1963 Buick Riviera

The Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Thunderbird, both of which began life as sporty two seaters, quickly diverged in their evolutionary paths. The Corvette got more serious about being a sports car, while the Thunderbird acquired a back seat and became an entirely new thing: a "personal luxury coupe".

It retained a sporty vibe, but put an emphasis on plush, high-tech accommodations for two... plus maybe a couple of friends. The new category was a winner, with the 1958 and 1959 T-birds selling 37,892 and 67,456 units, respectively, vastly outperforming its two-seat predecessor in the marketplace and completely crushing Corvette sales numbers.

General Motors could not let this situation stand and launched a personal luxury coupe of its own. The task was handed to GM's second most prestigious brand, Buick, who launched the 1963 Riviera with unique sheet metal and on the all-new E-platform chassis. Even as far back as the early Sixties, that was a rarity for GM. (Prior to this car, Buick had used the "Riviera" badge as a trim level on other models.)

The standard engine was Buick's "Wildcat 445", which was what Buick called the 401 cubic inch version of its Nailhead V-8 with a four-barrel carburetor and 10.25:1 compression. The "445" was its output in ft/lbs of torque and it was rated at 325 SAE gross horsepower. Optional was the "Wildcat 465", which was a 425-cube Nailhead making 345 horses. Both engines were backed by a Turbine Drive automatic, which is what Buick was calling the old Dynaflow in the early '60s.

The license plate says this one has the 401, as did the car tested by Motor Trend when it was new. The crew at MT managed an 8.1 second zero-to-sixty dash and a 16.01 second trip through the quarter, hitting the traps at 85.71 miles per hour. Observed top speed was 115 and the finned aluminum drums brought the car to a standstill from sixty in 151 feet.

Price as tested was $5,159 in 1963 dollars, or about $55,100 in current bucks.

This example was photographed in May of 2026 using a Canon EOS R and an RF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

1963 Lincoln Continental Convertible

After taking a multimillion dollar bath on its late-Fifties design extravagances, the Lincoln division of Ford Motor Corporation condensed its lineup for 1961 down to a single model, the Continental, which was available as a coupe or a convertible.

The fourth generation of Continental was of unibody construction, like its predecessor, but smaller, having a 123" wheelbase. (The design proposal was originally floated as a Thunderbird, and the unibody was related to that used by the '61 T-bird, but stretched.)

Under the hood was a 430 cubic inch MEL ("Mercury Edsel Lincoln") big block V-8 with a four-barrel carburetor with a 10.1:1 compression ratio, rated at 320 gross horsepower. All cars had a three-speed Turbo-Drive automatic transmission driving a 2.89:1 rear axle ratio.

The cars were given a lengthy dyno run-in and a 12-mile road test on completion, and were delivered with a two year, 24,000 mile warranty, which was the longest of any domestic car at the time.

The slab-sided "suicide door" Fourth Generation Continentals, like this Spanish Red 1963 convertible are, to my eye, a refreshing break from the chrome-laden rolling Wurlitzers of the late Fifties. They won several design and engineering awards, sold like gangbusters and Chrysler hired their designer, Elwood Engel, away from Ford to serve as Virgil Exner's replacement as head of the styling department at Mopar, where he remained until his retirement in '73.

This one was photographed in August of 2022 using a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

1963 Cadillac Fleetwood Seventy-Five

The 70/75 Series from Cadillac were their largest and most luxurious postwar cars, not only sold as large sedans but also in limousine form, as well as serving as the platform for livery cars, hearses, ambulances, et cetera.

The 1961 redesign marked the eighth generation of the Series Seventy-Five and carried on the Fleetwood name, denoting that its body was made by the coachbuilder Fleetwood Body Company, which had been purchased by Fisher Body in the 1920s and absorbed into the General Motors family. Fleetwood bodies were exclusive to Cadillac, and only the top-flight Cadillacs, at that.

This was still the era where Detroit made small cosmetic changes for every model year, so it's easy to place this Basildon Green Fleetwood Seventy-Five nine-passenger sedan as a 1963, halfway through the eighth generation's 1961-1965 run.

