Great music and great cars go together. And the type of car I’m driving, or just thinking about, dictates what I’m listening to. A pimptasticly cool Cadillac or Lincoln from the sixties or seventies needs to have classic Motown like Smokey Robinson or Diana Ross on the speakers; a splendiferously sexy personal luxury coupe like a Cutlass or Monte Carlo invokes images of cruising to the disco in highly flammable clothes with The Trammps or Donna Summer on the radio; a late model muscle like a Challenger queues up some late model metal like Ghost or Five Finger Death Punch; and what else could go with a great classic pickup truck but great classic country from Waylon Jennings or George Strait. In musclecars, like April Wine said, I Like To Rock, and I like it hard and I like it loud. And I like the hard stuff from the ’70s and ’80s; for those familiar with SiriusXM satellite radio, Ozzy’s Boneyard is the soundtrack of my life. For Those About To Rock, We Salute You.
How many other Gen Xers remember this July, 1985 Car and Driver issue? Changed my life, man. Then, as now, in a motoring world surrounded by FWD piles of crap, C&D reminded us cavemen that V8s and RWD, much like rock and roll, will not die.
I remember this commercial when watching a NASCAR race back in 1985. George Thorogood promoting a Buick Grand National; that was all the hook I needed. Remember, this was long before “Bad To The Bone” was used to promote Disney movies and George had a air of danger to him. I didn’t need anymore convincing, this was a car I needed to have.
Wouldn’t you really rather have a B-B-B-Buick? My Dad did…
(internet photo; this wasn’t his car but its an exact copy)
My Dad retired from being a cop in 1983 and treated himself to a new 1983 Riviera after putting his reliable-as-an-anvil 1971 Plymouth Satellite out to pasture (AKA the scrapyard.) It wasn’t the Buick at the top of my dream sheet, but since I was 10, Dad didn’t care, he was making the payments and he wanted a Riviera since the 1979 restyle. In 1983, there was no Regal Grand National yet for me to lust over, even though there was a limited edition 1982 Grand National, the ‘real’ Darth-Vader-your-car-is-ready black turbo’d monsters wouldn’t come out until the 1984 model year, but I would have settled for any Regal coupe just because Richard Petty and Daryl Waltrip drove them in NASCAR.
But his Riviera was a pretty car, charcoal grey with a light grey landau top and matching light grey interior with the ‘big’ 4.1L six but really, it was a steaming pile. By the time he sold the car in 1990 with less than 80K on it, it was on its third transmission, plus it had a ton of other problems so it was in the shop a lot. Thankfully my Mom’s ’82 Delta 88 was rock solid and water proof so we had a good backup car. While it frustrated my Dad, since the car he worked so hard for turned out to be a lemon, for me, I didn’t mind, because I would always ride with him to the dealer every time it had to be fixed under warranty.
Schroeder Buick always had a shiny new black Regal Grand National sitting on the showroom floor as a draw for showroom traffic that I could ogle. I’m sure the salesmen got tired of wiping my drool off the hoods. I would sit in them, looking out over the hood bulge, which proudly displayed the now legendary “3.8 SFI TURBO” emblems, studying the turbo plumbing, and planning for the day I could play my Rush and Van Halen tapes on the stereo. But, since Grand Nationals were hot and desirable cars from the beginning, they always had a pretty high entry fee, and that someday wouldn’t come for me until 30 years later. Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today.
“Nobody gonna take my car, I’m gonna race it to the ground
Nobody gonna beat my car, It’s gonna break the speed of sound
Oooh it’s a killing machine, It’s got everything
Like a driving power, big fat tires and everything” Deep Purple “Highway Star”
In the spring of 2017, I brought my ’69 Charger in to my favorite bodyshop for some paint and bodywork. In July, when I stopped in one day to check on the progress on the Dodge, I noticed a Grand National sitting outside, off in a corner and covered in dust. I wandered over to take a look and sho’nuff, it was a legit 1987 Buick Grand National with T-tops, which is exactly what I wanted-it had to be an ’87, the last and best year for the GN package and I had to have one with T-tops.
