As the cornerstone of Billy Durant’s original General Motors, Buick always seemed to have an important place in GM’s corporate heart. They were always allowed to do their own thing, and since General Motors’ divisions had less centralized authority in the ’60s than any of their competitors, they came out surprisingly different from each other. Take the ’62 LeSabre four-door hardtop shown above. While it lost Buick’s accelerator pedal starting and torque tube just a couple years before it was built, it still had a Nailhead V8 with its unusual valve layout, a Turbine Drive transmission that was unlike anything being offered in America at the time, and “Advanced Thrust,” which I’ll get to in a minute. And it was all wrapped in the typically assured GM way, crisp and lithe for such a big car. Painted in a nice shade of “Fawn Mist,” this 1962 LeSabre is located on Marketplace in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, and it was brought to us by our man T.J., who knows a nice Buick when he sees one. With a claimed 52,000 miles, it’s listed for $12,500.

So what is “Advanced Thrust?” It’s not much more than an advertising tagline, but it’s not all smoke and mirrors either. Buick engineers moved the engine and transmission forward, because as the brochure and advertisements say, “it is like putting more weight in the head of an arrow.” Magazines didn’t quite agree, but moving the engine “slightly over the front…suspension” reduced the size of the transmission tunnel, offering more room for passengers. It’s little things like that that each of the divisions tried that differentiated themselves from each other. The engine is Buick’s 401-cubic-inch V8, but with a two-barrel carburetor in the LeSabre, which added up to 280 horsepower and 424 lb.-ft. of torque. As you might know, Buick advertised their engines by their torque ratings, but the marketing department sometimes had a say; for example, although the LeSabre had 424 lb.-ft. of torque, it was inexplicably titled “Wildcat 410.”

Not counting the compact Special, the LeSabre was the basic Buick, slotting in below the Invicta and Electra, but it was still a big, comfy Buick, and this one has power steering and power brakes for an effortless drive. The seller says that “it just floats down the road.”

He also says that it’s been “kept in [a] climate-controlled garage for years,” and aside from “some bubbles popping through” the paint on the hood, the “paint…presents very well.” Pennsylvania uses as much road salt as the rest of the rust belt, so the clean condition of this one suggests that the mileage claim might be accurate, and if it isn’t, the car’s clearly well-maintained. While the Buick engineers’ idea of “Advanced Thrust” might not have made the car handle like an arrow (aside from a propensity to want to go straight), there’s no doubt that they knew how to make a car ride smoothly. Billy Durant might agree that there’s nothing like a Buick.