[Submitted by Adam LaFave]
Those that notice my comments here on CC probably know that I have a strong infatuation with the Buick V6 engine. Love it or hate it, you’d have a hard time claiming that the engine has not been a major part of the American (and Australian) automotive landscape. It’s powered everything from Chevy Monzas to Cadillac Devilles to Jeep CJs to Buick GNXs to Indy race cars to Vixen motor homes. It’s been turbocharged, and supercharged. It’s been a credit option and the premium offering. It’s been a risk and the easy way out. With over 25 million built over 46 years, ‘venerable’ doesn’t adequately describe it.
While the Buick 3800 or 231 may be more famous, it all started with the 1962 Fireball V6 that powered the entry-level Buick Special. Created at least partially in response to Pontiac’s new Trophy 4, it was a bored- and- stroked Buick aluminum 215 V8 minus two cylinders and cast in iron. The resulting odd-firing 198 cubic inch V6 made a little less power (135 hp) but gave slightly better fuel economy.
So at least in 1962, I think M/T got it right.
I have nothing insightful to add other than that I support this nomination.
Oh, and lookie what I got squirreled away in a carport! It’s the same version…a ’62 model 198 with the dinkiest automatic transmission I’ve ever seen attached to it.
I was at an estate sale & the whole unit had been hanging from the rafters of an old shed for many years. I have no use for it but having the “first” Buick V6 engine was well worth the $80 winning bid 🙂
The lighting sucks & this was the best pic I could get. That A/C compressor setup is probably uncommon but the transmission is more interesting.
So do you own the nice example pictured above?
Wow. Are you sure that isn’t a mobile refrigeration pump?
Did you see the comments about that little automatic in today’s ’62 Skylark CC?
I skipped today’s CC initially — thanks for the tip. I’m going to drag the shop light out there & take better pics of the unit so I can infect that thread now.
Funny you should mention the compressor — it’s a York. They are supposed to be the best autmotive A/C compressor for ‘alternate usage’. I think my father’s old ’72 Fury 360 had this type. It probably weighs as much as the transmission!
Here’s a neat link to building your own air compressor.
http://www.jedi.com/obiwan/jeep/yorkair.html
I was going to say, it looks like aftermarket add-on air with that non Fridigaire compressor.
Those work very well as on-board air units. You will need to rebuild it occasionally though.
What those York pumps are really good for is running Propane as a refrigerant. I did that to my 79 Chief and had 35 degree air pushing out of the vents on a 98 degree day.
Do it at your own risk. Before the whole safe and secure crowd jumps on me, I had a line rupture under the hood six months after filling the system. No firey death. Your results may vary.
Wow that ac compressor must have practically made the V-6 stall when it kicked it!
Do you still have this 198 and if so would you like to sell it? My son just bought a 1963 buick with a blown motor and he sure could use a motor. his goal is to have the car ready for his senior prom this year.
I agree, the Buick v-6 is one of the great engines of all time, although it started out as something of a quick improvisation. I’ve always wondered why Buick didn’t employ offset crankshaft journals when the engine was introduced, as that was not exactly some brand new technology-I recall reading somewhere that Packard in the ’50s briefly considered creating a v-12 off their existing v-8 using offset crankshaft journals to smooth the engine. Maybe this was another case of budget constraints by the GM bean counters.
In 1977 my mother was considering buying a new car, and she thought she liked the Skylark; being the resident car guy I had to accompany her-I drove a v-6 powered version and the engine’s shaking at idle made it completely unacceptable to me.
The split pin crank would have been more expensive and it is inherently weaker, though I’m betting it was the cost that kept it out of the engine until they bought it back.
Agreed, the odd-fire V-6 was a nasty beast that throbbed and shook. The even fire motors were much better and the first ones I ever considered driving. The odd fire engines were just too painful for me, rough, noisy, slow and not particularly cheap to run.
It appears Cadillac adopted split-pin cranks for the experimental OHC V-12, as well, although obviously it never made production.
I never understood why Buick would go here, other than as a cheap and dirty way to get a six based off of an existing engine. GM even gave up on it early and sold it (I believe) to Jeep, just the place for a rough and noisy powerplant. I believe that it was only after the 1973 fuel crisis that GM bought it back (if I recall the story correctly).
As it turns out, the downsizing/front drive era suddenly made the V6 configuration attractive, but this happened a good 15-20 years after the engine came out. I would count this as the CCOTY the same way as with the Chevy Suburban. Nobody foresaw what a huge deal it would become, but by building the same stuff for long enough, the world eventually came around to GM (rather than the other way around.)
