1965 Buick Riviera

Straight lines are the hardest thing to lay paint on and the easiest to get wrong — which is why so few cars were ever drawn this way.

A curved panel forgives — the reflection bends the way the metal bends, and a low spot has somewhere to go. A hard crease forgives nothing: it reflects the horizon as a single straight line, and anything wrong underneath bends it, visible from thirty feet and impossible to polish out.

So the plates are mostly about one thing. The crease itself, shot low along the flank, runs from front fender to tail without a break; the descent runs the same test in motion, every light overhead traveling the length of that line; and the third is a different problem entirely — both windows down, no pillar between them, the city legible straight through the car.

The sheet below is the shop’s standing spec for a Riviera done right — Gran Sport badge, nailhead 425 and all, as the spine has said all along.

Continued below — the build sheet