Grand National fans know to look for the magic WE2 option code on the trunk RPO decal and there it was. I asked what the story was on the car and it goes that the current owner brought it in not running. After the shop mechanic looked at it, the owner decided he didn’t want to (or couldn’t) pay to get it running again, so he essentially abandoned it at the shop and the shop owner, who is a good friend of mine, was about to put a mechanics lien on it. At the time, Grand Nationals were (and still are) rising very quickly on the collector market but the shop owner told me the owner would probably let it go pretty cheap. He gave me his number and we struck a deal, and while he didn’t sell it to me for peanuts, the price was more than reasonable given what the market is for these cars.
(The GN the day I found it in 2017)
After I got the title and keys, I found that it was a car that appeared to have been well-loved at one time but then neglected in recent years. It was a local car, spending its entire life here in Hampton Roads, Virginia, where it doesn’t snow very often so cars here are generally spared from road salt rust but the salt air from the ocean and Chesapeake Bay can take its toll if cars aren’t washed regularly. The body and paint looked pretty good, there was no rust on the car, and especially on T-top cars, the floorboards are prone to rust from roof leaks that these cars are notorious for.
The interior was pretty ate up as there were some tears on the seats, the drivers door panel was pretty well-worn and the speaker grilles on the dash were broken from when someone tried to shoehorn in speakers that wouldn’t fit, but luckily, those parts are all reproduced by restoration companies. It came with a set of Trans Am GTA wheels but it also had the original chrome GM wheels.
Then there was the engine. There was about 140K on the odometer and the engine was torn half apart by the previous owner and all of the parts were in the trunk. I asked the mechanic what he thought was wrong with it, he said it had some kind of oiling problem, which I do remember as a common problem from having been around and working on lots of cars with pre-3800 Buick 231 V6s; in fact I had a 1980 Firebird in high school with a 231 dying from low oil pressure.
I had never worked on any of the turbo cars before so I bought a factory service manual and did some online reading before I got my tools out. I brought the car home, dove in and the first obstacle I ran into was a busted oil pump; I ordered a new one from Napa and got back to work. Then I found it had a broken intercooler fan. These cars have 2 fans; a large electric one mounted to the radiator for engine cooling like all of today’s cars, and a second smaller one mounted directly to the crankshaft pulley for the intercooler.
While the restoration companies are making a lot of parts for these cars now, that fan is one of the Turbo Regal parts that are not reproduced and used ones are very hard to find; since these cars were collectible from the day they left the factory and very few were scrapped and parted out so parts that are specific to Turbo Regals can be hard to find, plus they didn’t build very many of them to begin with. I called around to several resto shops and old car-friendly junkyards and either no one had one or wasn’t willing to sell me one. I first thought I would just skip it and not run an intercooler fan until I found one, but doing that makes the engine prone to detonation. Then, just as I was about to order an aftermarket electric intercooler fan like some of the racers use, I found a shop that was willing to sell me a factory fan after I turned on my charms. A few days later, I bolted it to the crank and I finished putting the engine back together. I got it fired up and found out why it was torn apart; the oil pressure was 2 psi at idle.
So it looked like I was heading for an engine rebuild, and with almost 150K on it, a Buick 231 is on borrowed time. When it comes to cars, I budget myself for one big project a year. The Charger paintjob was the big ticket item I planned for in 2017, and I had just bought the GN, which was an added cost that required approval from my wife, plus I had to unexpectedly replace the engine in my Chevy that I wrote about in my last COAL, so I figured if I could just drive the GN sparingly and go easy on it. I just needed it to last about 6 months or so and then I could rebuild the 231 for my 2018 project. I also thought I could work on some of the smaller projects on it in the meantime like detailing and doing some of the interior repairs.
Besides the oil pressure problem, the car misfired terribly and I traced the problem back to the ignition module. I must have left the key on or something when I was swapping it out because when I replaced the module, I blew the ignition fuse. Now, at the time, I didn’t know these cars had their own fuse for the ignition, I’m used to working on non-computer controlled, carbureted cars. It took me about a month of troubleshooting before I figured out it was a blown ignition fuse, and that was only after I talked to a couple of professional mechanics and a guy that specializes in Turbo Regals. So that was about a month of cranking and cranking and cranking and cranking the engine, and with all that cranking with no spark, the fuel pump was continuing to pour fuel into the cylinders with nowhere for it to go. So guess what happened when I finally replaced the fuse, and now there was power from the new ignition module to fire the spark plugs.
When I turned the key, I thought I had been shot.
BOOM!!!! It was such a loud and violent backfire that it literally blew the muffler apart and the shielding shot across my garage, broke the teeth on the timing chain, broke the timing module AND cracked the starter. That’s so metal.
If it wasn’t my car, I would have thought that was the coolest thing in the world.
“Jump back, what’s that sound
Here she comes, full blast and top down
Hot shoe, burnin’ down the avenue
Model citizen zero discipline” Van Halen “Panama”
Whether I budgeted for it or not, the engine now needed a rebuild. Normally I like to do my own mechanical work and building engines makes me happy but my wife was 8 months pregnant at the time, and it was a high-risk pregnancy so there was no garage time. If left to my own druthers, who knows when I might have had the time to pull and build the engine myself. I have a neighborhood shop that I trust to do things like brake jobs and minor repairs when I can’t or don’t want to do them myself, and I,ve gotten to be pretty good friends with the shop owner.
One day early in 2018, I stopped in to BS for awhile and told him what happened to my Buick. He loves these cars and quoted me a price for a build that also included pulling and replacing the engine for me that other shops would have charged just for just doing the engine work. He was a circle track racer from back in the ’80s and ’90s and built a lot of GM G-and F-body cars so he knew his way around these cars pretty well. Early in the spring, I got the car back, running better than new with 60 psi of oil pressure, just in time for the summer driving season, with the T-tops off and the stereo cranked up. LOUD.
“Well weathered leather, hot metal and oil, the scented country air. Sunlight on chrome, the blur of the landscape, every nerve aware” Rush “Red Barchetta”
After a 1500 mile break-in period, I put about about 4000 miles on the car since getting it back on the road, mostly with the T-tops off and always with the stereo on. It gets lots of looks and accusations of being a Monte Carlo. I came out from work on 2 separate occasions to find notes under the windshield wipers asking if it was for sale. After it was broken in, I made a few proven Turbo Regal improvements including an alcohol kit and bigger injectors. There’s a dragstrip close to where I work and I stopped by on the way home from work on a cool night in September on one of the test-and-tune nights and the car went a lot faster than I expected; it’s on a level playing field with a new Mustang GT or a Scat Pack Challenger.
“Then we race together, we can ride forever
Wrapped in horsepower, driving into fury
Changing gears I pull you tighter to me, I’m your Turbo Lover” Judas Priest “Turbo Lover”
(At a trip to Copart, the 31-year-old Buick was laughing at the dead late models)
I’m a volunteer fireman, and back in October, I stopped by the firehouse to check in on our contract mechanic, who was working on one of our fire trucks. He knows me and my cars pretty well but he said he hadn’t seen my Grand National before and “wanted to see what it could do.” Well, you know what that means…
“Grooving on the freeway, Gauges all are red
Gun down on my gasoline, Believe I’m gonna crack your head
Talking ’bout love” Led Zeppelin “Trampled Under Foot”
I power braked it up and just did a simple burnout to give him a little smoke show and a chance to hear the turbo spool up and then BOOM!!!
Unfortunately with this car, that’s a sound I got used to hearing.
I wasn’t sure what had happened. There was smoke everywhere and steam was pouring out the exhaust. Did I blow a rod through the block? No, the engine was still running but it was making a lot of valvetrain noise. Did the driveshaft shoot out? Nope, the car was still moving. I was afraid to shut the engine off at first because I thought it might lock up or may not start again so I limped it home, which was only 3 miles away. I had to go through one intersection that crosses a major highway between the fire station and my house and I crossed my fingers that the light would be green when I approached it; of course it had just turned red as I got to it so I had to wait for the light to completely cycle through before I could go.
So, as it was about 4:30 in the afternoon and rush hour, traffic was fairly heavy and I had to sit there and keep my foot on the gas and the brake so it wouldn’t stall as it lost compression and was misfiring terribly, and the car was quickly enveloped in smoke and steam. It must have been pretty funny to see, but again, it was my car and I wasn’t laughing. When I got it home, I found that the passenger side head gasket literally blew out; pouring oil and antifreeze everywhere. The next day, I poured antifreeze into the radiator and watched it pour out from between the cylinder head and block; no compression test needed.
Am I angry? No, breaking stuff is the cost of playing with old cars. I parked the car in a dark corner and I will revisit it after the holidays when life settles back down again, but all last summer, me and my Grand National were Rockin’ Down the Highway. Hopefully we will be again by next summer.
“On I Burn, Fuel is pumping engines,
Churning in my direction, quench my thirst with gasoline,
Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.” Metallica “Fuel”
Sorry to hear about the head gaske, but I sure love hearing about your cars. I’ve wanted a Grand National since they were still in production and I was 9.
Would the current GM 3.6L be an option ? How about a 5speed ?
Something like that? No, the best value proposition is to keep it original. It’s legit a modern collectible, probably the only ’80s American car (other than it’s roided out brother GNX) that is.
No, we don’t do things like that to original Grand Nationals.
Some owners have swapped in SBCs and LS’s but that is definitely frowned upon in the GN community. There is no shortage of standard G-Bodys out there begging for engine swaps but we leave original Turbo Regals alone. Besides, once they run right, theres no end to these car’s capabilities
Anyone swap in a Series II or III 3800, in either NA or supercharged form? Real Buick engines those, and smoothies…
I was never bitten by the Grand National bug, unlike most here. But I feel for you when a car you love turns on you like a bad dog. Here’s hoping that 2019 is a better year for your Buick.
That’s the Buick I wanted in the mid 80’s when my Dad bought a regular Regal with a 3.8 litre.
Of course, that was the correct Buick for him because if he’d listened to me the back half of the frame would still have rotted and dropped off a GN in our salty winter climate.
“You can’t go on
Thinking nothing’s wrong
Who’s gonna drive you home tonight?”
Front frame rot was always more of a concern on G-bodies in NW Ohio where I grew up and we certainly used a lot of salt. My old Cutlass had the mount for the swaybar separate from the frame at roughly a little over 10 years on the road.
Grand Nasty…
These cars did live up to one of the typical American Car stereotypes of the day: “Goes real fast… in a straight line.”
Personally I’d rather have had a Regal T-type. Much more subtle and every kid in a modified Civic/WRX/Mustang/Camaro wouldn’t want to race me. I rode in a used T-type once when my best friend’s Dad got one traded into the dealer he was working for. Plenty fast for burning up the back roads between the cornfields.
If collectiblility isn’t a concern I think any excellent GM LS V8 would be a nice choice.
These cars actually handle surprisingly well. A few minor upgrades-better springs, sway bars, shocks and stickier tires, and I would put it up against a Corvette or a Porsche any day. It may still lose but it would be a lot of fun!
One of my brother’s friend’s had a new Regal T-Type, it was about the same color grey as my father’s Riviera. I think he had it for about a year but got rid of hit after his insurance bill about tripled from getting so many tickets.
Like I mentioned earlier, if it was a standard issue Regal/Grand Prix/Monte Carlo/Cutlass, there would be no heartache in throwing the original smog motor out but for collectability and historical purposes, its best to leave Turbo Regals alone.
A stock a 3.8T is fast by modern standards; a stock GN is about as fast as a base Challenger R/T, and most owners that drive them on the street (like I do) run a few simple upgrades like alcohol injection to keep them competitive with the new musclecars
As an over 40 year reader/subscriber, I do recall that “Car & Driver” issue.
This was when the magzine’s editor was David E. Davis; who made sure each issue was flavored from his personal cauldron of automotive lust.
Today’s “C&D” reads like some internet site populated by kids who don’t have a driver’s license and spend 18 hours each day hiding behind their laptop. I am no longer a subscriber.
It was not long after that that he left and founded Automobile Magazine.
I followed DED to that new magazine, enjoyed it until he left.
His automotive opinions often mirrored my own.
I remember it, too. I was a freshly minted high school graduate. I think the article said we were supposed to listen to the Beach Boys while driving these machines. I was a fan of the Monte Carlo SS and NASCAR. Turbo Lover by Judas Priest was entirely appropriate for the Regal.
