary Hebbard. At the time Gary wrote, “maybe a reader will remember one of these cars or perhaps owned one. If one existed today it would be a very valuable antique for its rarity.”

The advertisement said that GM engineers visited here, examined driving conditions, experimented, changed designs and arrived at “an especially engineered Buick that is not available on the mainland or elsewhere.”