1996 Buick LeSabre Custom from North America - Comments

Upper intake manifold cracked shortly before I acquired it, leaking coolant into the engine without my knowing it.

Engine now requires a total rebuild in order to fix it completely. The car drives like crap even with new bearings/gaskets.

Despite knowing the history of this car, I bought it from an acquaintance of my father, as he assured me the car had the intake manifold replaced. It turned out his garage had replaced the lower one which typically has no problems, and left the defective plastic upper manifold intact. The car ran fine for about 2 months, back and forth from work and around town.

After driving the car normally on a 80K miles visit round-trip to see some college friends, the engine started to idle rather loudly and seemed to lose pickup changing gears. I took the car in and discovered the upper manifold had cracked around the EGR stovepipe, and now coolant was running through my engine. After replacing all the bearings and gaskets, the car still runs, but I wouldn't trust it to make it another 10K miles, so I'm taking it into Carmax to hopefully get a nice trade-in and buy something more reliable.

Morals of the story are: never trust the person you buy from, always get the car checked out by YOUR mechanic before you drive it, and don't buy GM. Sad thing is, I loved the car (other than the crappy manifold and engine failure); it really handled like a dream and was the most comfortable car I've ever owned.

How could one, "After driving the car normally on a 80K miles visit round-trip to see some college friends..." Where do your friends live? On the Moon? I have a 1996 Olds 88 and it is the best car that I've ever owned, one year and 7,000 miles no issues or break downs. These cars are made to last.

People should continue to buy GM. I've owned 3 Caddys, one Buick, 2 Pontiacs and an Olds, no issues.

I also drive a '99 Buick with the 3.8 engine with 140,000 miles and have not had the intake manifold problem. However, it is a well known of and common problem which should but won't ever be recalled. Why GM ever changed the design is beyond me. The current 3.8, soon to be phased out, now uses an aluminum manifold. Another prime example of mass units failing is the window design in the late model LeSabre, DeVille, and Bonneville. My '99 has never had any issues with the windows, however the next year the design was cheapened on some models and has cost hundreds of thousands of owners a lot of money. It is thinking like this which is really hurting GM. When you take something which works perfectly and cheapen it to save costs, you only lose in the long run when customers take their business else where. I however plan to trade for another Buick because my experience has been positive.