It is a massive car, stretching twenty feet and three inches from stem to stern, riding on a nearly 150" wheelbase, and weighing a pavement-crushing 5,400 pounds.

Power was provided by a 390 cubic inch version of Cadillac's proprietary V-8. While it retained the same bore and stroke of the previous year's engine, a 390 cube development of the 331 Series OHV engine that debuted in 1949, it featured extensive changes. The new motor had a smaller, lighter block, a revised mounting setup for accessories, and was dubbed the 390 Series. With a Rochester 4-barrel carburetor and 10.5:1 compression, the 390 was rated at 325 SAE gross horsepower.

Base price in 1963 was $9,724 in 1963, which adjusts to over $101k in current money.

This one was photographed in May of 2025 using a Canon EOS 40D and an EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS zoom lens.

1963½ Ford Galaxie 500 Sports Hardtop

Halfway through the 1963 model year, Ford altered the roofline on the Galaxie hardtop coupe, then in its third model year of the second generation.

The original roofline, which had sported chunky C-pillars and a nearly upright rear window, was replaced with one that featured thin, sleek C-pillars and a fastback roofline. Dubbed the "Sports Hardtop", not only did the new roofline look sleeker and more modern, it also helped the Galaxies by giving them better high speed aerodynamics on the banked ovals of NASCAR tracks.

Like many cars of the period, the Galaxie 500 Sports Hardtop was available with a bewildering variety of powertrain choices, from the 138 horsepower Mileage-Maker 223 cubic inch inline six and a simple "three-on-the-tree" manual, through 260 and 289 cubic inch small block V-8s, to big block V-8s in 352, 390, 406, and 427 cubic inch displacements. There was even a limited production lightweight car with the 427, intended for drag racing.

This Rangoon Red example was photographed with a Nikon D700 and 24-85mm f/2.8-4D zoom lens in November of 2020.

1963 Mercury Meteor Custom

After one year as a full-size, 1962 saw the Meteor nameplate moved to a midsize offering, becoming Mercury's counterpart to the new Ford Fairlane.

In '63, the car came in three levels of trim. Available as the base Meteor, the sporty performance-oriented Meteor S-33 hardtop coupe, or the deluxe Meteor Custom, Mercury advertised the car as having "Spirit, Sparkle and Brawn... Bright words that mean Mercury Meteor for 1963."

The bodywork had been lightly restyled so the pod-like taillights downplayed the increasingly unfashionable tailfins, and the advertising materials played up the modern stainless steel trim on the rocker panels of the Custom.

The base powerplant in the Custom was the Meteor 6, which was FoMoCo's 170 cubic inch OHV inline six advertised at 101 SAE gross horsepower. Optionally, a Meteor Custom buyer could spring for the 221cid V-8 rated at 145 horsepower or the Mercury Lightning V-8, which was a 2-barrel Ford 260 Windsor small block that put out 160 horses.

All engines could be had with the 3-speed manual or 2-speed Merc-O-Matic transmission and the 221 V-8 could additionally be optioned with a 3-speed manual that had an automatic 4th overdrive gear.

Alas, the midsize Meteor would be discontinued after two years of sluggish sales and Mercury would do without a car in that size slot until 1966, when the Comet got upsized from the Ford Falcon platform to that of the Fairlane.

The one in the picture, a '63 Meteor Custom sedan in Cascade Blue with a Pacific Blue roof, was photographed in May of 2013 with a Samsung Galaxy SII.

 

1963 Pontiac LeMans

The first attempt at compact cars by General Motors devolved into something of a goat rope. Initially, everyone was going to share the unibody shell of Chevrolet's Corvair, but none of the other divisions were keen on the idea of an air-cooled rear engine car. Buick and Olds, further, were skeptical of trying to offer a vehicle on the short 108" Corvair wheelbase, which would make it cramped and out of step with their plusher catalogs, to say nothing of how much harder NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) would be to curb in a unit body car relative to a body-on-frame one.

So GM came up with a stretched 115"-wheelbase version for Buick & Oldsmobile, dubbed the Y-body, while Pontiac would try and shoehorn a front engine driveline into the Corvair envelope.

