CLOUD NINE
Considering he’d never owned an American car before, one might say that Malcolm Cozens was jumping in at the deep end when he decided to buy one that’s aircraft carrier-long, had a very brief production run and survives in such excellent unrestored condition that its continued careful preservation is effectively a moral obligation. Despite the fact that the 1973 Buick Centurion fulfils few of the criteria that most first-time owners would want from a classic Yank, for Malcolm it’s proven to be ideal.
“I was looking specifically for an American car, and this one was just so nice and it was within my budget. I’d been going to shows and saw that Mustangs and Corvettes had their own crowd, pick-up trucks had their own crowd, and then there were other cars that were just different.
“I wanted to go in the ‘different’ category.”
Malcolm saw the Buick advertised for sale in Sunderland in 2017, went to view it and was sufficiently taken by it to drive it straight back to his home in Surrey – only a little jaunt of some 300 miles. It
