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Buick's daring Riviera redrew the American personal car for the 1960s, with an appeal that matched even Mercedes-Benz

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If the 1963-'65 Buick Riviera is not the peak of American luxury coupes, I cannot think of one that looks better. It was the early '60s passion project of General Motors' styling vice president Bill Mitchell, allegedly inspired by the vision of a coachbuilt Bentley driving through a foggy London evening, and a response to the seemingly unstoppable success of Ford's four-seat Thunderbird, then selling at a rate of 80,000 units per year.

But it was also something more than that. Mitchell was conscious that the appetite for highly embellished, rocketship bodywork was on the wane, particularly among wealthy domestic customers who were increasingly turning to prestige European makes in search of a restrained and balanced aesthetic.

The Harley Earl era at GM had finished, and Mitchell wanted a clean-lined, all-American classic for the new decade: a 'personal luxury' machine with tightly tailored, chisel-edged lines that merged coachbuilt Bentley and Pininfarina Ferrari overtones into a pillarless two-door, four-seat coupe with a razor-edged roofline and Coke-bottle waist. The 1961 XP-715 prototype revived the LaSalle name (hence the bladed ends of the front wings, a homage to the final-year 1940 LaSalle), but neither the Cadillac nor Chevrolet divisions - already selling every car they could make - needed it.