1966 Buick Riviera in Riviera Gold Paint & 425 Nailhead Engine

Jim Kolich has owned this 1966 Buick Riviera, finished in Riviera Gold over a 425 Nailhead V8, since 1991 — the same year he brought his daughter home from the hospital. That kind of coincidence is exactly why some owners never sell, and Lou Costabile’s My Car Story series caught the story firsthand at a Wisconsin car show. It’s a color and an engine you won’t see paired often, attached to a memory that’s stuck around even longer than the car has. Watch to hear it in Jim’s own words.

Some cars get bought for their specs, and some cars get bought because of what was happening in a person’s life the year they found them. Jim Kolich’s 1966 Buick Riviera falls firmly into the second category, and the story he tells about the timing of his purchase is the kind of detail that turns a routine car show feature into something with actual stakes attached. On the surface, this is a well-preserved Riviera in a paint color most people cannot name off the top of their head, powered by an engine most people have never heard of. Underneath that surface is a memory Jim has been carrying for over three decades, and it is tied directly to the exact same year this car came into his life.

The Nailhead That Made Buick’s Reputation

Under the hood sits Buick’s 425 cubic-inch Nailhead V8, named for the unusually small, vertically-oriented valves that resembled nail heads when viewed from above — a design quirk that limited high-RPM breathing but produced enormous low-end torque, exactly the trait Buick wanted for a personal luxury car built to feel effortless rather than frantic. By 1966, the Nailhead was entering its final years before Buick’s Big Block architecture replaced it, making this engine one of the last examples of a design that had powered Buick’s flagship models since the 1950s, before torque-focused big blocks with more conventional valvetrains took over the lineup.

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A Color That Doesn’t Show Up Twice

Riviera Gold is not a shade you will spot on many other cars from this era, which is part of what makes cars finished in it stand out at shows dominated by more common period colors. First-generation Rivieras, built from 1963 through 1965 before this facelifted 1966 model, established the nameplate as Buick’s answer to the personal luxury coupe boom that Ford‘s Thunderbird had kicked off a decade earlier, and the styling updates for ’66 kept that formula intact while sharpening the details.

Thirty Years, One Owner, One Memory

Jim has owned this Riviera since 1991, which by classic car standards qualifies as genuine long-term stewardship rather than a car passing through a collection. The detail that sticks, though, is what he was doing the same year he bought it: bringing his daughter home from the hospital. That kind of coincidence — a car and a milestone landing in the same calendar year — is exactly the sort of thing that turns an owner into a lifelong keeper rather than someone shopping for the next upgrade, since the car ends up tangled into a family memory no trade-in value could ever match.

Why the My Car Story Format Keeps Finding These

Lou Costabile has built an entire channel around exactly this premise: park a camera at a car show, find the owner standing nearby, and let the conversation go wherever it goes. More often than not, it goes somewhere personal, because owners who have kept a car for decades usually have a reason that has nothing to do with horsepower or paint codes. This is one of those conversations.

What Makes a Riviera Worth Keeping

Collectors chasing first- and second-generation Rivieras today are drawn to exactly this combination — a distinctive color, a numbers-matching Nailhead, and documented long-term ownership — because it is the provenance, not just the sheet metal, that separates a good driver from a genuinely desirable example. Jim’s Riviera checks every one of those boxes, and the story behind it is the kind of thing no restoration shop can manufacture after the fact.

Watch the full video and share your thoughts below.

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