'87 Buick Regal Grand National Long-Term Test

That will be a cool test.

In '86 mine cost $14,400 off the showroom floor... That was all it took to rule the streets. I remember 200 wins and 12 losses written down in a note book in the center console. Those were my eighties.

 

our high school assigned officer (kind of a image thing really) had a sweet GN, black with weld racing wheels, and brought it out to our school car show ....he sure gained some cred that day ....bad ass cars in the day!

 

I gave up looking for an '87 a few years ago. Everything I found was hacked & wacked. Wish I would have known about this one. It would have been perfect except for the T-Tops.

 

GNX
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That was a smoking deal! There was a low mileage one that sold at an auction in England for over $50,000 US (I'm pretty sure)

 

love it!!!!!!

 

How about some period pics of both my GNs the years they were new?

I recently recovered these photos of my car from a contact sheet of negatives I took for my college photography class. I had not seen them in 25 years. Yes, I had a cellular phone in 1987!! LOL. Cost like $2 a minute to talk back then.
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I have original dealer brochures from 1986 and 1987. I also have an original plastic model still sealed.

Additionally I have magazine articles from the period as well. I've saved everything. I want another one - maybe when things improve for me financially.

Here are some more photos. The T-Type was my friends. Both of these cars were about a month old when these photos were taken. Both 1987s and probably had less than 1,000 miles each. I also owned a 1986 prior to this. These were recovered from old slides I'd saved in a box.
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Here is my 1986 taken in summer 1986. I am one of the few lucky people who had an 86 when they were new. Not many people knew what they were and this car surprised a fair number of people, including several unsuspecting new (C4) Corvette owners.

By 1987 lots of people knew what they were, so it wasn't as easy to surprise them. I have so many memorable street racing stories from the time I had this car. This one was a coupe with the digital dash and touch button AC.
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Here is GNX #546 on the showroom floor of Darby Buick, fall 1987. They only made 547 of these and this one was next to last.

These were recovered from long forgotten slides in a box. I have several more photos of this car.

I have an extremely long history with these vehicles.
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Here's my Monogram model from 1987, still sealed in the box.
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GNX #155 with only 10 miles on the clock. They've had it for some time now. IIRC it been advertised in the 120's several months back. No affiliation.

http://www.motorcars-intl.com/vehicle_details.aspx?id=1265&CAR=Buick-GNX-for-sale

 

I was going to MCC in 1986. Kept asking my dad to buy a hot car all through High School. He said he had to have a car that would comfortably fit four adults. I tried to talk him into the Mustang and Camaro line but he didn't approve of the back seat leg room. When the GN got fast in 1986 I started pushing...I'll never forget when he drove home with the 1987 from Darby Buick. Said he was pissed because he had never paid full price for a car in his life but Darby wouldn't budge a penny even though he was friends with Mr. Darby himself. We all loved that car, my mom who was normally very nervous in a car would constantly ask my dad to blow the car in front of us off of the road...he would and then we would all laugh out loud as the "world's fastest top gear accelerator" would pin us to our seats. The car was perfectly balanced for drifting (although we didn't call it that) and dad couldn't understand why his rear tires only lasted a few months (he knew.)

Impromptu street light drag races...My dad lost one and I only two. Me: Once to a Mustang 5.0 who surprised me (you absolutely had to hold the brake and and wind up the turbo to get a good launch) and second to another GN who wasted us..turned out he had nitrous on it. My dad said a local kid beat him with his 69 Camaro and I didn't believe it...turned out the hose clamp blew off of the turbo...We went to a marine supply and got a bigger intake hose and double clamped it on both sides as many other GN owners had done.

Anyway, I wonder if we ever ran into each other cruising the Sarasota/Bradenton area?

Ever hang out at Siesta or Tuttle beach on Friday nights?

When the GN hit 200,000 miles my dad traded it for a milk toast LeSabre.

Next time I visit my parents in Florida, I'll look for some pictures.

Dave

As an aside, last Christmas my dad drove our Ferrari for the first time. At first he just drove it like the LeSabre but after I convinced him to keep it above 4000rpm at all times he suddenly came alive. Just like old times...

 

I love these cars.

I owned an '87 for 11 years. Even through the early 2000's people would dog it for having a V6 instead of V8. The cars are such sleepers since they make zero noise unless under boost and to top it, most people figure they are Monte Carlo SS's with a carb'ed 305.

