Larry Morris loves his one-of-a-kind 1950 Buick Super. The owner of Larry’s Body Shop in Westview, Ky., first spotted the vehicle at a Car Cruise in Louisville five years ago. The car, standing alone and notably different from everything else he’d seen, drew his attention. Fortunately, the eye-catcher was for sale. Lifelong car aficionados, Morris and his wife, Reba, bought the unusual Buick, which had only 33,000 miles on it. “It ran okay, but it wasn’t dependable,” he says of the car’s condition. “We wanted to modernize it.”
So modernize they did. After a year-and-a-half restoration, the Buick now hums smoothly down the road and gets plenty of thumbs up from admiring fans. “It’s a blast to run around in,” Morris says. “It’s just a good ol’ car.”
COMING TO LIFE
The most challenging part of the restoration was finding parts, Morris says, because they’re so rare. Luckily, he had a friend who is a “Buick fanatic,” who was able to supply a lot of parts that were not available elsewhere. “We’d go look in his parts bins and find what we needed,” Morris says. He also relied on pal Jason Love, who owns a fabricating shop. “He made parts for the car that you cannot buy for a ’50 Buick,” he says. Between hunting around for parts and working with Love, Morris got everything he needed.
He and his wife put in a complete FatMan front suspension, custom-built rear suspension, stainless tubular A-arms, rack-and-pinion steering, a 455ci Buick engine, four-wheel disc brakes, Ididit steering column, new smoked side glass, vintage heat and air and a new leather interior by Galloway’s Upholstery.
Morris estimates that at least a thousand hours went into restoring the Buick. “We had a pretty hard year-and-a-half working on it,” he says. Taking breaks helped. “It wasn’t a seven-days-a-week, 12-hours-a-day thing at all. If we got tired, we’d quit for two weeks,” Morris says, adding that during the entire process, “we totally enjoyed it.”
Aside from the difficulty of locating parts, the process was relatively free of mishaps. “Every part worked like it was supposed to,” he says. That was a nice break, considering how many restorations include a setback or struggle along the way.
FAN FAVORITE
Morris says the best part of completing the restoration was finally driving the car down the road and seeing everyone’s reactions. “That’s what makes it worth it. We get a lot of thumbs up. [The car is] different, and it’s odd, and that’s what people like about it. If we go to gas stations, it takes 15 minutes to get away,” he laughs.
The Buick also stands apart from the crowd at shows. “We go almost every weekend to a show or a cruise,” Morris says. Some of the Buick’s awards include “Best of Show” and “Best GM.” The car’s uniqueness creates a stir. “We’ve had real good luck with it,” he says.
So, what’s next on the weekend agenda? Restoring another car, of course. “As soon as we got done, we got started on another,” Morris says. “We’ve been doing it for so many years, we don’t know anything else.”
