In the early 1980s, Buick faced an image problem. Long seen as a brand for grandparents more concerned with a cushy ride than with performance or handling, Buick’s demographic was aging, and new buyers simply weren’t visiting Buick showrooms. The answer was to borrow a page from the brand’s storied past, when Gran Sport models were used to attract a younger, performance- and image-conscious buyer into Buick dealerships.
When the first Buick Grand National appeared as a 1982-only model, it was little more than an appearance package, but in 1984 a far more sinister Grand National hit the streets, bedecked in black over black and infused with turbocharged V-6 power. Of all the turbocharged Grand National models built from 1984-1987, the ultimate expression of performance came in the form of the car’s swan song, the limited-production, 1987-only Buick GNX.
From 1984-‘86, Buick produced 9,614 Grand Nationals, and by 1987–the final year of production–demand was so high that Buick built 20,194 examples to satisfy its customers. To give the Grand National a fitting farewell, Dave Sharpe, Buick’s chief engineer, petitioned senior management to allow the creation of a “super Grand National,” and thus the GNX was born.

From the beginning, it was to be a low-volume car, produced for Buick by ASC/McLaren at a “suggested retail price” of $29,290, at a time when a well-equipped Grand National carried a sticker price of $18,295. Initial plans called for production of just 200 GNX models, but to meet escalating demand that quantity ultimately increased to 547 units.
The design goal for GM’s Advanced Concepts Group (which would ultimately set the specifications for the car) was both simple and ambitious: Build the quickest GM production four-seater, ever. Doing so would require extensive modifications to the engine, transmission and even suspension, but the team appointed to develop the car proved to be up to the challenge.
Under the hood, the GNX started with the same 231-cubic-inch V-6 as other Grand National models, but received a special Garrett T-3 turbocharger equipped with a ceramic impeller; an intercooler with the same dimensions as the stock one but more cooling fins per row; a ceramic-coated turbo shield and inlet pipe; a larger diameter dual exhaust; and a recalibrated engine control unit that permitted 15 PSI of boost. The net result was an output of 276 horsepower and 360 pound-feet of torque, a gain of 31 horsepower and five pound-feet of torque over standard Grand National models.

Even the GNX’s transmission received tuning, allowing it to produce crisper shifts to maximize acceleration, and the net result was a car that could sprint from 0-60 mph in 5.5 seconds and run through the quarter-mile in 13.4 seconds at 100 MPH. By comparison, Road & Track reported that a 1987 Corvette with the four-speed manual ran from 0-60 in 5.9 seconds, getting through the quarter-mile in 14.5 seconds at 97 mph.
Underneath, the GNX received a unique rear suspension that used a Panhard bar/ladder bar setup on the car’s Positraction-equipped live rear axle to maximize grip and minimize wheel hop under hard acceleration. Wheels were similar in appearance to those used on the Pontiac Trans Am, but with a different offset and GNX center caps. Measuring eight inches across in front and rear, the 16-inch wheels were shod with Goodyear Eagle Gatorback VR50 tires, 255/50R16 out back (the same size as the Corvette) and 245/50R16 up front.
Like the Gran Sports of the 1960s, the GNX was designed to be fast in a straight line, conceding road course lap records to more agile cars. Brakes consisted of discs up front (with 10.5-inch rotors) and 9.5-inch drums in the rear, the same sizes used on other Grand National models. Even the beefed-up suspension couldn’t mask the Buick’s 3,545-pound curb weight, leaving it with a lateral acceleration of .80 g.

​To cover the meaty Goodyear Gatorback radials, the GNX wore bold fender flares in front and rear, and front fenders also received functional venting. In the cabin, however, the differences between Grand National and GNX models were far more subtle, limited to GNX badging above the glove compartment and a full set of analog Stewart-Warner gauges (including a boost gauge, helpful for dragstrip launches) to keep close tabs on the underhood happenings.
As Martyn Schorr explains in his book, Buick GNX (included, along with a GNX jacket, as a gift to original buyers), ASC had the difficult task of giving the GNX a “High-Intensity” appearance that needed to be both similar to, and distinctive from, the Buick Grand National on which the car was based. All references to the Buick Regal or the Grand National were removed from the GNX’s exterior, which then received just two forged aluminum GNX badges, one on the grille and a second on the trunk lid. The front fender vents, vaguely reminiscent of Buick’s classic “porthole” vents, were deliberately painted in low-gloss to provide contrast to the gleaming black paint. Even the unique instrumentation was chosen to convey a message of high performance, ensuring that the driver knew this was no ordinary Grand National even before the engine was fired up.
The automotive press could not heap enough praise on the GNX, with Car and Driver calling it “an ax-wielding Barbarian laying waste to everything in its path,” while Cars Illustrated proclaimed it “The fastest showroom trim Musclecar ever.” Like the Buick GS models of old, the GNX also looked good going fast, and demand quickly outstripped supply, leading to dealer price gouging. Convinced that the GNX would be an appreciating classic, buyers eagerly paid whatever price necessary to park one in their garage.

That’s where the tale of the GNX über-Buick takes a sad turn. Many were purchased as investments, meaning that too few buyers got to appreciate the car as the ultimate expression of Buick performance in the 1980s. Today, low-mileage examples cross the auction block with some regularity, now commanding the kinds of prices that original owners hoped to realize thirty years ago.
In 2014, NADA published a value of $72,100 for a GNX in average condition, with a high range value of $103,500. Five years later, NADA puts the average value at $97,700, versus $136,100 for a high-range example. For an original owner, than might represent a reasonable return on investment (overlooking, perhaps, the cost of three-plus decades of care and feeding), but it pales in comparison to a comparable 32-year investment in Microsoft stock: $29,200 invested in 1987 would be worth about $9.5 million today.
The moral to the story? It’s best to buy cars – particularly new cars – for enjoyment behind the wheel, and not as additions to an investment portfolio.

Article courtesy of Hemmings Daily, written by Kurt Ernst.

As pointed out in this Vox video exploring what made Route 66 America’s favorite road, the highway has essentially been defunct for twice as long as it was an active part of American transportation routes. So why, then, do we keep featuring stories related to the Mother Road?
Is Dan planning a Route 66 trip of his own? Is he being paid off by the Route 66 lobby? Is it just because Route 66 stories play well to this audience? Well, no, no, and partly.
It does still capture the imaginations of plenty of people looking to discover “the real America” or the American dream, however one wants to define those. Photographers drive it scouting for subjects to shoot. Europeans and other international visitors explore it in search of an explanation for the country at the heart of so much geopolitics. Retirees and vacationers amble upon it hoping to revive their memories of an America gone by. And plenty of local tourism and economic development boards still see its potential to revive the slice of rural America through which it runs.
But if I can step in to answer the question that Vox’s Phil Edwards raises in his video, Route 66 is uniquely American, not just in the landscape or the chintzy baubles one picks up as souvenirs along the road, but also in the way it has become legend.
Every country, every culture, sees its history become mythologized in some way as its stories get told and retold. Route 66 has a certain set of facts that it seems everybody feels obligated to tell when reciting the Route 66 story: 1926, Cyrus Avery, dirt roads, the Green Book, the Okies and “The Grapes of Wrath,” the bypassing and the decommissioning, the ghost towns, Cadillac Ranch and the roadside attractions, the revitalization attempts.
But what makes the retelling uniquely American is the plurality of voices telling the story and the perspectives they bring to it. Shing Yin Khor saw in the legend the story of the immigrants who make up the fabric of the country and who now make the towns along Route 66 their home. Edward Keating saw, just past the theme-park aspects of the highway, a rural America in which “forgotten” people “settled wherever their bones and their broken cars dropped them” and dealt with the shattered promises of capitalism. Candacy Taylor saw how segregation made the American dream relevant to only some Americans. The lowriders of Albuquerque see an integral part of their culture. The people of Tulsa and other locations along the highway see a need to preserve the unique and vernacular structures that gave the road its hodgepodge mid-century aesthetic.
Perhaps none of them tell the story of Route 66 in its entirety. In their own personal legends of Route 66, they adopt, reinterpret, and recast the story in their own way. Even Edwards puts his own spin on it. And that’s great. We already have a textbook history with all the facts; what makes the story of Route 66 captivating and particular to American mythology – what separates it from the stories of the thousands of other ribbons of road in the country – are the many retellings of that story from diverse viewpoints and backgrounds overlaid on top of that textbook history.
Route 66 itself is just a strip of dirt, gravel, concrete, and asphalt, and the stories of these common materials don’t matter at all if we don’t take into account the stories of the people – of all the people – whose lives Route 66 has touched. So, in the end, we shouldn’t just tell the story of Route 66 once; we have to let everybody tell their own Route 66 stories.

The ’80s was a crazy time for fashion, hair styles, and automotive accessories. Here’s an awkward moment in aftermarket shifters, the Hurst Lightning Rods.

Part of the fun in looking through old scrapbooks is having a good laugh with ourselves for the fads and styles of times past. Jeez, what we were thinking? Such could be the case in automotive fashions, too. Take the Hurst Lightning Rods, an aftermarket performance shifter marketed in the 1980s. This gadget employed three shift levers to accomplish everything that a single lever could do.

​Hurst’s inspiration for the Lightning Rods was the Lenco transmission (above) used in drag racing in those years, notably in the NHRA Pro Stock category. A highly specialized, purpose-built piece of straight-line racing equipment, the Lenco employed a series of planetary gear assemblies that stacked together in modular fashion, with an individual shift lever for each gearset—simple, positive, and utterly foolproof. Hurst took this race-only setup and adapted it to production automatic transmissions, allowing road drivers to emulate their drag strip heroes, grabbing a separate lever for each upshift.

