The 1989 Buick LeSabre Is an Old-School American Luxury Coupe

CHECK OUT THIS 1989 BUICK LESABRE T-TYPE ON CARS & BIDS!

This is a 1989 Buick LeSabre T-Type and it's GM's attempt at a sort of luxury, sort of performancey coupe in the late 1980s. We are thrilled to be offering this LeSabre for sale on CARS & BIDS!! Today I'm reviewing this Buick LeSabre and I'll show you all the many quirks and features. I'll also get behind the wheel and review the driving experience.

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DOUGSCORE CHART:

CHAPTERS:
00:00 THIS...
00:32 It Can Be Yours On CARS & BIDS!!!
01:07 Overview
02:33 T-Type Powertrain Improvements
03:21 Cosmetic T-Type Upgrades
05:07 Exterior Quirks & Features
06:01 Trunk
07:05 Strange Hood Operation
07:39 Lighting
08:45 Interior T-Type Upgrades
09:11 Interior Quirks & Features
11:19 Gauge Cluster
11:45 Stereo & Chromium Dioxide
13:28 Rear Seating
14:23 The Heart of a Winner
15:01 Owner's Manual
15:50 What Happened to the LeSabre?
16:34 Driving Experience
21:35 Final Thoughts
22:04 DougScore

#dougdemuro #carsandbids #cars #buick #buicklesabre #lesabre

[bamshiggity]

Type II (2) tape is a chromium dioxide-based cassette tape that provided better dynamic range and frequency response than normal (Type I) ferric tape. It required a higher bias current for recording and used a different EQ curve to get the best results.

[chadsmith]

As a 40 y/o, these 80's & 90's reviews are easily my favorite. I love how he finds survivors of these disposable cars.

[theinternets]

Doug, i know these aren't the most profitable videos but thank you for continuing to produce this kind of content. The older/obscure vehicles you showcase are what keep me coming back.

[dricc]

Doug, please don’t ever stop making reviews of old school cars like this. These are your finest work

[TheCarHornMaster]

Who agrees that Doug should review more 80s cars?

[FliesFLL]

My mom had a similar car, an '89 Bonneville SE with the 165 hp Buick V6. It had a lot of torque, but what made it special was that when you set the cruise control at 70 mph, the engine only ticked over at 1800 RPM, and the car was utterly silent. Me and my brother used to fall asleep in that car, because the engine sound was so quiet and the tiny amount of sound and vibration was soothing. I took Belgian friends in that car and they told me that this car was so big inside and so sedate that it was like an S class Mercedes.

-I don't know why GM kept the LS and discontinued the 3800 V6.

[rmps]

Ok, the rear license plate slot is kinda genius and needs to be brought back...

[smuckerst]

CrO2 was a switch to go between type 1 (Fe) and type 2 cassettes (CrO2) bias. This wasn't a gimmick, every cassette player except very old or basic ones had this. Some decks automatically switched modes using cutouts in the spine of the cassette.

There were 4 types of cassette, but type 2 was the most common thing people would upgrade to. Type IV was and is very expensive but can rival CD quality on the right deck. Type 3 (FeCr) was a very brief thing that failed in the late 70's, so those are rare.

[emfraza]

This special model single handedly brought Buick's average buyer's age down a full decade, from 85 to 75. Well done!

[jimgalin]

I did a double take when I saw this because I purchased a new LeSabre T Type in 1987. It was black with a grey and black interior. This sure brings back memories. The interior of the T Type was different from the regular LeSabre because it had more gages, different seats, a different steering wheel, a center console with shifter, and all of the backlighting was red. The engine was great and it got very good mileage. As Doug mentions, though, the only was to assess this car is in relation to what was available at the time. There is no use in comparing to what we have now. Thanks for the flashback, Doug, and please review more from this era.

[scoutandscooter]

I think the 3800 was perhaps the most bullet-proof engine GM ever made.

[WookieeMonster]

My family and I owned a 1988 Buick LeSabre. We bought it in 1989 after suing Ford under the Lemon Law over the Taurus that we bought that the transmission could never be fixed.
Ours was a former rental car. That meant Power Nothing. Hand crank windows. Manual locks. The passenger wing mirror was powered, but the driver side had a mechanical connection for adjustment.
The front seat was a bench. So, wherever the driver was comfortable, *everyone* had to be comfortable.
It did, however, have the 3800 V6, which is some of the finest Detroit steel that they ever produced. I was able to beat a Porsche off the line one night, many years ago.
It originally had the hood ornament that stood up, but after my sister got in an accident and nearly totaled it, the new front end had the flat ornament.
When I graduated from college and got a job half-way across the country, my parents sold it to me. None of the other vehicles we had looked at that we could afford were ones that they felt safe letting me drive away in. She was nearly totaled again in Nebraska, but still kept going. I had it for the years I was gone, and several more after I came home to California.
Eventually, she needed more work than I could afford, and so they bought it back from me. They fixed her back up, and had her several more years. But, time catches up to us all. My folks could no longer get in and out of the car with any ease, due to back and knee problems. Though it killed them to see it go, they sold it about a decade ago, to the son of one of my dad's co-workers.
That car was all heart. The only times she let any of us down was when she literally could not do it anymore. There were a couple of times our mechanic was dumbfounded by how she was running *at all*, poorly or otherwise. Things had broken that told him in all of his experience were not compatible with operation, and yet there she was. Still pulling and doing everything she could to not just give out.
I have so many stories I could tell about that car and her quirks, her virtues, and her significance in my family's lives. I've had several cars since then, some good, some middling. But I never expect to have another like that LeSabre.

[vivienm]

Also, the chromium dioxide thing is wrong. The button is to tell the tape player that you are using a CrO2 tape so it can adjust itself accordingly. This was fairly common in the late 1980s… there were multiple tape chemistries and you had to tell your tape player which chemistry a tape was. I believe high end cassette decks in the 1990s gained the ability to detect these automagically… and the rise of CDs made the more expensive higher quality tapes vanish.

[John_Locke_]

Doug is clearly not an audiophile.
You always knew somebody was serious about the mix tapes if they had CeO2 tapes. Seriously. The look, brand, and type of cassette tape you used was very important and showed your status.

[zachgadson]

I drove this in high school in 2004 and at the end of my senior year, the football players' senior prank was to remove everyone's license plate and throw them in the pool while everyone was in class. It was a mess. Police came, parents were pissed. And mine was the ONLY car allowed to leave the lot because my plate still attached. Good times.

[ericbutler]

It's easy to forget that this car was an improvement and better than a lot of other GM offerings - Corsica, Beretta, Grand Am, etc...If you owned this, you had something pretty good compared to some other options.

[kppprom]

You missed some T-type unique features. Bucket seats were unique to the T-Type other lesabres had a bench seat. The dash trim was metallic instead of wood and the full instrument cluster had red-orange lighting instead of the standard green simpler cluster. The taillights were also unique with amber turn signals. To nitpick the 3800 was standard in 89, but I'm glad you mentioned the gear ratio. The suspension was also more sportier than the standard lesabre floaty ride.

Great video Doug, glad to see the T-type get some attention.

[jordach]

My mom had the 1990 LeSabre and I loved it! The seats were so comfy, I loved the lights in the back seat as well. When you're a little boy and your mom owns that car with a Bell car phone, you feel like a rich kid. We weren't rich at all.

[wvusmc]

80's and 90's reviews are my favorite.

[uncleivansarcade]

After watching this I think we need a Monte Carlo review. The evolution of it and all.