1987 Buick Regal

Gateway Classic Cars of Denver welcomes this 1987 Buick Gran National!

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. The significant improvement was in 1986, when Ron Yuille and the Turbo Engine Group engineered an intercooler for the 3.8 Turbo SFI V-6," wrote Martyn L. Schorr in his book, Buick GNX. With a new two-piece aluminum intake manifold that increased airflow by 10 percent, the engine was rated at 235 horsepower and 330 lb-ft of torque for '86, then 245 horsepower and 355 lb-ft for '87.

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. Ed Mertz became Buick general manager in 1986, and GM's aging rear-wheel-drive mid-sizers ceased production in 1987 to be replaced by new GM10 front-drive models for 1988. But Buick extended its Grand National build through the end of that year to satisfy demand. A total of 20,740 GNs were built for 1987 (versus 5512 in 1986). Of those, exactly 547 would be converted to GNXs. (Source: Car and Driver, Gary Witzenberg)

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