Mid 90s GM door handles

[Tim]

Ah, the 90s. I have such fond memories of the Dallas Cowboys winning Superbowls while I spilled salsa on my Space Jam t-shirt. Not so fond however is my memory of dealing with the vertical door handles on my 1994 Buick Regal GS. That GM platform spawned a few different cars across GM’s brands and the coupe versions, like the Oldsmobile Cutlass, Chevy Lumina, etc. all sported a funky vertical door handle that when new worked fine.

However over time these cars’ doors would droop because the door hinge bushes would wear (another pattern failure in itself, IMO) due to the excessive weight of these long doors. Once the doors started to droop, the door handle’s latching mechanism wouldn’t align just right and it would get worse and worse in short order. This made it necessary to slam it harder to close, yank harder downward to open it, and swear just a little bit louder ever time. If it was icy at all outside these cars sucked balls. If you’ve ever wanted to fall on your ass trying to open your car door in an ice storm, buy a ’94 Buick Regal.

If I’d known better I would’ve recognized the cause of the problem and replaced the bushes, but being a spry 28 years old I didn’t think that far ahead. So I just replaced the handle. You know how OEM parts are usually a little to much better than the aftermarket stuff? The same was true here, except the bar was set a bit lower with these door handles. The replacements were made of the crappiest pot metal I’d ever seen – they even had that characteristic mottled, patchy look to them on the back side. Those promptly snapped off after a couple weeks.

So kind of two pattern failures in one. The vertical latches I think would’ve failed with or without the soft hinge bushes due to the spindly design of the hinge. Not sure when GM started using those soft bushes for the doors, but they ALWAYS wore down on any vehicle I’d seen them on. WHY GM, WHY?

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