Eight forums, every scale, and thirty years of shop talk — new arrivals, restorations, reviews, and the finds you won’t see posted anywhere else, with the full archive back to 2002 restored and searchable. Free to Register.
Ah yes, the proposed Riviera 4-door, to be badged "LaSalle II" (the production '63 Riviera was originally intended to revive the LaSalle name under the Cadillac banner, but Cadillac turned it down).
You can see how the bodywork of the full-size Buicks of the later 60s took on some of the characteristics of this styling experiment, but it's curious that it seems to have T-Bird emblems on the concealed headlights!
If they never built the Buick Riviera automobile, this LaSalle proposal would have some attractive features, although I think the absence of a true (or at least more traditional) front grille would be a design feature I would like to see changed.
From Wikipedia: René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle - November 22, 1643 – March 19, 1687, was a French explorer and fur trader in North America. He explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and the Mississippi River. He is best known for an early 1682 expedition in which he canoed the lower Mississippi River from the mouth of the Illinois River to the Gulf of Mexico; there, on 9 April 1682, he claimed the Mississippi River basin for France after giving it the name La Louisiane. One source states that "he acquired for France the most fertile half of the North American continent". A later ill-fated expedition to the Gulf coast of Mexico (today the U.S. state of Texas) gave the United States a claim to Texas in the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. La Salle was assassinated in 1687 during that expedition.
Although Joliet and Marquette preceded him on the upper Mississippi in their journey of 1673–74, La Salle extended exploration, and France's claims, all the way to the river's mouth, while the existing historical evidence does not indicate that La Salle ever reached the Ohio/Allegheny Valley.
Coat of arms of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle.