by Michael Pearce

Created on: June 26, 2008   Last Updated: November 07, 2008

The Buick regal of the late 1970s- early 1980s was almost a poster-child for everything that was wrong with American cars of the era. It was big, heavy, technologically archaic, plastic-y and ugly inside and out. Available only with an unenthusiastic, embarrassingly underpowered lump of a 3.8L V6 mated to the slushiest automatic transmission ever to disgrace a rear-wheel drive car. It handled like a bowl of pudding on wet linoleum. The stylist appeared to have never heard of a french curve and to be actively offended by roundness. The target market seemed to be people who had had their taste surgically removed and old people that had given up on enjoying life.

Maybe it was years of being car geeks forced to produce automotive pablum but in 1982 the boys at Buick went a bit mad. They stripped the Regal of it's tacky chrome-work and badges and painted it all black. They fitted it with chrome plated mag wheels. They stiffened the spring rates and upgraded the dampers. They even put in two-tone bucket seats, a floor shifter and- of all bizarre things- a tachometer(!) And not just any tachometer- something called a 'sequential LED' tachometer- to match the sequential boost gage.

Boost Gauge? Yes- the boys at Buick had blown it, so to speak- with a turbocharged 180 hp version of the 3.8 V6.

Obviously this was madness- no creaking geriatric worth their strained peas would want this thing! It needed a new name, and it got one. It was named after a prestigious NASCAR racing series and became the Buick Regal Grand National.

Over the years that followed fuel injection, intercooling and other improvements were added. Then the hammer came down- the delirious Buick boys were told that 1987 was to be the Grand National's last year- the 1988 cars would be based on a new front drive platform that would be unable to handle the now 265hp and 300+ pound feet of torque of the Grand National.

What to do? The obvious- they went mad again. Barking mad... This was to be, literally, the Grand National to end all Grand Nationals- the GNX. They went to work with McLaren/ASC and installed a Garrett ceramic-turbocharger, improved the intercooler and piping, bodged in large-diameter free-flowing exhaust with dual muffers and hacked the ECU chip for more power. They rebuilt the Turbo Hydramatic 200-4R transmission to lock-up fast with a special high-performance torque converter. A new lightweight differential cover incorporated a Panhard rod and other performance changes. A ladder-like reinforcing

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