Long Live Rock’n’Roll- Dio \m/ \m/
RIP Ronnie James Dio!
I haven’t seen the article in years but I do remember the tagline said something like “grab your Beach Boy tapes and head down to the beach”
And again, it’s kids and their toys ruining everything. Never gets old…
LT DAN, if you’re looking for rare parts for this car, you *may* be able to find them on an ’89 Turbo Trans Am – they used the same engine. They’re even more rare, but you may be able to find one. At least you’re looking for two cars instead of one.
LT DAN: Keep these articles coming! Enjoying them “to the max”.
Im already working on the next one. It should make the Colonnade fans happy
I know what car you are alluding to and I have been looking forward to hear that story.
Patiently waiting…
I liked your write-up. I haven’t heard “Turbo Lover” in 30 years and now its been stuck in my head since I first read this three hours ago, and I don’t remember most of the words! Arrgghh!
Not my favorite JP album but a great song. Supposedly K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton wrote it after they bought a couple of Porsche 930 Turbos but I always liked to think if they had bought Grand Nationals it would have been a louder faster song.
The video has not aged well, lol, but still a great road song
Awesome. That car goes with ZZ Top from the eighties. Rolling up to a bar in that thing bladtin CSharp Dressed Man” and you know you’re gonna be leaving covered in ladies.
This car epitomizes everything pre-teen me thought was cool. Pre-teen me is a big part of late-thirties me.
Excellent read. Hope you can get her back on the road soon!
Always liked these cars, and am happy that I did briefly drive and earlier 3.8 turbo Regal (1981?) when it was nearly new. Congratulations for sticking with it, and keeping it on the road, and strip. As for car songs, a favorite of mine from a little earlier, though explicitly NOT relevant to these Buick’s, is Larry Wallis’ Police Car:
“I got speed, power, I got a V8 heart”
I used to have a cassette of Mozart’s 41st symphony. My usual taste runs to rock, blues, and classic 50s and 60s R&B (you might guess the latter from my screen name), so Mozart’s 41st is an outlier, but I like it. I don’t normally get into a certain kind of music suiting a car, but somehow Mozart’s 41st just seemed right in my ’71 Peugeot 504.
Great article, I hope you get back on the road in it soon.
It was the best of GM. It was the worst of GM.
These Grand Nationals are interesting to me. I kind of don’t understand the love for them, but at the same time I really do. They have just about every early-80s styling and build quality issue that makes American malaise era cars so difficult to like. But damn, once you paint it black and put that big turbo six under the hood it becomes another animal. That kind of performance was rarefied air back then and it is strangely appealing to have it available in a lightly restyled version of this:
GM deserves some credit here, the new sheet metal for 81 helped these cars a ton (Cutlass and Monte Carlo too). Before that the original 78-80s very clearly looked downsized, with odd stubby proportions, but the refresh managed to completely mitigate that. I would directly compare them to the 68-69 Skylarks vs. the 70-72s as another reskin that completely changed the attitude of the car for the better.
I find it more amazing just how much different the GN looked from Regals of the SAME years. GM plastered on so much plastichrome, puffy vinyl and wire wheel covers on standard Regals that they don’t even look related. Up to 10 years ago a 87 Regal would just blend in to the carscape as some old beater handmedown, while a Grand National would turn heads even if it was a bit derelict in condition itself.
Man, between the Charger and this you have a third of my dream garage. Sorry to hear about the troubles, but at some point when you’re passionate enough these things just get chalked up to personality quirks, my hobby car has certainly has them. Only thing I never much liked about Grand Nationals is the dash design and mandatory grey upholstery, the exteriorstyling is so brooding and tough but other than the 3 spoke steering wheel they look and feel run of the mill 80s GM anycar. I of course use this as a excuse for coping, after passing(Parents not agreeing ) on a somewhat worse for wear GN as my first car, right as the values skyrocketed gen for lower grade examples like that one. T-tops are something I used to love in GMs but after discovering how leak prone and rigidity compromising they are (I assume less so in these BOF G-bodies though) in practice, my tastes changed drastically.