I was lucky to have a few tracks close and constantly had the car there. I ended up completely re-doing the suspension with Hotchkis parts; Baer brakes; etc. Power was TA49 with alky and supporting mods.

 

Dave it's very possible the guy with nitrous was me.

My 87 had a lot of mods: Eastern Performance chip, adjustable boost valve, re-jetted NO2, test pipe in place of the catalytic converter, ram air system, K&N filter with the box. I would go out looking for people to race at night time. I was never beaten by another GN, and wasn't aware of any other GN with nitrous in the area in those days. My 86 also had nitrous, but the 87 got all the other mods.

I was a student at MCC in late 86 through 88 and then moved to Connecticut for college, and drove both my 86 and 87 GNs to school back then.

 

Small world..now that I think about it I remember you with your gn from mcc and also when you moved up to the 87. You were sort of a legend among car guys. I drove a 1967 Morris minor, a beat-up 1964 chevy 10 pickup, and a rusted out 76 pontiac Lemans during those years. If it was you that dusted my sister and me in dad's gn ( and I think it was) I will never forget disappearing in a cloud of tire smoke only to see you leave us in the dirt...you pulled over ahead with a friend and we talked for awhile...I at first thought something was wrong with our car and you laughed and said you thought I would say that....then you showed us the nitrous...also laughed when you realised that sis and I were out in the family car....

 

Wow, that's nuts! Definitely a small world. WOW!!!

Like I said, I knew of no one in the area back in those days who had NO2 on their GN. I know I was first in the area to install it as Automotive Engineering (remember them?) off of Cortez was one of the few places to get bottle refills at the time and it was pretty well known mine was the only one.

I had a buddy who had one of the Turbo TAs and I would dust him pretty bad, too. The TTAs were way faster than stock GNs as well.

I have lots of stories about street racing back then. I got both of my cars from Conley Buick and had a GNX reserved. Ended up in a lawsuit over that one...long story best saved for another time.

Here are another few shots of the car, including the nitrous setup that used a specialized inlet hose tapped specially for the fogger. These came as 125hp kits but I read an article in Hot Rod mag where they used bigger jet fittings and got 250hp out of it. I ordered the same jets, replaced them and the rest was history. I would say conservatively my GN was well over 450 hp and would turn mid to high 11s at DeSoto.
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BTW I still live in the area but this is my main playtoy now...
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Return of the GN?

http://www.edmunds.com/car-news/grand-national-gnx-and-t-type-are-returning-to-buick.html

"For those born after the Reagan administration, the Buick Regal T-Type, Grand National and GNX were essentially the quickest cars you could buy in 1986 and '87. They were powered by turbocharged versions of Buick's 3.8-liter V6 and they instantly became legends on the street and on every drag strip in America. Today these Buicks are highly valued collector cars, with prices topping out at $100,000 for one of the 547 GNXs that GM built in 1987.

One of those GNXs used to belong to Mark Reuss, the current president of General Motors North America. In fact, his dad, Lloyd Reuss, approved the original GNX when he was executive vice president of General Motors North America in the '80s. Needless to say, there's plenty of enthusiasm at the very top of General Motors for a return of these storied nameplates.

That enthusiasm can't work miracles, however, so we'll have to wait at least another year before this crop of performance Buicks even gets a mention in public. Figure the 2014 Detroit Auto Show is a good bet.

Edmunds says: Just when we think GM has settled back into stupid mode Reuss and the gang get smart. We can't wait to drive these new Buicks. Make ours, and everyone else's, black."
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GNs were 2 doors, not 4.

Besides the impact of a new GN will be basically zero since there are so many fast cars out there today. In the late 80s that simply wasn't the case, so that made the GN very special. A six cylinder old ladies car that moved like that was something no one had really seen before. Now there are fast 4 and 6 cylinder cars everywhere.

 

True...seems you have to go for a GNX to find one untouched or not "hacked up". Or get a project car and do the hacking to your wants. On a tangent, I have been looking for a 1st generation 4Runner (84-89), and there are no stock ones out there in nice shape.

I have seen a few GNs on the auction shows like Mecum and Barrett Jackson over the last two years, that look great and go in the high teens/low 20's. Don't know if they were good deals, no interested buyers, or not so nice underneath.