Choices, Choices . . .
If I called the shots on my car ownership journey, I would have started not with a janky ‘79 Capri, but instead a ‘64-‘72 GM A-body, preferably a Skylark. But daily driver “golden age” A-bodies were long gone in Rochester by 1987; even Colonnades (well, ones you’d actually want) were in short supply by then. So, being a Buick man, I set my sights on a ‘78-‘80 A-body Regal.
‘79 Regal Sport Coupe: Yeah, this was more my style.
By the mid-‘80s, I was delighted by Buick’s commitment to the turbocharged 3.8L V6. Buick found the answers to many of the early turbo engine’s shortcomings in one place: electronic engine management. Their resulting sequential port fuel injected, distributor-less, turbocharged, and (starting in ‘86) intercooled 3.8L V6 laid the beat down on its late-model competition (as long as one knew the right launch technique). I hoped that, by association, a little bit of that mojo would rub off on my Regal.
As the Audi volk say, “Vorsprung durch Technik,” or “Progress through Technology.” Port fuel injection and engine management made Buick’s turbo 3.8L V6 good; intercooling made it legendary. / oldcarbrochures.com
Choosing Carefully
In “dream world” 1987, I would have procured a brand new Light Blue (code 25) turbo Regal. In “real world” 1987, my still limited budget led me to an old-gas-station-turned-used-car-joint on Route 96 by Eastview Mall. They stocked the kind of cars a true A-body connoisseur could appreciate.
An exact match. Would I have preferred buckets and a console? Of course, but there are far worse ways to travel than on light blue velour pillow back seats. / oldcarbrochures.com
I got the Regal in June of ‘87, after gleefully sending my godawful Capri to meet its maker. Mine was a Limited, in Dark Blue metallic (actual color name in brochure), with a light blue landau top, light blue velour split bench pillow seats, most power goodies, and two prized (to me) options: factory road wheels and the 4.9L Pontiac-sourced V8. It even had the rallye ride and handling package (!).
The front office of my ‘79. Same color, same trim level, but better radio here. And the clock probably worked on this one. / oldcarbrochures.com
My Uncle John again co-signed for an enthusiastic me this time, and I was on my way.
No V6s, no V6 turbos
I had zero interest in the 105 hp, two-barrel carbed, naturally aspirated 3.8L Buick V6. A friend of mine had an ‘80 Regal with one and It. Was. Such. A. Dog. (He later blew it up one day by continuing to drive it when it was overheating, until it finally died. A story for another time.) Hard to believe that in ‘79 the 3.8L was a step up from the Regal’s standard 3.2L V6.
A carbureted turbo V6 Regal Sport Coupe was tempting, but only for looks: while it generated a healthy (for the time) 170 hp and 265 lb.-ft., in ‘79, uneven drivability showed that Buick hadn’t advanced the art of turbocharging much from the Olds Jetfire and Corvair Corsa days.
‘79 Regal Sport Coupe. I liked that hood, but not enough to put up with the turbo V6 underneath it. / oldcarbrochures.com
Thankfully, I was lucky (and gun-shy from the Capri) enough to avoid a Regal Sport Coupe. This caution cost me an opportunity to enjoy a frequent one-two punch of early turbo Regal ownership:
- The turbo dies, necessitating an expensive rebuild/replacement.
- Shortly after the turbo repair is completed, the engine dies due to oiling system deficiencies inherent in the Buick V6 design.
‘78 Buick carbureted 3.8L V6: Sometimes, the old ways aren’t the best ways.
Some turbo early adopters must have been pretty sad.
The (Not Terribly) Great V8
In any event, I wanted V8 power and torque, or at least V8 torque. Our trusted local garage (hardcore GM homers of the “baseball-hot dogs-apple pie-and-Chevrolet” persuasion) gave middling-to-negative long-term reports on early Chevy 305s, so I avoided Regals with little “5.0 litre” badges on the front fenders.
