Car Fix DIY Videos

We went to look at this 1984 Buick Regal Grand National and will be purchasing it and bringing it to McGinty Motorcars to get it ready for sale.

According to Car and Driver:

“For 21 years before NASCAR started selling naming rights in 1971, its top stock-car racing championship was known as the Grand National, and the name lingered in public usage long after the series officially became the Winston Cup. Ten years later, Darrell Waltrip raced factory-backed Buick Regals to claim back-to-back championships in 1981 and ’82. So, it was in keeping with division general manager Lloyd Reuss’s thrust to move Buick’s image from a maker of cushy “doctors’ cars” to something more youthful and exciting when it unveiled the first Regal Grand National at NASCAR’s 1982 Daytona 500.

Just 215 first-year GNs were built, but then Reuss’s team launched a run of all-black Regal GN coupes that would culminate with the truly awesome ’87 GNX. “Tom Wallace was the vehicle chief,” recalls then–Buick assistant chief engineer Don Runkle, “and I had the engine side. My message to the group: ‘We have to beat the Corvette.’ “

This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Turbo Genesis
The turbo V-6 story goes all the way back to 1973 when Ken Baker, a young engineer in Buick’s test lab (he would later lead General Motors’ electric-vehicle program, then its research labs), started a Boy Scout Explorer program at the Buick engineering department. “I decided that a great project would be to turbocharge the recently revived V-6 with the capability of performance in lighter cars or fuel economy in larger cars,” he relates. “We begged, borrowed, and scrounged parts to build a dyno engine, then got a scrap Skylark and married the two. That project involved many engineers giving seminars to the [Scout] kids regarding their areas of expertise . . . and a car that was a blast to drive.”

Future Buick boss Reuss returned from a stint at Chevrolet in 1975 as chief engineer and soon called Baker into his office. “He asked about the secret Explorer project.” Baker recalls. “I thought it was the end of my career. ‘I’ve heard about that project,’ he said. ‘Is it any good?’ I described our performance and economy goals and two weeks later was asked to head a team—with engineers Tom Wallace and Jeff Lane—to put it into production.

“Then Reuss said, ‘How about doing a turbo V-6 Indy Pace Car?’ So, we went to work on production and pace-car versions. On the final commitment day for the Indy engine, assistant chief powertrain engineer Cliff Studaker came to the dyno for a power run, and we blew the top off the air cleaner with a major backfire! When we went to Lloyd’s office and gave him the update, he said, ‘Can we do it or not?’ I said, ‘Yes!’ And the rest is history, perhaps one of the most exciting technology reaches ever in a pace car. We had that V-6 boosted to 21 psi—more than the methanol-fueled cars in the race we were pacing—running on gas with a little octane additive, and it was a hit! Dan Gurney took it for a drive on the track, and after four flat-out laps, we had to replace the tires! It was in the lobby of the Indy museum for quite a while.”

Among the key new technologies on that 1976 Indianapolis 500 pace car’s engine were a knock sensor and pre-ignition control, “an early version of electronic spark control that helped it run at its limit without damage,” Baker explains. Rated at 165 horsepower, the turbocharged 3.8-liter V-6 first made it to production in 1978. The much hotter 200-hp Grand National would follow six years later.

The Black Arts
Other colors were considered, but the decision to make all GNs black gave them a sinister Darth Vader look. Don Hackworth, who replaced Reuss as Buick general manager in 1984, authorized a cool but controversial commercial showing a Grand National rumbling menacingly through a city at night to a Buick-ized version of the George Thorogood and the Destroyers song, “Bad to the Bone.” Buick built just 2000 copies of its ’84 Regal Grand National and 2102 for 1985—far short of demand…

Car and Driver’s April 1986 review began: “Corvette, get outa town. Mustang, move over. Camaro, keep your back to the wall at all times. The biggest, baddest gun west of the Pecos is loose in the streets, and there’s gonna be some shootin’….” C/D clocked a 4.9-second zero-to-60-mph run, quicker than a contemporary Corvette, most U.S.-market Ferraris, and even the Lamborghini Countach. Its quarter-mile was also impressive at 13.9 seconds. But C/D’s tech team calculated that the test car’s engine was actually pumping out something like 290 horses versus the advertised 235, so it may have been tweaked by Buick engineers.”