​The Lightning Rods system was set up to work like any ordinary automatic gear selector, more or less, with a conventional PRND shift pattern (as shown in the top photo). The difference was in the two additional levers: the far right lever and release button performed the 1-2 upshift, while the middle lever and button performed the 2-3 upshift. Or the driver could simply leave the lever in D for Drive or OD for Overdrive and drive normally. In that regard, the Lightning Rods setup was not unlike the Hurst Dual Gate aka “His ‘n Her” shifters of previous years.

Hurst marketed the Lightning Rods through its regular speed shop channels in several versions, including kits for the GM F-Body Camaro and Firebird and a universal model with a small, stand-alone floor console. Perhaps the most familiar application was as standard equipment in the 1983-84 Hurst/Olds–the final iterations of the Hurst-equipped muscle cars. Some 3,001 models in 1983 and 3,500 units in 1984 were built before Hurst/Olds production concluded for good. In hindsight the Lightning Rods look like a silly idea, but often, silly can be fun.

Car audio has worked its way through a number of music formats through the years, including 8-Track, cassette, and Compact Disc. Here’s one early effort: Chrysler’s Highway Hi-Fi record player of 1956. 

Today, in-car audio is an essential part of the automotive experience, offering nearly unlimited programming choices from satellite to MP3. But until 1956, American motorists were stuck with but one choice: AM radio. That’s when Chrysler opened the door, we might say, with an in-car phonograph system called Highway Hi-Fi.

​Highway Hi-Fi was developed by CBS Laboratories chief Peter Goldmark, the inventor of the 33 1/3 rpm long-playing album format. (As legend has it, Goldmark despised the rock ‘n roll then taking over the radio airwaves and decided to offer civilized motorists  an alternative.)  After experimenting with various mediums including magnetic tape, he devised a special hybrid record format: a seven-inch vinyl disc like the RCA 45 rpm single, but playing at the 16 2/3 rpm used in Talking Book spoken-word records. Dynamic range was limited to 3,000 Hz but on the plus side, the novel format offered 45 minutes of programming per side. A five-pin harness sent the player’s output into the car radio’s audio section, while a carefully engineered tone arm with high tracking force kept skipping and skating to a minimum.

Goldmark pitched his record player to several Chrysler engineers, then to executive Lynn Townsend (who later became company president). ChryCo liked the setup and agreed to buy 20,000 units from the CBS manufacturing division, although the order was later dialed back to 18,000. The automaker created the trade name “Highway Hi-Fi” and made the made the player optional on Plymouth, Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, and Imperial models, all sharing the same under-dash unit pictured above. The CBS Columbia dvision manufactured the records, a mix of light classics, musical theater, and easy listening favorites, which were distributed through Chrysler’s dealer network and by mail. Perennial Dodge spokesman Lawrence Welk joined in on the marketing effort.

​Unfortunately, we know how this comes out. While the player was offered across the  Chrysler model lines from 1956 through 1959, it never caught on—due mainly to poor reliability, high warranty costs, and the limited variety and distribution of the Highway Hi-Fi record catalog. The record player was never more than a novelty, although a healthy number of the units are still around in the Chrysler collector car community.

Despite the first misfire, Chrysler revisited the auto record player concept again in 1960-1961 with a completely different unit produced by RCA and known as the AP-1 (below).  Offered by both Chrysler dealers and RCA Victor retailers, it was also marketed by Sears under the Allstate brand. This player took popular RCA-style 45 rpm singles (including rock ‘n roll, hurrah) and played them upside down much like many juke boxes of the era. As each record in the changer finished, it dropped into the floor of the unit. While the RCA player was also less than ideal, it spawned a host of copies and competitors from Philips and others, and no doubt inspired new and improved in-car musical formats, including four-track and eight-track tape cartridges.

From a time when General Motors ruled the world: This newsreel presents the fabulous 1954 GM Motorama at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. 

​ There really are no modern parallels to the annual GM Motorama spectaculars of the American mid-century. As we’ve often referenced here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, the Motoramas were elaborate multimedia extravaganzas that used theater, music, even interpretive dance to present the corporation’s advanced products, from the latest Cadillac dream cars to the kitchens of tomorrow.

More than 1.9 million visitors took in the show in the 1954 season, which opened on January 26 at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. In this two-minute newsreel on the ’54 show, we see a number of Motorama dream cars that would soon become famous, including:

+   The Chevrolet Nomad, which showcased the division’s sports wagon concept, on a Corvette theme in its original form.

+   The Buick Wildcat II, a radical sports roadster that still exists today at the Sloan Museum in Flint, Michigan.

+   The Cadillac El Camino, a close-coupled coupe that introduced GM customers to the El Camino name, later used on a series of Chevy passenger car-based pickups.

+   The turbine-powered GM Firebird I, which even six decades later looks more like a jet fighter than an automobile.

+   The Pontiac Bonneville, the Pontiac division’s take on the two-seat sports car category as exemplified by the Chevrolet Corvette.

See all these wonders and more in the video below.