They did this by slicing the 389 cube V-8 in half to create a honking big 195cid slant four, mounting it in front, and then putting a transaxle derived from the Corvair's in the rear, with independent rear suspension, also cribbed from the rear-engine Chevy. The engine and transaxle were connected by a curved driveshaft only two thirds or three quarters of an inch in diameter, immediately dubbed the "rope drive" by the motoring press. Marisa Tomei's character explains all this to you in My Cousin Vinnie.

Most of that work, incidentally, was for nothing because at the eleventh hour GM headquarters relented and green-lighted Pontiac to use the longer Y-body platform.

The big four cylinder was the base motor, and optional was the Buick-designed alloy 215 V-8.

Initially there were no coupes when the Buick, Olds, and Pontiac compacts were launched for the '61 model year, only sedans and wagons, but, surprising everybody, the plusher, more powerful "Monza" model was the best-selling version of the Corvair, causing the other divisions to pile in with their own sporty two-doors. Pontiac's was called the LeMans. The coupe did have clean lines for the era.

1963 was the last year for the compact Y-bodies, as it was decided that for 1964 the Buick/Olds/Pontiac cars would move up to the midsize A-body used by the new Chevelle to fight against the midsize Ford Fairlane.

This LeMans (its own model for that year) had a new option for '63: The 326 V-8. It was essentially a de-bored 389 and weighed like a boat anchor, and it actually displaced 337 cubes but supposedly GM mandated that no compact car could boast a bigger motor than the Corvette's 327.

It was available in standard 2-barrel form, rated at 260 SAE gross horsepower, or a higher compression 4-barrel 326 H.O. variant with dual exhausts that made 280.  When Car Life tested a car with the 2-speed TempesTorque slushbox and the 2-barrel 326, they got a zero-to-sixty time of 9.5 seconds and a 17.0 second quarter at 81 mph, with a top speed of a buck fifteen. Price as tested was $2,953, or about $30,500 in 2024 currency.

There's an excellent, turbo-nerdy deep dive into the tale of the 1st Generation Tempest at Ate Up With Motor, by the way.

The car in the photos was snapped in September of 2021 using a Nikon 1 V2 and a 1 Nikkor 17.5mm f/1.8 lens.

1963 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray Convertible

The second generation of the Corvette was a stylistic triumph that had engineers pulling their hair. The Sting Ray is one of those cars that, like the E-Type Jaguar, you can't really appreciate until you see one out motoring around among the Accords and RAV-4s and Chrysler minivans of day-to-day traffic.

The sleek lines generated lift at speed and made handling sketchy when you started getting near triple digits. Chevy was Officially Not Racing at the time, so when 'Vette engineer Zora Arkus Duntov and his posse snuck a This Isn't A Factory Race Car, Honest out the back door, the Grand Sport was festooned with vents and an elaborate air dam to keep it from turning into a frisbee on the back straight.

This was also the first year that a hardtop Corvette coupe was offered, and Larry Shinoda's design for it had a solid longitudinal panel dividing the rear glass, which is why 1963 Sting Ray coupes are known as "split windows". (This formed a handy vertical blind spot smack in the middle of the rear view mirror, and was removed for '64, which is why only '63 Sting Ray coupes are known as "split windows".)

1963 was the only year of the C2 'Vette where the coupe was almost as popular as the convertible: 10,594 coupes versus 10,919 ragtops were sold.

You could get the new 'Vette with any one of four flavors of 327 cubic inch V-8. The base four-barrel motor had hydraulic lifters, a 10.5:1 compression ratio, and was rated at 240 SAE gross horsepower. Going with the L75 option got a bigger Carter AFB carburetor and different heads and exhaust manifolds and bumped the output to 300hp. The gnarliest carbureted motor was the solid lifter L76, which raised the compression ratio to 11.25:1 and the rated output to 340 horsepower. Finally, the king of Corvette hill was the fuel-injected L84 327, boasting 360 horsepower at 6,000rpm.

Car & Driver tested a 1963 Sting Ray coupe with the L75 V-8, 4-speed manual, and 3.36:1 rear end and reported 0-60 times between 6.0 and 6.4 seconds and managed a best quarter mile time of 14.4 seconds at 100mph.

