Posted on 12/13/2010 1:06:27 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
A pristine Buick that's sat in the showroom of a Signal Hill dealer for 23 years is the stuff of turbocharged automotive legend.
The sinister-looking black coupe sits in a corner of the showroom floor, oozing macho and muscle. Square headlights. Evil sneer for a grille. Six cylinders of turbocharged fury.
If Darth Vader drove a car, this is what you might find in his garage.
This new car is 23 years old. It's a Buick Regal GNX, and in 1987 car enthusiasts including celebrity collectors Reggie Jackson, Burt Reynolds and Sylvester Stallone snapped them up.
This menacing Buick — one of only about 500 — still sports its original $29,389 sticker on the window. Experts say it could sell at auction for north of $120,000, especially since most of its surviving siblings have many more miles of rough roads under their fenders.
Why this GNX still sits there in Signal Hill amounts to a miscalculation by the dealership, Boulevard Buick, which tried unsuccessfully to boost its profit by auctioning it to the highest bidder.
"This was a car that was meant to go fast and driven hard," said Steve Davis, president of Barrett-Jackson, the Scottsdale, Ariz., rare and classic auto auction house. "So when you find one in virgin condition sitting unsold at a dealer, that is bulletproof provenance. There is no question this car was born the way you are seeing it."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
our toyota sienna 3.6l normally aspirated puts out 270hp and is awd. gets off damn quick for a grocery/kid hauler.
Think back to 1987. Granted, nowadays, 276 horsepower is about what a V6 Honda Accord puts out. But 23 years ago, with the muscle car just re-emerging on the scene after the automotive hell of the 1970s and early ‘80s, 276 hp was serious stuff...especially out of a 3.8L GM V6, and ESPECIALLY out of a Buick. And then there’s the NASCAR connection with the “Grand National” name...Buick was still competing in NASCAR Winston Cup with the Regal in 1987, and though they ran V8s instead of turbo V6s, the connection would resonate with people.
I was riding around in a friend’s Mustang GT 5.0L one night up in Columbia, MD and we happened to pull up next to one of these at a stoplight. Glances were exchanged, engines were revved, and when that light turned green, the Grand National was *gone*. An F-body Mustang 5.0 was pretty quick, but this thing just destroyed it off the line.
}:-)4
Smokey Yunick probably forgot more about horsepower secrets before he died than most folks at GM know today.
This is still my favorite tidbit from his history: "Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using eleven foot (three meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons (19 liters) to the car's fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said "Better make it ten,"[2] and drove it back to the pits."
30 GRAND seems a little steep. Especially for 1987. Maybe that is why they couldn’t sell it?
How much was a Corvette in 1987?
So why would I want 218 HP @ 6400 rpm rather than 290 HP @ 6400 rpm for less money?
I do like the appointments of the Infiniti line, and we discussed shoppong them this time, but her Maxima is pretty niced trimmed out.
Because you never had one or drove one.
I did. This was one of the most enjoyable strip car I ever had.
The engine came out of the CART racing division and was originally designed to be the replacement for the Corvette 8.
The car had 300+BHP but got around 25MPG and it was lightening fast. I took my GN to comp 3 and sub-4 second 0-60 and turned quarter mile in low 10’s.
The car was very raw power-wise, you hit it and when the turbo kicked in your neck snapped and the car launched and pretty much ate anything that tried to race you.
I have had a lot of high-powered muscle cars in my life and I miss this one quite a bit almost as much as the 1970 Buick GS-1.
And I am not a Buick guy.
Because you never had one or drove one.
I did. This was one of the most enjoyable strip car I ever had.
The engine came out of the CART racing division and was originally designed to be the replacement for the Corvette 8.
The car had 300+BHP but got around 25MPG and it was lightening fast. I took my GN to comp 3 and sub-4 second 0-60 and turned quarter mile in low 10’s.
The car was very raw power-wise, you hit it and when the turbo kicked in your neck snapped and the car launched and pretty much ate anything that tried to race you.
I have had a lot of high-powered muscle cars in my life and I miss this one quite a bit almost as much as the 1970 Buick GS-1.
And I am not a Buick guy.
I had a 1986 Monte Carlo SS small block, the twin of this car. T-tops, and an incredible chick magnet.
It was stolen, TWICE. After the last time it came back in bad shape, and I traded it.
Joy-riding car thieves LOVED this car.
In some ways, surely. Though not entirely true unless you're talking braking and handling.
If you're looking at 0-100kph figures or 1/4 mile ETs, most of the foundation test report figures of the time (Motor Trend, Car & Driver) had varying methods for achieving these results.
Most any '60s muscle car can shave 1 to 2 seconds off their factory floor ET with a tire change and some tuning, presuming that they're not detuned for modern 92 unleaded pump gas.
Some of the 'baddest' '60s muscle cars are still highly impressive in their acceleration performance, but maybe I'm thinking of the limited factory production models as being 'baddest', like the '64 Ford Thunderbolt A/FX cars with the SOHC 427 FE that would run high 10s on slicks and tuned/timed for 129 octane race fuel. You may be thinking 'GTO' or 'Chevelle SS396'.
And old gentleman at a car show parked his Thunderbolt next to my Chevy at a classics show a few years back and we spent an hour talking about his car even though he pretended to be more interested in mine. People who knew what they were looking at saw his as a true-born NHRA treasure, while lots of tuner kiddies with imports visiting the show (kids who wouldn't know genuine magnesium Halibrands if they saw them) mostly regarded it as a silly old redneck man's car not even worth the once-over... until he fired it up a few times and let everyone at the show hear what 700hp worth of mechanically fuel-injected motor through straight un-muffled exhaust pipes sounded like.
Sounded like an F4U Corsair idling, and made the street smell like burning sauerkraut from spitting unburnt fuel ... thoroughly gassing everyone out and making children in strollers hold their ears and cry.
Yeah, I paid about $16,000 for a 1989 5.0 Mustang. For $4,000 I could have put it into the low 11s and still had $10,000 left over for gas with the difference in price. For the extra $10,000, I could have set it up to turn, too. ;-)
I’ve owne 5 Corvette’s over the years.
“Smokey Yunick was involved in those V6 Motors.
Smokey Yunick probably forgot more about horsepower secrets before he died than most folks at GM know today.
This is still my favorite tidbit from his history: “Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using eleven foot (three meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons (19 liters) to the car’s fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said “Better make it ten,”[2] and drove it back to the pits.”
He was getting hammered,The Big Three were crying to NASCAR about him! LOL or “no porting” he pumped mud through the intake manifolds until they were cleaned up.
Nope, crazy, unmarried, cool uncle.
No, no. Sorry. I mean the G37 sedan
Horsepower 328 hp @ 7,000 rpm
Engine 3.7-liter (3,696cc) 24-valve V6 engine, aluminum-alloy block and heads. Resin-coated pistons
Rear-wheel drive or AWD.
I have a 1987 Jeep Wrangler Laredo with 2,200 miles on it. People can hardly believe it when I tell them why it looks so good.
That stock GNX would eat your wife's Infiniti for lunch....you cannot always go by HP numbers. As I posted above HP figures have been chnaged so many times over theyears. Some are gross, some are net rear wheel horsepower figures..and some cars just do a better job of getting the hp to the ground.
Its just a matter of making the decision early on.
A friend of mine bought a Buick Omega with only a few thousand miles on it. He bought it from an elderly woman who quit driving not long after buying the car.
2011 Maxima has a carburetor??? Normally aspirated engines do not have fuel injection!!
Aspiration has nothing to do with how the fuel gets mixed.
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