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You’d be hard pressed to find a more thorough or impressive custom car build than this souped up 1948 Buick Roadmaster restomod.
Master of the Road
Car restoration is its own distinct automotive art. For some, rebuilding to stock and thereby preserving a car’s original character is paramount. For others, refashioning a classic using modern technology is the preferred route. Restomodding, that is restoring and modifying, does its best to modernize while honoring a car’s history. We recently discovered a 1948 Buick Roadmaster hotrod on Carsforsale.com that nicely balances the sometimes-conflicting impulses to update and to preserve.
On par with the Cadillacs of its day, the Buick Roadmaster of the late 1940s was a car of refinement and presence. Like Mercuries of the same time, the Buick Roadmaster became a popular basis for lead sleds and chopped and channeled custom cars in the 1950s.
Our 1948 Buick Roadmaster is about as thoroughgoing a restoration as you can get, despite looking almost stock. But before you give you all the details on this spectacular hotrod, let’s look at the original Roadmaster for comparison’s sake.
Buick Roadmaster – Elegance Defined
The Buick Roadmaster dates back to 1931 and saw rapid evolution in design from the staid stylings of the 1920s to greater streamlining in the ‘30s to a bold dynamism by its fourth generation starting in 1942. The fourth-gen Roadmaster, and those before it, owed its looks to GM’s head of design Harley Earl. The ’42 Roadmaster was longer, lower, and sleeker than before, taking influences directly from Earl’s Y-Job concept car of 1938.
The Roadmaster was offered in two-door coupe or convertible or as a four-door sedan, later adding a woody estate wagon. In those immediate pre- and post-war years, Buick was nearing Cadillac in terms of quality and refinement with the Roadmaster as the brand’s flagship model. It ran the same Fireball 320 cu.-in. straight-eight it had since the mid-1930s, with a “three on the tree” manual with a Dynaflow two-speed manual option added in 1948. Despite a shortened production for 1942, cut off in February of that year, the new Roadmaster proved exceptionally popular.
Upon returning after the war, the Roadmaster was updated with a new bombsight hood ornament and less chrome than before. The car’s popularity soared. Despite being the Buick’s top end model, the Roadmaster accounted for 20 percent of sales.
The Roadmaster received a generational update starting in 1949 that saw a bigger chrome grille and even more chrome body trim that included a new optional “Sweepspear” accent and aeronautically themed Venti-Port side vents. The Dynaflow two-speed automatic became the default transmission. The Roadmaster saw a succession of generations through 1958 and a brief revival in the 1990s as an estate wagon.
Restomod Reimagines the Roadmaster
This 1948 Buick Roadmaster was meticulously restored and modified by hotrodder Ron Coco. He performed a full body-off rotisserie rebuild replacing the entire frame as well as the running gear: suspension, powertrain, and all. Replacing the stalwart but underpowered Fireball straight-eight is a swapped Chevy 502 Ram Jet V8 rated to 502 horsepower and 565 lb.-ft. of torque. The interior of this Roadmaster has also been completely overhauled. Updates include modern power bucket seats, leather clad of course, as well as a new padded dash and new instrumentation.
The car’s two-tone paint job is a combination of light green and Black Sapphire and makes a perfect contrast to the bright chrome wheels. Much of the original’s brightwork has been removed, a common modification on customs of this vintage. But in their place, Mr. Ron Coco added back a neat detail, a quad set of Venti-Port side vents that reference the following year’s (1949 model) trim.
Between the near complete rebuild, the classic custom car looks, and the powerful 502 Ram Jet V8, this Roadmaster restomod is about as good as it gets. It can be yours for $89,900.
