Our accelerated release schedule means there’s another new version of Firefox for mobile out now. The other passes will be lower to the East or West and will work fine for a 50W mobile. There are laptop stands smaller than large desks ready to slide right in under the side or front of your couch when you’re ready to get to work or pay bills or just go down a blissful rabbit hole of cat videos for who knows how long. And the data centers of today are such a new phenomenon that there aren’t specific building codes for them in most areas at the moment. Inks derived from vegetable oil are often considered eco-friendly and sustainable because they don’t produce VOCs and come from several different types of crops. But don’t fret. Magstripes are being phased out of credit cards in favor of the more secure chip-based credit and contactless cards, with Mastercard leading the way. They still required muscle, but the process was similar in concept to the way we clean clothes today, agitating the water to release dirt from cloth fibers. LeSabre still rode a 123-inch wheelbase, but so did Wildcat for the first time in four years.

Wheelbases contracted to 116 and 119 inches, ­respectively (Estate wagons rode the shorter one); curb weights dropped several hundred pounds. Estate wagons moved up to its 127-inch wheelbase. This hot-selling line continued into 1970, but without Specials — the smaller workaday models were now Skylarks — and with Estate wagons in a separate series. Skylark performed well with the latter, and tastefully done sport coupe and sport sedan models offered firmer suspension and sportier appointments for more-serious drivers. Buick jumped to third in industry production for 1982-83 and ran fourth in model years ’81 and 1984-86. Even so, ’86 volume was well down on ’85’s, and the slide continued into 1987, when Buick fell to fifth, behind Oldsmobile. With all this, Reatta failed to meet even its minimum yearly sales goal of 10,000 units and was thus dropped after 1991. Total production was precisely 21,850, including a mere 2437 ragtops (only 305 of which were built to ’91 specs). Never­the­less, full-size cars remained Buick’s bread-and-butter through 1975, accounting for over 40 percent of total division sales. In common with all X-body variants that year, Buick’s version gained heavily revised outer panels that gave it something like European “sports sedan” flair.

Riviera wasn’t left out, becoming a high-spec version of the new B-body LeSabre (though it would soon return to the corporate E-body). An outgrowth of the 430 it supplanted, this monster gulped premium gas at the rate of 12 mpg on compression ratios of at least 10:1. The last mammoth V-8 Buick would build, the 455 bowed in ’70 with 350, 360, or 370 bhp, and was standard for the GS and LeSabre 455s, Riviera, Electra 225, Wildcat, and Estates. A similar H-body LeSabre arrived the following year. The big 1977-vintage Electra and LeSabre, for example, hardly changed at all after their 1980 update, receiving only minor styling and equipment shuffles through mid-decade while accounting for about a quarter of division output each year. All employed a new-generation A-body with so-called “Colonnade” styling that did away with pillarless coupes and sedans. Signaling the imminent demise of midsize Buick convertibles (ragtop sales were down to a trickle industrywide), Skylark hardtop coupes offered a fold-back cloth sunroof as a new ’72 option. Bolstered by spiffy Luxus and Regal submodels (the latter made a separate series after ’74), the midsize Centurys sold well through 1977, providing an important “safety net” at times when inflation and rising fuel prices sent would-be big-car buyers scurrying for thriftier alternatives.

Regal sold well from the start, but Century didn’t. Intermediates were next on the corporate slenderizing schedule, so a smaller Century bowed for 1978 along with a separate Regal series of personal-luxury coupes, all built on a new 108.1-inch-wheelbase A-body. When you hear a click and feel a DIMM snap into place, firmly push the module back until it is installed flat and level, with the clips holding it securely. That’s reason enough, I suppose, and I admit I like the feel of it. Right now, the only way to get your music onto Google’s service is to upload it yourself. This reflected the product policies of Lloyd Reuss, a former division chief engineer who became Buick general manager in 1980. A genuine “car guy,” Reuss wanted some Buicks to be American-style BMWs, and he got his way. A near twin to the Vega-based Chevrolet Monza, this 97-inch-wheelbase subcompact “hatch-coupe” took a bit more than eight percent of total division sales in its first six months. We were impressed when we reviewed the 2022 edition, and there’s a newer model on offer (2023), which our research shows comes in at 20% more powerful in CPU-based tasks, but you can save more money by going for the previous model.