The Riverside Red ragtop in the pictures was snapped with a Nikon D7100 and an 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II zoom lens in June of 2022.

1963 Mercury Monterey

The Monterey sat at the top of Mercury's 1963 model lineup, available in an array of configurations. All the non-convertible models had a reverse-sloped rear window in between buttresses formed by the chrome trim on the trailing edge of the C-pillars, the center section of which was retractable.

Termed the "Breezeway" by Mercury, this was a feature reminiscent of one found on late Fifties Lincoln Continentals and Mercury Turnpike Cruisers. The power window operating mechanism was snagged from the Colony Park full-size station wagons.

Under the hood was one of several flavors of FE 390 big block V-8. There was your basic Marauder, with a 2-barrel carb and 9.4:1 compression, rated at 250 SAE gross horsepower. Then you had your Marauder Super 390, with a 4-barrel carb and 10.1:1 compression that got you 300 horsepower.

If you really wanted to party, the Marauder Interceptor 390 added solid lifters and a hotter cam and brought 330 horses out to play.

Lastly, for people who wanted to go to the races, the 427 was available in regular Marauder and Marauder Super flavors, rated at 410 and 425 horsepower respectively. The 390 motors could be had with 3- or 4-speed manuals or the Multi-Drive Merc-O-Matic 3-speed auto. The 427's were 4-speed manual only.

Motor Trend tested a '63 Monterey sedan with the base 250-horse Marauder 390 and the column-shifted 3-speed Merc-O-Matic and got a zero-to-sixty time of 11.3 seconds and an 18.5 quarter at 75.5 mph. Considering that the car tipped the scales at over 4300 pounds, that 2-barreled juice lifter 390 had its work cut out for it.

The one in the pictures was photographed in Indianapolis back in July of 2017 using a Nikon Coolpix P7000.

1963 Volvo 122S

Initially sold in Sweden as the Amazon, the Volvo 122 was one of the first cars from the Swedish maker to have any sales success in the US. This is a 1963 122S, with the "S" signifying the sportier model, with a dual-carb 1800cc four cylinder motor making 85bhp. It was still no bolt of lightning, with 0-60 times in the mid teens, but the pushrod four with five main bearings was practically bombproof. Volvo B18 motors have put up prodigious feats of longevity.

Volvo will cling like grim death to a styling trend. By 1963 American makers were deep into the rolling Wurlitzer era of "longer, lower, wider", while the pontoon body styling of the 122 wouldn't have looked terribly out of place in the late Forties.

Volvo was ahead of the curve in other ways, though. Three-point shoulder harnesses, at least for front-seat occupants, were standard on the 122 from 1958, a first for a factory production car. The bodies featured extensive rust-proofing, too.

Volvo made the 122 up through 1970, by which point they'd largely been supplanted by the 144 and its ilk, first of the boxy Volvos that would carry on that look for decades after it, too, had become unfashionable.

The upper two photos of the parked car were taken with a Fujifilm X-E1 & XF 23mm f/2 R WR, while the lower was using a Nikon D700 and 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G, all in September of 2021.

1963 Chrysler 300 Convertible Indy 500 Pace Car

Thanks to the fact that it's a motorsports mecca, Indianapolis punches way out of its weight class if you enjoy seeing cool cars. I've joked before that if you sit at my favorite local car-spotting site at the corner of 54th Street & College Avenue, sooner or later one of everything will roll past.

One day a couple summers ago that "one of everything" happened to be a 1963 Indy 500 Pace Car replica.

While the much more interesting "letter series" Chrysler that year, the 300J, had the badass Golden Lion 413cid "Wedge" engine with dual quads on those wild-looking Ram Induction manifolds, it was only available as a hardtop.

Consequently the 1,861-vehicle run of 1963 Pace Cars were built on a regular 300 convertible. Painted Pace Setter Blue, they came with the 305hp 2-bbl Firepower 383 V-8 and a pushbutton-shifted TorqueFlite three-speed automatic transmission.

The photos of this clean example were take in June of 2022 using a Nikon D800 & 24-120mm f/4 VR zoom lens.