With no Buick 350 available for the A-body, that left the Pontiac 301, a design that was all about making a 400 as lightweight and efficient as possible. Pontiac turbocharged the 301 for the turbo Trans-Am in ‘80 and ‘81; its mediocre real world performance showed that Pontiac didn’t advance the art of turbocharging, either. The two-barrel carbed 301 was fine with me; as long as it wasn’t a four-cylinder or V6, I was in.
Pontiac 301 V8 in ‘79 Regal: The short-deck tower of no power. Reliable and low maintenance, it got the job done. / classiccars.com
At 140 hp and 235 lb.-ft. it was no drag racer (neither was my Capri), but made for its modest output with well-tuned drivability. I assumed the 4.9L was paired with a THM 200 automatic; despite its reputation as fragile and underbuilt, I never had a problem with mine and figured it had already been rebuilt once.
Family Buy-In
My father was 100% onboard with the Regal. It was more our kind of car; a vehicle with moderate practicality (could accommodate four passengers; had a useful trunk capacity) and a bit of panache. Plus, it was an automatic (my father never learned how to drive a manual). In 1980s Rochester, ‘78-‘87 A/G-bodys were everywhere; Monte Carlos, Grand Prixs, and of course, the ubiquitous Cutlass.
My father and the Regal, 1990 or so.
I paid something like $2,450 for the Regal; it had about 80,000 miles, which was creeping towards that dreaded 100,000-mile “danger zone.” But, it ran well, all the power equipment worked, and the A/C was R-12 cold. The bottoms of both doors were scaly with rust, but it had that body-on-frame ride quality and quietness not yet mastered by most unitized cars. It rode and handled like I expected it would: firmer and better controlled than a base Regal but without the Fox body’s flinty, crash-bang feeling.
This was either job interview day or attending a wedding day. ‘89 or ‘90.
I spent the summer and fall of ‘87 as a happy man; I tooled around in my Regal and started my second year of college, relieved that our family’s current financial state was stable and modestly solvent for the first time in many years.
Washy-washy
The Regal was a pleasure to wash and detail. It always looked so good afterward, with its chrome factory road wheels, contrasting paint and vinyl top colors, and enough shiny exterior trim to stake its claim at the top of the A-body food chain. I worked at our local Cadillac dealer through the summer of ‘88, so it was easy to pull it into a wash bay for a quick clean up.
Crediting my father for this one, as it bears all of his photography hallmarks: Portion of car cut-off, captured his own shadow, and another vehicle in the frame.
For my community college graduation in ‘88, my father and Uncle John went halfsies on a set of white-lettered Dunlop Radial GT Qualifier tires, which was a much-appreciated gift and a fond enduring memory of the car and that time.
Thanks, Dad. I didn’t need the top half of my head for that job interview anyway. Note Dunlop Radial GT Qualifier tires.
I used to see an ‘80 Regal with the same color scheme as my ‘79 at the local Ground Round. It had a set of BF Goodrich Radial T/As on Buick factory road wheels, and I thought it looked great, even with a vinyl landau top. My father was initially skeptical, but once he saw them on the car, he was sold.
Oh, for another 40 horsepower
I’m not going to lie: it would have been nice if the Regal had magically developed another 40 hp or so, on par with, say, an ‘83 Hurst Olds, which is not a terribly high bar. But, it didn’t need it. Actually, with the Regal’s propensity for brake consumption (covered below), additional power would have been a bad idea.
Today, I’d likely think the Regal was underpowered. But back then, I went to work, went to school, finished school and went to SUNY Fredonia for more school. My parents borrowed it a couple of times for out-of-town trips. It saw unexpected snow storms, summer humidity, and kept running. None of us were missing those 40 horses.