It was indeed a cheap way to create a lower-priced entry-level engine. The V6 was developed, as the story goes, because Ed Rollert (Buick general manager when these cars were introduced) wanted a less-expensive engine for a price-leader Special. At first, they were going to consider a slant four (half a V8) like Pontiac, but the engine development chief said he could do a V6 that would work better and cost less. The V6 was developed very quickly and was cheaper to build than the V8 because the six was iron, rather than aluminum.
I wrote the nomination.
I’ve owned a bunch of cars with the Buick V6 and I’m trying to own them all. Mecum has a ’62 Special V6 convertible coming to Kissimmee in January and there’s a 4.1L Cadillac on ebay right now. I’m very tempted to take a shot at both of them.
I’ve got to find a Pontiac Firebird Formula 231 someday too.
I just love the story of the engine. The SBC is great but it was born with a silver spoon in its mouth- it was always destined for greatness.
Meanwhile, the Buick V6 was just a cheap-ish way to create an economy motor. GM sold it off to AMC pretty quick. Once the AMC I6 is built, you expect that to be it for the Buick mill: it will just end up as an interesting footnote like the Pontiac Trophy-4 or OHC.
Then the oil crisis puts GM into a panic, they need a small engine and they don’t want to spend any money on it, so they buy back the V6 tooling. The engine goes back into production and returns to its usual place on the bottom of the BOP totem pole until one day someone decides to turbocharge the thing and it’s suddenly running down Corvettes and muscle cars on the 1/4 mile.
With the FWD switch, GM finally decides to spend some cash on the engine, culminating in 1988 when the 3800 is introduced. The 3800 and 3300 are great engines but of course GM decides to kill the 3300 and it cheaps out on the 3800 and makes it far less reliable with the Series II.
With that Ren Center declares Mission Accomplished and keeps it in production until 2008 with minimal updates to ensure it is an object of derision for Honda owners.
From what I’ve read the tooling went right back in the same locations held down by the same bolts in a factory that had sat idle since the engine was sold.
I never knew Pontiac built a V6 Formula until one of my scrapyard exploits discovered this terrible waste. I was so mad that someone would junk a vehicle this incredibly straight.
I got them to lift the “high boy” off of it & started stripping. Much to my surprise the installed powerplant was a ’71-2 455 Pontiac engine that looked to be in excellent condition. It, and pretty much everything else attached to this car that wasn’t damaged came home with me that day.
The real surprise (besides the odd-ball engine-turned dash bezel) was the build sheet denoting a 231 V6 engine, automatic transmission, and 2.56 ratio rear end. This car had to be the slowest Formula ever built.
It did not have a spot of rust in it even after I removed the carpeting. That was the original paint, BTW.
Junqueboi: Very nice find. You know, it seems every F-body ever made today sports a Z-28 package if a Camaro and a 455 if a Firebird. I think it high time that the hobby as a whole recognize the merits of restoring a vehicle like this, I mean, how many Firebird Formula’s would arrive at the car show with it’s original 231 V-6 motor.
WIth the high cost of a vintage V-8 Mustang or Camaro, those in-line sixes are looking to be like the more practical investment, besides being more practical in the fuel mileage department. That 4 door ’66 Impala written up here the other day by Daniel proves without doubt that not every car from that era must be the SS version, just as this car here has as much legitamacy as a Trans Am.
Thanks Michael. I’ve seen all the “Bandit” Trans Ams & fake Z28s I’ve ever wanted to see. Show me a nice base Camaro, Firebird, Berlinetta, Esprit, or unmodified Formula & I’ll be all over it!
That ’66 Impala the other day was really a peach wasn’t it? 🙂
It still kind of bugs me. it was a really nice car when it came across the scales. Just look at the condition of the driver’s seat.
Also in the mid-80’s when the exchange rate of the Yen took off, the cost of Holden’s new Nissan RB30 engine they’d adopted rather than bring their 1963-debut engine in line with unleaded fuel requirements.
The first VN model Commodores in 1988 with the fwd V6 had radiator hoses that came out the back of the engine at the firewall and ran all the way up to the radiator! That was soon changed but it was still a pretty unrefined engine, although it did have good bottom-end torque, perhaps a bit too much for the light Commodore and more than a few have hit something sideways in them.
Ajla, nice nomination and very worthy! I remember the late 70’s Buick Turbo Coupe’s with the carburated turbo motor, an interesting motor in an interesting design package. Somewhat like the Citation X-11, I just don’t see them anymore. I miss them. They were an attempt to introduce performance back via the turbocharged motor. And like Ford with their 2.3 Turbo, GM would not find true success with the turbo until EFI was introduced.
