A whirlwind tour of Dale Varnam’s junk yard Fort Apache revealed a derelict black sedan accordingly brought indoors under its own steam a decade or two ago. Blockaded by further horded stash over time, I figure here it will remain in this spot for the duration.

With much to see and no time to linger I swung my phone camera to grab this photo with the intent to identify the automobile later.

Make, model, year? Sans badging that is more of a challenge. Google Lens and Grok AI saw the tall radiator and proclaimed it a Rolls Royce possibly so no help there…

The is late 20’s or early 30’s and I browsed google images of hood mascots. Only high end cars of that era came so equipped and the Goddess ornament came into focus almost immediately as belonging to Cadillac (or sometimes grafted onto sister car, the less expensive Cadillac entry – LaSalle). One problem; none of those cars had the radiator shell resembling this one. Knowing that other GM makes shared from the same parts bin, I picked the next tier down and sure enough the grill style on this oldie is from Buick.

Buick had their own flying lady but this is not she and this ain’t a Cadillac. MIA on the black example is the floating badge that mounts between the headlights that was new for 1930. That would have made identification too easy.

The 1930 grill design differs from 1929 and it was revised again in 1932. A tape measure on the wheelbase would have nailed down the specific model.

The black sedan discovery is a (30 or 31) Buick, personalized with an embellishment from a period Cadillac to trick us.