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Junkyard Gem: 1962 Buick LeSabre 2-Door Sport Coupe

American car shoppers looking for a full-sized hardtop coupe in 1962 couldn't go wrong with the offerings from The General. Chevrolet would sell you a snazzy new Bel Air sport coupe for just $2,561 (about $23,800 today), but those Joneses next door wouldn't have felt properly shamed if you put a new proletariat-grade Chevy in your driveway. No, to really stand tall during the era of Alfred Sloan's Ladder of Success, you had to go higher up on the GM food chain. For the B-platform full-sized cars of 1962, that meant the Pontiac Catalina/Bonneville beat the Chevy, the Oldsmobile 88 was the next step up the ladder, and at the very top was the Buick: the hot-rod Invicta and its swanky LeSabre sibling. To go beyond that, you had to move up to a C-platform Buick Electra or Cadillac. Today's Junkyard Gem is a once-luxurious '62 LeSabre, now much-faded in a northeastern Colorado boneyard. The reason GM shoppers got so bent out of shape about the "Chevymobile" episodes of the late 1970s, in which some GM cars received engines made by "lesser" GM divisions, was that each division had its own family of V8 engines during the 1950s and 1960s and they weren't supposed to be mingled. The '62 LeSabre got a 401-cubic-inch (6.5-liter) Nailhead engine (so called because the valves were unusually small), rated at 265, 280, or 325 (depending on what kind of compression ratio and carburetion you wanted). That's not crazy horses for a big-displacement, two-ton luxury coupe of its era, but the small valves allowed for combustion chambers optimized for one thing: low-rpm torque. This 401 has the two-barrel carburetor, so it made either 412 or 425 pound-feet of torque. That's just a bit less than the mighty Cadillac's engine that year, and definitely sufficient to get this car moving very quickly. You had to pay a fat premium on the Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile B-bodies to get an automatic transmission (a three-speed column-shift manual was base equipment in those cars), but a Turbine-Drive (formerly known as the Dyna-Flow) automatic was standard issue on the 1962 LeSabre. This was an interesting transmission design that traced its origins back to the 1942 M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer and used torque-converter multiplication to provide a CVT-like experience with no perceptible shifts (the driver could select a separate low gearset manually, so the shifter looks just like the one on the true two-speed Powerglide transmission).

Consumer Reports no longer recommends Honda Civic

Consumer Reports annual Car Reliability Survey is out, and yes, there are some big surprises. First and foremost? The venerable publication no longer recommends the Honda Civic. In fact, aside from the walking-dead CR-Z and limited-release Clarity fuel-cell car, the Civic is the only Honda to miss out on CR's prestigious nod. At the opposite end there's a surprise as well – Toyota and Lexus remain the most reliable brands on the market, but Buick cracked the top three. That's up from seventh last year, and the first time for an American brand to stand on the Consumer Reports podium. Mazda's entire lineup earned Recommended checks as well. Consumer Reports dinged the Civic for its "infuriating" touch-screen radio, lack of driver lumbar adjustability, the limited selection of cars on dealer lots fitted with Honda's popular Sensing system, and the company's decision to offer LaneWatch instead of a full-tilt blind-spot monitoring system. Its score? A lowly 58. The Civic isn't the only surprise drop from CR's Recommended ranks. The Audi A3, Ford F-150, Subaru WRX/STI, and Volkswagen Jetta, GTI, and Passat all lost the Consumer Reports' checkmark. On the flipside, a number of popular vehicles graduated to the Recommended ranks, including the BMW X5, Chevrolet Camaro, Corvette, and Cruze, Hyundai Santa Fe, Porsche Macan, and Tesla Model S. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the hilariously recall-prone Ford Escape getting a Recommended check – considering the popularity of Ford's small crossover, this is likely a coup for the brand, as it puts the Escape on a level playing field with the Recommended Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Nissan Rogue. While Ford is probably happy to see CR promote the Escape, the list wasn't as kind for every brand. For example, of the entire Fiat Chrysler Automobiles catalog, the ancient Chrysler 300 was the only car to score a check – there wasn't a single Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Maserati, or Ram on the list. That hurts. FCA isn't alone at the low end, either. GMC, Jaguar Land Rover, Mini, and Mitsubishi don't have a vehicle on CR's list between them, while brands like Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Nissan, Lincoln, Infiniti, and Cadillac only have a few models each. You can check out Consumer Reports entire reliability roundup, even without a subscription, here.

Junkyard Gem: 2006 Buick Lucerne CXL

When The General's Buick Division axed the LeSabre and Park Avenue names in 2005 (after 46 and 30 years, respectively, though the Park Avenue returned a few years later in China), the replacement top-of-the-line Buick sedan became the new Lucerne. It wasn't the Buick with the biggest price tag that year— those honors went to the Terraza minivan and Rainier SUV— but it became the flag-bearer for a bloodline of cushy, prestigious Buick sedans that stretched all the way back to the early days of the American auto industry. Lucerne sales for the 2006 and 2007 model years went pretty well, and now enough time has passed that some of these cars are showing up in the self-service car boneyards I frequent. Here's a first-year example with the optional Northstar V8 engine, found in a Northern California yard last summer. Plenty of American cars have been named after cities in Italy, France, and Spain, but the Lucerne is the only one I can think of that bears the name of a Swiss city (to be fair, the entire Chevrolet Division is named after a Swiss man, so Switzerland didn't really get shortchanged by The General in the naming department). CXL was the Lucerne's mid-grade trim level, sandwiched between the CX and CSX. The high-zoot Lucerne CSX got the 4.6-liter Northstar as standard equipment, but this quad-cam V8 and its 279 horses cost extra on the CXL. The base engine for the CX and CXL was the good old 3.8-liter pushrod Buick V6, rated at 197 horsepower. No US-market 2006 Buick could be purchased new with a manual transmission; this car has a four-speed automatic. In a Buick tradition stretching back to the late 1940s, this car boasts flashy "Ventiports" on the fenders. In past years, the number of ports on each side designated the car's intended swank level; starting with the Lucerne, they indicated the number of engine cylinders. So, when you're crawling around your local Ewe Pullet and looking for Northstars, seek out the Lucernes with the four-hole Ventiports. "Leather-appointed" power bucket seats and "wood-toned" trim were standard on the CXL, as well as an MP3-capable CD player with six speakers. By 2006, most American vehicle shoppers seeking something big and luxurious chose trucks and truck-like machines, but the market still supported quite a few sedan models such as the Lucerne. Most US-market GM vehicles got these little square "Mark of Excellence" fender badges during the late 2000s.