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 ...
And modern 600cc sport bikes have more HP than the same most powerful ‘muscle bikes’ of the mid 1980’s.
Fuel injection and engine management are the reason.
Indeed they do. Some 4 bangers can match it too. But for 1987, this thing was pretty hot. A friend of mine had one and he put down many V8s in the quarter.
The feds also had a fleet of Regals. Bought them for their speed and agility. Again ... it may not stack up to modern cars, but we're talking about 1987 here.
My brother owns one of these...
lol! I’m sure your referring to my multiple posts..
Sounds like Buick has borrowed the Hell on wheels name from the 2nd Armored Division. Patton was it’s commander at Ft. Benning, Ga., at which time he named it the Hell on Wheels division. It fought in North Africa, Sicily, and Europe. Called the “Benning to Berlin” division, because it was the first American division into Berlin.
This is not your great-aunt’s Buick!
IIRC, it was quicker in a straight line than the Corvette of that era was.
That’s four kinds of sad right there....
HP ratings are also computed differently back then..
Also for 2-3 grand (Or less) this GNX can be down in the 10 second range. Many of those modern FI v6's take mucho $$ to get in the 10 second range.
Some cars cost alot to modify and some don't. . What made this car special is that it could be made to go fast for very little money. Some of them rice burners have $15-20k in engine mods and they still can't match this car or the lesser V-6 regular GN.
“I never understood the attraction to this car.
6 cylinders? Turbocharged? How much HP could it be?”
You could just as easily say this about a 911 Turbo. But you probably wouldn’t. :)
Smokey Yunick was involved in those V6 Motors.
This was a slightly refined straight-liner. It was designed to go fast, and had semi-decent handling, but fast was the emphasis.
A showroom stock GNX would run the quarter mile at 13.26 seconds and 104 mph (bested the 'Vette for the same year).
For 1987, it hauled ass. What made it special I suspect was the gear ratio. It didn’t spin the tires. The car has great grip. Definately a man’s car IMHO.
Wonder how it handles, too?
And I enjoyed seeing her introduced to "torque steer"...
:-)
The first time that car is driven with the windows open the overhead lining of the passenger compartment is going let loose from the insulation layer and drop down into the driver’s head.
Those 87 Buick Regals were insanely fun to fishtail in the snow though.
A friend of mine had a Nova like that. It only ran about 105mph top end but it got there in a hurry.
That dude's dad also had a Ferrari 308 and a DeLorian... The DeLorian was a P.O.S., but that flux capacitor thing was cool.
In 1987, this was the top “standard” production car. Remember, this car was out-running the new Corvette.
The real heart of the GNX was under the hood. The V6 turbo was upgraded with special bearings, rods and a strengthened valve train. A Garrett AiResearch turbo was linked to a special designed intercooler. The GNX’s computer was modified to enhance fuel mix, turbo boost and transmission performance. The result was 276 horsepower and a massive 360 lbs-fts of torque. There was so much torque available that a special ladder bar was installed beneath the car. It ran from the mid-section of the car to the rear axle to increase rear wheel traction. As a result, the GNX will actually lift the rear end up when the car is about to launch heavily. It’s an interesting and intimidating sight.
http://musclecarfacts.net/1987-grand-national.html
So this car is the Aztec’s father?
I read an article in a Sports Car magazine where a Honda Odyssey Minivan with a big six utterly destroyed a 60s era Porsche and Jag XKE wearing 60s era rubber. The minivan slaughtered them both on braking, acceleration, top speed, etc. And the slalom made it even worse.
They didn’t expect it to be competitvie at all, so they had brought along some modern tires to help the minivan. When they threw those on, it became a total route.
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