The parents had an 85 Regal with the 3.8 engine. The exhaust note was indeed different from, say, the 2.8 GM V-6. But that engine ran without a lick of trouble. Simply a great motor from GM.
I have a 62 Buick Special Convertible that I am selling for my brother.
The car is in Kansas City. I am looking for a replacement carburetor for it.
Before you go too far with the accolades for this engine:
I’ve written several times about the Poopmobile, my sisters 77 Skyhawk, $hit brown, with the 231 (named for both what it looked and drove like).
The car was bought brand new and was loaded with problems from the get-go, the engine being one of its biggest. After just a few years and very low miles, the car began stalling out while going uphill. And, although I can’t say this is directly engine related, there was a big puddle of rust colored water that formed in the passenger footwell. The car started only when it wanted to. The entire engine was rusted out.
After 5 short years and less than 40,000 miles, it was dumped.
Bottom line: It was a rough, crude, poorly designed engine that was shoehorned in a poor quality excuse of a car.
Now-I know GM basically rebuilt the engine top to bottom in the late 80s and dropped it in almost everything they made. It became a smooth, torquey and reliable engine at that point. HOWEVER-it still had 1 major problem that keeps it from winning any major awards in my book: the sound. It was one of the wimpiest, whiney-est sounding engines available, rivaling even the Chrysler-Mitsubishi V6. Weak sounding engine=my personal pet peeve. It was guaranteed to turn any GM car into a grandmamobile instantly.
Thanks for listening.
Other than your point on the sound (I think the NA ones sound just like every other OHV V6, no better or worse and my supercharged SSEi sounds quite good to my ear), I don’t really disagree with you.
I consider the ’88-’95 3800 and the 3300 to be two of the best GM engines of all time. However, I also understand that the 231 was quite unreliable until maybe 1980 or so, and even then it’s durability was only reasonable for early 1980s GM.
But the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, and the creamy middles is what I find so interesting about the engine. I’ve blown up two of my Buick V6s, but I still love em.
The CC tagline is “Every car has a story” and the Buick V6 definitely has a story.
I got to have some fun on a friends farm once in a CJ3 with a 225 in it. It wasn’t refined in any way but crawling through the washes and gulleys out back the thing was virtually unstoppable. I swear you could lug that engine down to 50 RPM.
I put 176,000 miles on my 1988 Olds with the 3800. It was smooth, a great long distance runner, and got good mileage. On one run from Salt Lake to Laramie I recorded 31.5 mpg at 84 mph. Must have had one hell of a tailwind.
When GM bought back the V6 tooling from AMC, the seller was eager for the $, since they already had their I6.
Hindsight, AMC should have held out for more cash, or made a deal for to get some motors from GM to build it for their Hornet/Gremlin.
Well it sort of did, a little later AMC started using the ol’ “Iron Duck”4 banger for Jeeps and what not for many years.
I recall that AMC’s comment on that subject was that they didn’t really have the money to sort the V6’s refinement issues the way GM eventually did. I don’t think AMC had actually used the V6 since acquiring Jeep from Kaiser in 1970.
My 77 Olds Starfire had this and it was junk. Backfired and caught on fire on Virginia Beach Boulevard when I was still in the Navy. That was just the most dramatic failure but it was one of many. It drove me to the 78 AMC Concorde that I bought next and it made the concorde look good.
Having said that… many members of my family had later 3.8 or 3800 engines and they were terrific. I can go with the nomination mostly because I can’t go with a ferrari and/or avanti. This should go to real cars not rich guys toys. This engine and all that went with it sure qualify in that regard. I always think of this as the little engine that could… and did.
I just noticed the standards on the gas pump here in Texas and was amused to note that each gallon contains 231 cubic inches of gas. Apropos to nothing at all but I seem to remember that as the CID equivalent of 3.8.
If you want to get the ultimate version of the 3800 in Australia, that would be the supercharged HSV XU6, which had the power bumped from 210 to 240hp, suspension, brake, body kit and interior upgrades. Auto only, they built something like 950 from 1999-2002. Plus it would actually be worth importing, rather than buying a VN Commodore where the shipping bill would be 4x the cost of the car!
We got some 260hp versions in the Pontiac Grand Prix GTP/GT in 2004-07.
They had dropped the s/c engine over here by in 2004. I was wrong about the power output for the normal Commodores, it was 229hp not 210hp which was what latter versions of the n/a engine had. Trouble was the Falcon engine from 2002 had 244hp, anyone wanting power from a Commodore bought the V8
Any chance anyone can tell me about the alternator bracket and any pullies that are on the engine pictured at the top of this article and where i might find them. You can email me direct at shadetree@gorge.net
I just got that picture off the web from a google image search. Sorry.