All those suggesting alternative engine swaps are nuts. If you had an original 440 6-pack Roadrunner with a blown head gasket, would you swap a modern Hemi in its place? I thought not. Better off finding a Regal brougham and cloning a GN visually if you’re going to do that IMO
What are the other 4 cars in your dream garage Matt?
Regarding T-tops, I always hated convertibles but I love sunroofs and T-tops. Maybe because the car gets to keep it’s lines but you still get the open air feel, or maybe it’s just a generational thing where in the 70s and 80s, it was a cool option as convertibles were phased out.
68-70 RoadRunner or GTX, 69-70 Mustang fastback, Challenger Hellcat and a 60s Porsche 911 for some diversity.
I loved T-tops too for the same reasons, my Cougar has a factory moonroof and it was a big selling point for me, but having done some maintenance with it and dealing with T-top leaks on friends F-bodies I’ve gradually grown to prefer steel roofs.
1987 was a notable year for these for many reasons – it was the last one for the rear-drive Regal, an extended one for the GN that ran through December, a great sales year for same, and it was the last year General Motors allowed cars to be ordered with a la carte options. And it was the last item that gave me some thought to buying one, because Buick went even further and unbundled the fast turbo engine and associated chassis upgrades too. For ’87 only, you could put this beast of an engine in *any* Regal – you just had to order the “T” package along with it that included the wider tires and wheels (different style from the GN) and hood bump to accommodate the turbo. You could save some money and get a much wider choice of colors by ordering the 3.8T on a base Regal instead of the Grand National. But anyone who knows me knows what I wanted to order – the broughamed-out Regal Limited, burgundy velour button-tufted loose-cushion bench seats, column shifter, matching paint outside, maybe a landau vinyl top, definitely opera lamps – oh, and the turbo mill. Basically something that looked like your grandma’s car but could shut down Corvettes and Porsches. I lusted after this car, but it was too expensive and impractical for me, and I didn’t like the mandatory automatic transmission. I also assumed these would quickly depreciate (whoops). BTW, about 300 people thought like me and bought Turbo Regal Limiteds. I wonder if any of these *weren’t* special-ordered.
I love the GN. There was somebody that had one down the street when I was growing up in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
When i worked at the local pontiac dealer in the early 2000’s there was always one that came in every 2 months. The one service tech also had one. He had a manual transmission installed in it. I forgot how he fabbed it up but it shifted well. He told me that in the 1990’s he did a lot of transmission work on these cars because the auto trans could not handle the power (which is not surprising as the not too powerful 85, 87 Cutlass and 80 Malibu I have owned all needed new transmissions.)
So you might want to budget for a trans rebuild with more beefy internals and a external trans cooler.
Also you might want to drain out the coolant from the engine and also the oil. Put fresh oil in it and then drain it and fresh oil in it again once a month or two so as to remove the possible coolant contamination from the engine. Coolant will eat your crank bearings out in no time.
Well, thank you sir for all the music tips which will be so useful behind the wheel of my ’79 Caprice ! (I’m currently downloading “en masse” and looking forward to tomorrow’s daily commute !).
On the other hand, I DO not thank you for my future mileage. With a 4 barrel 350, I’m barely reaching 10 to 12 mpg. With those rock tracks, I’ll guess I’ll go down to 7-8 MPG…
By the way, this is one of the best piece of writing I’ve read this year. I really enjoyed the way you tied cars (especially from the great malaise era) to music.
Great write-up Dan, and another cool car! I love the tie in’s to music, and great song selection. I remember that C/D issue and if I recall correctly, the Olds 4-4-2 was the dog of the bunch. Even the HO 307 was no strong performer and they came with 3.73 gears. G-body coupes were very popular in my home town, although the most popular of the high performance models were the Monte Carlo SS, followed by the Cutlass 4-4-2. GN’s were very rare, but once I first laid eyes on one, it was clearly the best looking of the performance G-bodies. There was something about the blacked out paint scheme on the Buick that just improved its looks dramatically. The Caprice vs the Impala SS had the same effect.
Unfortunately, I have never had the chance to drive an GN, but would love to some day. It’s too bad about blowing the head gasket, but I am sure you have that 3.8L up and running again soon, the T-tops down and the tunes cranked.