But, that’s not to say it didn’t have its quirks:
- Olympic gold medal brake eater. I actively used this car for about three years and roughly 30,000-35,000 miles. And I put at least three sets of brakes, of which two were brakes and rotors, because the pads were worn to the studs, which made some destructively groovy grooves in my brand new rotors. The pedal feel gave no indication that the brakes were toast. Ugh.
Rotors from a ‘69 Corvette with groovy grooves. Like throwing away money. / corvetteforum.com
- Never enough brake for hills. There was one hill coming into Greene, NY, that, even with the Regal’s new front brakes and rotors, and compression braking, you felt rotor pulsing in the brake pedal by the bottom of the hill. It was a moderately steep hill, but not Mount Everest. No matter; just one trip down and I’d “un-new” my new brakes.
- Muffler eater. In those days, I considered muffler shops a license to print money. I put on one exhaust system and part of a second system during an active driving period of around three years.
- A-/G-body “behind the rear axle” frame rot. This was not a critical issue during my ownership, but I was aware it was happening as the right side of the rear bumper sagged a little. I later saw the car, driven by its next owner, with a wooden rear bumper. Wooden bumpers make me sad.
If you let it go long enough. you end up with this, making it hard to keep the rear bumper attached. As with the Fox body Mustang, the aftermarket has repair parts. / gbodyforum.com
- Designated driver status. Most of my friends had smaller cars. They always wanted to go in my Regal because it was more comfortable and had more room than their sportier cars. This frequently made me the designated driver.
College cruiser
My friend Jim and I, freshly minted community college graduates, headed to Fredonia NY in August 1988. We led a three-car caravan: he and I in my well-loaded Regal, our respective mothers in Jim’s parents Crown Victoria, and our fathers in a panel van from Jim’s parents business, carrying other “must have at college” items.
Entrance to SUNY Fredonia campus. The June day of our campus tour, the weather was like this. As of 2025, I am still batting 0 for 2 on attending out-of-town college. / observertoday.com
We were both excited about the much fabled “college experience” — being away from home, starting new, becoming (sort of) self-reliant. And, for me, that lasted about two days before I decided I didn’t like being there very much. Things I didn’t like included the food, the weather, our dorm room, some of the professors, the cliques, etc. My friend Jim blossomed on campus; he got involved in things and met people. I, on the other hand, wilted on campus, I found it nearly impossible to get into any groove.
Oh, I also disliked my car being parked outside in the elements, far away from our dorm. I was not in love with the requirement that one’s SUNY Fredonia parking pass be adhered to the back bumper of one’s car. But, for better or worse, I had my car on campus (I was not going to school without my car). That meant I could leave. And I did.
Entrance to SUNY Fredonia campus. This is what the weather was like during my brief residency. Not sure what I expected — it’s practically on Lake Erie. / wgrz.com
Eastbound and Down
Every Friday, after my first and only class of that day, I grabbed my school books and my laundry, jumped in my Regal, and I was gone. The ride home took about two hours on the NYS Thruway, and gave me a chance to decompress and feel like myself again. I returned to school every Sunday evening, stocked up with supplemental food and clean laundry, ready to gut out another week.
As the fall semester passed, I learned to endure being on campus, first with an indifferent compliance, then later as an OK-ish routine. But, I still went home every Friday. I only stayed the last Friday before the semester ended because of finals.
How I would have preferred to find my Regal on Fridays at Fredonia: Idling in Park with the trunk open, door open, gassed up and ready to go! In reality, it was usually buried in a snowdrift in one of the student parking lots.
One Fun Weekend
Jim and I had a great time that weekend. We went out to the local bars and clubs, met up with his friends, danced with a bunch of women — what some might consider a typical college social weekend. Later that weekend I helped out a friend of Jim’s who, upon preparing to drive home for holiday break, found himself with a flat tire and no safety spare. Unaware that tires could be patched or plugged, he had what we in learning and development call a “teachable moment” as I took him and his flat tire to the local garage.
