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 ...
A friend’s dad had one of these. With an aftermarket chip in it the speedometer needle was a blur. The car was very very fast. The car was holding me deep in the seat at a buck 20. With another cog in the tranny it would topped 175 easy,all with stock hardware.
I’m afraid Lunny Tick is incorrect as i look over my shoulder at my Edelbrock Pro Flow multi port fuel injection system i can assure you it is naturally aspirated.
Plus, Maximas are gay.
Same engine, different tranny, way different performance outcome.
I knew a guy who had one of these. He was one of the worst drivers I ever met. He claimed something snapped in the drive train (rear axle?), and that caused the wreck, but I suspect it was his own inability to handle the power.
That's just the driver taking up the slack in the drive-train by applying the gas while standing on the brakes. Live rear axles rise. IRS squat under a similar load.
I used to do this with my Mustang --no big deal, nor is it a exclusive feature of the Buick.
Good to see you around Kid.
This is a video of a GNX that I just happen to have seen run a sew times at the strip.
Believe it or not, this is a 6 cylinder !
http://www.streetfire.net/video/1076bhp-buick-gnx-in-this-one-smokes-some-tyre_41056.htm
Cheers,
knewshound
Why he had to go down my street that day I will never know. It could be the only reason I am alive today. God sometimes protects us from ourselves.
It was not stock...
:-)
And for the record: my wife defines a car's gender by the presence/absence of a tail fin of any sort - stock or otherwise. With fin = Male. Without = female. It's always fun watching this get explained to the salesperson.
Pay no mind to Maxima haters.
I just bought my son an Infiniti i30. A 2001 model. We were looking for Maxima’s, but came accross this i30. Had 156,000 dealer mainained miles. In good condition.
Paid $4,300 for it. I’m very pleased.
Compare it to my h.s. friend Richard’s 1973 Buick GS with a 455 cubic inch monster under the hood. It made the earth shake just idling (musta had a hot cam) and it could pass anything but a gas station. Fortunately, it was only about 28 cents a gallon. But we were making a buck sixty flipping burgers...
This car is a metrosexual version of a muscle car.
The legitimate 57 Corvette that we ran in SCCA and won every race we entered went 108 in the quarter and was clocked at 157 in the back straight at Riverside.
Porters 58 Corvette we ran and won in the Guadalahara State Fair and won beat the factory Porsche and Corvette that The Rodriguez Bros ran in the race I wound up selling the car to them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC6HF6BA-WA
naw they aren’t fun at all...lol.
and no a little 6 can’t generate much...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs7hGJ1vkhc
BTW thanks for the walk down memory lane...man now I miss it even more.
“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.”
IIRC, this was actually in Grassroots Motorsports. It was a good demonstration of how far tire technology has come since the ‘60s.
“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. “
One of my favorite examples of this was the Chevelle SS454. On the stock 14-inch tires, it turned about a 14-second quarter.... with a trap speed of around 105.
“One of my favorite cars is the Suburu WRX. Wouldn’t know it hauled by looking at it.”
Make mine a wagon. :)
““One of my favorite cars is the Suburu WRX. Wouldn’t know it hauled by looking at it.”
Make mine a wagon. :)”
But don’t get me started on all the things wrong with the suspension geometry of Subaru Imprezas... or the reasons why you don’t want the single largest mass in the car hanging ahead of the front axle.
““One of my favorite cars is the Suburu WRX. Wouldn’t know it hauled by looking at it.”
Make mine a wagon. :)”
But don’t get me started on all the things wrong with the suspension geometry of Subaru Imprezas... or the reasons why you don’t want the single largest mass in the car hanging ahead of the front axle.
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