Nice call on the Caprice. Just adding the Hofmeister kink and opening the rear wheel well made a huge difference.
It’s more than the paint scheme, I’ve seen enough non-black T-types to realize the bones of this bodystyle is way better than it gets credit for. I think the turbine wheels and subdued black trim is the key. I almost forgot about this chance photo-op I got of a trio of Turbo Regals I spotted in my Cougar back in June (lots of formal roofline porn here). I dare say was more drawn to the two T-Types that aren’t black.
In stark contrast, Caprice Classics with the hoffmeister kink and round rear wheel opening updates still looked like decommissioned cop cars in any other color but black and that dark maroon color used on Impalas.
You’re right it was more than the paint, but I think you knew what I meant. Really, it was the colour trim and wheels and stance that made the GN and that was the same thing that did it on the Caprice to Impala SS transformation. The T-Types you show above have all of the above elements, other than the black paint, so they do look better, although black is still best in my eyes.
We had lots of regular Regals around town and they were old person specials. Wire wheels, white walls, terrible stance, vinyl tops. So despite the decent overall styling, these were not attractive cars in my eyes. See below for an ’87 Regal in standard fare:
That’s what I was saying in an earlier post too, regular Regals couldn’t possibly look more different than these despite identical sheet metal, I saw tons like that one too around here, usually in blue or gold though. While wheels and the blackout trim no doubt play equal roles between these and Impalas, I think the core styling is significantly more resolved on the Regal than the Caprice. Dark paint was absolutely critical for the Impala’s looks, no matter what wheels and trim are on it, it’s pure camouflage to hide the less than attractive aspects that couldn’t be fixed. All Buick needed was less tinsel to clutter it up, the black paint on the GN package, while extra menacing, isn’t actually hiding anything unflattering about the design
I saw one like that…but it was a Regal T-type Limited. White with a white Landau roof, velour bench seat, column shifter, old-man door moldings, stand-up hood ornament…the only clue to the turbo was the “3.8 SFI TURBO” badge on the hood.
Living the dream, Lt. Dan. Easily in my top 5 Buicks, with the 85 Riviera. My dad also bought one as a reward for himself upon hearing about the 86 redesign. His was also dark metallic gray, but with a matching vinyl top and dark gray cloth interior. But his had the Olds V8 (IIRC, it was definitely an 8 though) which was much more reliable. It made it to 168,000 miles before a piston grenaded itself.
My Buick Encore is black-on-black and has a turbo 4, so I’ve thought about drawing up and making a yellow and red “4” logo for the deck lid to echo the old turbo 6 logo from the GNs as a bit of an inside joke.
I hope your GN has many more burnouts in store for 2019!
Had to laugh at the broken every night line because it’s so true. Some friends and I played around with Turbo Regals in the early 2000’s and there were about 15 in the local area, of which 3 might run at any given time and only 1 ready for action so to speak. Sometimes 2 would be ready to play but that was rare. It was my experience that most TR’s run merely ok for putting around and if you try to make a run it’ll be disappointing until you put some work into getting it sorted out.
Besides the almost inevitable head gaskets we saw a lot of ignition module and coil pack failures, injector drivers in the ECM failing, and of course the good old 200R4 3rd gear flare shift. This is on top of the usual old car problems and modifications naturally.
Cometic Multi-Layer-Steel (MLS) head gaskets. and head studs if you really want to bulletproof it. You’ll probably never have to do them again.
This. Even the notorious Ford 3.8s V6s are cured by these, on the Buick it should be bulletproof.
Exactly! And I already ordered a head stud kit from ARP. I took a few days off this week and the weather is supposed to be nice so I may get to it this week if the wifey lets me
Honestly…this shouldn’t have happened.
I’m glad you took all the problems in stride. I’m not really a GN guy, but I much enjoyed your writing, as well as a story about someone obtaining the object of their childhood desire.
Maybe it’s better that the car needed work. After all…
glittering prizes and endless compromises
Shatter the illusion of integrity.
You quoted “Spirit of Radio” That gets me right in the feels.
I needed to pay you back.
Rock on, LT Dan.