When Jim and I departed campus for the holidays, I felt like I might have finally become comfortable enough to not jet home every Friday. I hoped that the spring semester would prove more agreeable.
Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Return To School
But, life has a funny way of interrupting the plan. The day after Christmas, both of my parents unexpectedly found themselves out of jobs. And just like that, the “plan” changed to a survival strategy. Christmas presents were returned, unused items were evaluated for resale. This strategy left no room for returning to school. Maybe if I’d been in my last semester, I would have returned. But I had a year and a half to go, so it made more sense to stay home and work.
So, now the Regal was my work car, as I commuted back and forth to Webster, NY in the winter and spring of 1989. From the classroom to the press room, I worked second shift as a temp at a law book publisher. Where will this lead? Well, you’ll find out in the next installment, when I buy a car “that doesn’t exist.”
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1978 Buick Regal – The Extreme Moderate
1986 Buick Regal Limited: Rhapsody In Black Jason Shafer
Nice car, and clearly you cared for it very well.
When the turbo Regal came out, I was still in high school. One of the students mom leased a brand new two tone silver and gray Regal turbo. It was really nice and loaded with options.
But, John (her son) told me that it was one major pain to keep up with. First, we lived in Fort Myers and the closest dealer who was trained to work on that car was in Orlando. Once every 5 or 6 months it would get plugs, wires and regular oil changes.
Second, I noticed that every time they pulled into the parking lot, they’d sit in the car with it running for about 4-5 minutes. This was in the owner’s manual and if shut off to too soon, the turbo could lock up.
They kept that car two years and went back to a standard Regal. John stayed away and bought a 75 Cougar!
Well that’s a good reminder of some of the things the Regal did well. I tend to dwell on the slowwww 3.8 and frame rot when thinking about our family’s experience 😕
At least you didn’t total the Regal on the same day your parents lost their jobs. My wife crashed the family Chevette on the day her Father’s business failed and was told “ you have ruined your life “ which fortunately was not the case.
Cold and cruel. As if a family Chevette wasn’t mean enough.
I had a ’83 Cutlass with the 231 V6. Slow as hell, but very, very reliable. Kept for 12+ years. Only gave up on the car due to the rear oil seal dropping 1 to 2 quarts of oil every tank of gas and the lack of R12 freon while living in the Deep South.
Surprised by the front pad issues. As typical, GM would use the customer as the proving grounds and fix things as customers complained. Very similar to the Pontiac Fiero.
The badly framed pictures are a hoot. There are plenty of them in my family’s archives, if it’s any consolation.
I had a colleague who bought a carbureted Turbo Regal in late ‘81 or maybe early ‘82. I drove it once and really enjoyed it; I don’t recall poor drivability, at least no worse than most carbureted cars of the time. It was well-optioned in a sporty way and I remember decent handling and road feel, and good power, again by 1982 standards. I moved on to a different company soon after, so I don’t know how it lasted. The Buick replaced an RWD Corolla so he may have been in for a disappointment.
I’m a California lifer so I can’t imagine the rust nor the update NY winters. My wife went to college in Rochester NY and Michigan but came to California for her first job and never went back. Her stories of college winters make me so glad I never ventured east.
Of course I meant upstate New York 😀
Compliments to your comments about the bad oiling system of the Buick V-6, a terrible design. The 301 was a fair engine, but low on power and would degrade with miles. The best engine would have been the Olds 260, low on power, but indestructible. The common Chevy 305 would do the job also.
Yup. I never understood the hate for the 305. In an A Body, the 305’s torque zipped it along very nicely and if you want more power, it is very easy to get.
The 305 actually felt more sprightly off the line than a 350 and got 30% better fuel economy.
Rochester New York ~ I lived at 390 Wellington Road part of the 1960’s .
Sounds like you took the time to research these and dodged the common bullets .
