Detroit Speed and Engineering has long been known for its efforts to bring modernized chassis and suspension components to classic muscle cars and trucks. Originally founded in 2000 by Kyle Tucker, a former suspension engineer on GM’s Corvette development team who started designing suspension upgrades for a ’69 Camaro project in his spare time, the Mooresville, North Carolina-based company has become one of the preeminent shops for pro touring hardware in the years since. But did you know that DSE has a stable of incredible in-house builds as well?
The latest entry in the growing roster of DSE stunners is this 1965 Buick Riviera GS. As Detroit Speed’s Matt Butts explains, it’s a build which epitomizes the company’s overarching goal of bringing contemporary performance to vintage platforms without compromising classic style. “The big thing for us is that we want to keep the elements that made the car cool in the first place. From there we expand on the details and refine the overall package, but we never want to lose the original vibe of the car. And from a performance standpoint, we of course always put a lot of emphasis on the handling, drivability, and the ride quality of the vehicle.”
Although it looked like a fairly clean example when it first rolled into the shop, Butts says that it soon became clear that the team had their work cut out for them with this particular GS. “We discovered a ton of rust, and anyone who knows Buick Rivieras from this era can attest to the fact that there’s not a lot of reproduction parts available for them. So that meant that a lot of those parts needed to be built from scratch. But the overall concept was clear from the get-go: Take an iconic car and make it even better than it originally was.”
Being a DSE build, the chassis was an obvious focal point for the build. But while the company offers an array of direct bolt-in suspension systems for everything from first-generation Mustangs to Chevy C10 pickups, some projects call for a more bespoke approach.
“With this Riviera, we ended up grafting our first-gen Camaro hydroformed subframe assembly into the car,” Butts says. “And our engineering team basically scratch-built a rear suspension for it using our QuadraLink system components. The Riviera’s original rear suspension is kind of unusual – it’s a three-link design. We wanted to stick with that three-link setup, so we basically just built our own using our Swivel-Link components. It goes back to staying true to what the original vibe of the car was.”
The custom suspension setup has been matched up with hydraulically-adjustable JRi JRide shocks that can raise or lower the car by as much as three inches without changing the car’s ride characteristics, while a DSE rack-and-pinion system bestows the Riviera with a level of steering precision that Buick engineers could only have dreamed of back in the day. Stopping power has also been dramatically improved thanks to a Bosch Motorsports ABS system, Brembo calipers, and carbon ceramic rotors.
It’s all seriously impressive stuff, but where things start to get really interesting is under the hood. Although the power plant might look like a traditional Buick Nailhead V8 at a glance, it’s actually a 468-cube Black Label LSX from Mast Motorsports that’s outfitted with a custom Mast three-bolt core cam, Mast Black Label LS1 295cc cylinder heads, a Holley dual throttle body intake, and a Holley Dominator EFI system. It’s a combination which belts out a healthy 730 horsepower while also perfectly matching the car’s overall aesthetic.
“The Nailheads have really distinct head and valve cover designs – it’s a really wild looking engine,” Butts points out. “We wanted to capture some of that here as well, so we machined adapters that bolt onto the cylinder heads so we could make them look larger and give it the look of that Nailhead orientation. From there we machined some finned valve covers with the Buick script and hand-fabricated the air cleaner.”
The dual-snorkel intake was also purposely oversized in order to hide the fuel rails and wiring, an effort that adds to the engine’s convincingly old-school appearance. “We also relocated the coil packs – they’re all mounted in a cluster at the very back of the intake manifold, so it looks like a distributor,” he adds.
The exterior’s sinister red paint was inspired by Ferrari’s Rosso Mugello hue, and a range of custom exterior touches have been applied to give the build a unique look without abandoning the original sense of style. “We hand-fabricated the front and rear bumpers,” Butts tells us. “They’re sort of stock-style, but they’re sleeker and tucked really tight to the body. We also 3D-scanned the factory headlight assemblies because those clamshells have a really tight bar spacing to them from the factory, and then we designed our own headlight assemblies that perfectly match the spacing of the grille bars. We 3D printed them to make sure they would have the symmetrical look that we wanted across the front of the car, and then we machined them out of billet aluminum and chrome plated them.”
DSE also relocated the tail light assemblies from bumper into the tail panel to clean up the look out back. Similar to the development process of the headlight assemblies, a rendering was created and then 3D-printed up to verify that everything was up to snuff. The finished pieces were machined out of solid pieces of brass and then chrome plated.
Despite the emphasis on big power and chassis tuning to match, the Riviera is still a grand touring machine more than anything else, so the cabin is appropriately well-appointed. As Butts pointed out earlier, reproduction parts can be hard to come by for these cars, so DSE refinished the parts that they deemed usable and fabricated the ones that they did not. Since the team had to create the entire custom floorboard in order to accommodate the custom frame and modern 6L90E gearbox, they also fabricated a custom center console and made other design tweaks where they saw appropriate.
“The idea was to create an interior that looks original but is actually far from it,” says Butts. “So all of the wood inserts in the door panels and the center console are constructed from bloodwood planks which were milled down to veneers, cut to fit, and satin clear coated. Satin tends to bring out more of the grain pattern than a gloss finish does.”
The steering wheel is also a custom piece. While the team wanted to retain the look and feel of the original, they also wanted to provide the driver with more control over the transmission when needed. They incorporated paddle shifters into its design as a result, an assembly which now includes more than a dozen billet machined components. Adding to the vintage-meets-modern motif are the repurposed the factory climate control sliders, which now control the adjustable suspension and Hooker Blackheart exhaust cutouts.
After a five-year gestation period, the Riviera made its debut at the SEMA show in Las Vegas, Nevada, earlier this year. And as you’d expect, it turned plenty of heads on the show floor. “I think it’s one of the more detailed Riviera builds of the last few years,” Butts says. “For us it’s about extenuating the style and refining the overall package without losing that original flavor.”
