If we’re being honest, the average person does not have much need for a sports car. The want for a sports car comes from an aesthetic desire and feeling. Buick wanted to tap into that desire while delivering a vehicle that could acclimate incredibly well to everyday life. Jay Qualman, advertising manager for Buick at the time, told Car and Driver in 1988 about the company’s mentality, “The more we dug into it, the more we found that there was a group of buyers who wanted a kind of sporty orientation but still wanted a practical car — one, quite frankly, that a fairly well-heeled guy could give his wife.”
The car most people sighted for this kind of vehicle was a Mercedes 560SL, and considering that Mercedes-Benz is a luxury brand, that car was out of the price range for most people at $64,230 (nearly $167,000 adjusted for inflation). That price would still be a lot for a car today, 25 years later. This is where Buick comes in with the Reatta — despite having a framework similar to that of the Mercedes, the Buick Reatta dropped the price to $29,000 ($75,270 adjusted for inflation). That is still quite a bit of money for a vehicle, but it being less than half the price of the German automobile makes it all the more appealing to your average person.
[Featured image by TKOIII via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]