-Nate
Your story touched on a long-ago thing that I’d long forgotten until now. When I was looking for colleges, one of my main criteria was that underclassmen were allowed to have cars on campus. I had a preferred college in mind, and I recall that was my first question to the admissions person who I met with following a tour. After receiving a “yes” to that question, I recall driving through one of the student parking lots and being relieved that the parking passes were in cars’ windows instead of on the bumper. Most much satisfactory in my opinion.
Also, I love the photo with the top half of your head missing… not just because it’s so symbolic of pictures from those days, but because someone in your family actually kept it after being developed.
Turbo Buick 3.8s were installed in Holdens down under, lighter than your Buick they went really well, of course that was years after Buick did that and they were debugged and upgraded,
Kinda like those Buicks looks like a nice cruiser.
Thank you for the excellent write up! The Regal was indeed everywhere back in the day. I personally would have gone for the Chevrolet 305 because it was so easy to make it go faster. A cam, intake and dual exhaust woke them up very nicely.
The brakes of GM cars of the era were pathetic. GM cheaped the out. On a B Body, you’d be hard pressed to get more than 20,000 km out of them. For comparison, I have 62,000 km on my Golf and the brakes are still more than 50%. The only consolation about poor GM brakes is all the parts were dirt cheap.
Great story and one of the best color combinations. Had an acquaintance who received a new dealer ordered 1980 as a high school graduation. Poverty spec model. Silver with vinyl, am radio and no a/c. She loved it.
That’s a nice car.
My “old-gas-station-turned-used-car-joint on Route 96” was on Enterprise Ave in Lake Charles, Louisiana in 1972. I bought a 1970 Plymouth Sport Fury for 2,895 with 500 down and the difference financed at the “dealership” for 36 months. Nothing fancy, dark green with a green vinyl top; 383 with a Carter 2bbl and AC of course … which required a can of R12 every summer … of course, it had “ice cold AC” when it was on the lot. I still have the hose my dad bought for me to “gas it up.” Fast forward “a few years” as my wife and I just put a can of R134a in her ’04 Taurus; DIY rules at our house.
I traded my Plymouth on a ’73 T-bird, which was a huge mistake … got tired of the wet carpet, as it leaked every time it rained; I found out later the previous owner was involved in a “fender-bender.” Traded the T-bird and it’s vacuum operated transmission on a ’73 Plymouth Gran Coupe a few months later as I soon figured out that the T-bird was the proverbial “money pit”; my dad said I “regained my senses.”
A few years later on my way to class, then to one of my two part time jobs, I found another ’70 Sport Fury; this one was identical to my first car, but was a GT with the 440. Bought it outright for 500 and still have it today. The plan is to “go through it” and fix it up, rebuilding as many original parts as I can, including the “old school ignition,” I haven’t forgot how to “set the points;” I still have my dad’s old timing light. And now I finally have the time to do it.
College kids and car payments don’t mix; I soon found myself working two part-time jobs “sweating those car payments.” I never bought another car on the “easy payment plan” and can safely say with the prices the way they are today, I never will.
After all these years, you can still pick up a good used car for 3 to 5 G’s … if you don’t mind the “DIY thing” and learn the quirks of today’s computerized automotive technology.
Google and YouTube are a big help for a novice mechanic like me.
My mom had a 79 Regal, only her experience was nowhere similar to yours. She said it “fell apart,” and she wound up trading it in 1983. That was unusual for her as she maintained her vehicles and normally kept them for 8 or 9 years, minimum.
I’ll never forget walking out to one of the (distant) parking lots at Oswego in the mid ’90’s and being unable to find my car. My friend and I walked around for a good 30 minutes before we made it to the other side of the lot. Once there, we turned around to walk back and suddenly, we spotted my forlorn ’86 Escort, half buried in a pile of snow 20 feet tall. Anyone that’s been to a SUNY campus in Upstate (or any huge parking lot, for that matter) will know this isn’t an exaggeration. Another half on hour of digging, crawling through the drivers side and giving it all the ponies left, I made it out.
Oh, those were the days.
Great looking car, much sweeter than the poo brown LeMans my Mom bought new in 79. Speaking of that worthless boat anchor slug of a carb’d 231…..
But we only had a 2 car garage, you had FOUR so things couldn’t have been all that bad!
Took me a minute to get what you meant about four garages. It’s not what you think; those were condos — each building had four condo units. Each unit got a single car garage.
Trust me; the three of us in an 800 square foot, single-level condo was not palatial by any means. Part of the reason it worked as well as it did was because I worked second-shift. My folks were asleep by the time I got home, so I had the place to myself, so to speak.
When the “downsized” 1978 GM intermediates appeared; all my car magazines were red-hot on the turbo V6 Regal.
A salesman friend of our family finessed a weekend test drive for me and Dad. We parked my 1976 Regal, with it’s BUICK 350 4-BBL V8 engine, in the dealership’s back lot and drove home with a 15 miles old turbo V6 Regal.
As Mom and Dad loved the downsized body; I kept my steaming pile of automotive offal design opinion to myself.
Compared to “my” Regal, the turbo V6 Regal was a flat spotted dog. Hard to start when hot, no power until you had your foot on the front bumper for a couple of heartbeats. Mom thought it was smooth, she was a timid “tip-toe” careful driver, I made ugly facial expressions, Dad gave me dirty looks.
Mom still wanted it, God knows why. Monday morning Dad and I trundled it back to the dealership. Extended price negotiations yielded a $400 discount off the sticker. Dad was not amused, I snorted my derision. The salesman kept saying that the turbo Regal was a hot item; if we didn’t want it someone else would. Dad politely declined. After a warning glare from Dad I kept my mouth shut.
As we walked up to “my” Regal (Mom’s hand-me-down, actually) I noticed two notes under the windshield wiper. Both were offers from dealer service department employees who wanted to buy it.
Mom was heartbroken when we pulled up in the driveway in “my” Regal. Thunderclouds were forming over her face. After a long, heated discussion with Dad all I heard when he raised his voice slightly was “four hundred G-D dollars discount!” Mom dropped her eyes to the floor and also dropped the conversation then and there.
Agreed, Mark. The specs looked good on paper; in the real world, the turbo lag was pronounced. The “Turbo Control Center” or knock sensor/electronic spark control worked overtime trying to keep the engine (sort of) on the edge of detonation to maximize performance. The effort was laudable; the execution was not.
And no one was going to baby these engines—they were going to follow the sort of iffy oil change schedule one does on Granny’s 307-powered Nova.
Much more development made the ‘81-‘83 ones better. But it took some real electronics to make them what they became in ‘84 and after.
The Regal Beagle my friend called it. He had a ’78 turbo. That was probably my first time around a turbo’ed gas engine in a car. Plenty of diesels had turbos and I figured those could handle the extra stress on the bottom end. My friend would pull up to a stop and he’d let the car idle for a few minutes before turning it off. What was that for I wondered. That was to let oil and maybe coolant circulate through the turbo to cool it down. Hmmmm I thought. Wonder how many do that today with all the turbos around now. Maybe there are electric pumps that time out. Don’t know.
I had a couple of Cutlass Supreme Broughams, ’80 and ’81 with the 3.8s. They were company cars. Similar to the Regal, they were like driving your living room down the road. Nice for commuting. I didn’t mind the lack of supercar performance. I went home to a 911.
Re: letting it idle to cool it down—that was still a thing into the early 2000s. There was a healthy aftermarket business in “turbo timers” which allowed the driver to “turn the car off” and exit the car with keys in hand, while the engine continued to run for a pre-determined time afterward, then shut off.
I don’t hear anything about those now; oil formulation and newer turbo designs supposedly have resolved the issue. I have ~63k miles on my stock 2014 Focus ST — we’ll see how long it goes (or doesn’t).