1986 Buick (Century) Gran Sport - All The Money in the World

What this isn't is one of Buick's famed "Grand National's" or a "GNX" from the 1980's but rather a 1986 Buick Century "Gran Sport". It popped up on Facebook Marketplace this morning with a price reduced (by $500) ask of $7,000.  

You may be forgiven for thinking it was a "Grand Nat" as I did at first. The poster of the ad used this picture of the rear end as a thumbnail. Talk about "click-bait". I should have known better seeing that even a rusted out "Grand Nat" with a seized engine (or both) would command north of ten-grand. Seven-large for this is, as my father would say, "all the money in the world". 

Buick only built these cars for model-year 1986 and, yes, "Gran Sport" is spelled "correctly". There was never a "D" in the "Gran" in "Gran Sport" going all the way back to the first "Gran Sport" in 1965. There was no "D" in "Gran Turismo Omologato" (GTO), either. Although, "Gran Turismo Omologato" is Italian, using some poetic license here, for grand-tourer-homologated, a classification of cars certified for racing in the grand tourer class. For the record, please note, there was a "D" in the "Grand" in "Buick Grand National". 

So, again, what this isn't is one of Buick's famed coupes from the Eighties based on their rear-wheel-drive Regal, but rather a two-door version, I wouldn't call it a "coupe", per se, of their front-wheel-drive Buick Century  introduced in 1982. It shared it's structure and a great deal of DNA with the Pontiac 6000, Chevrolet Celebrity and Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. 

Buick herked and jerked some of their models around in the 1970's and 1980's to such a degree one needed the laser beam focus of a fighter pilot to keep of them all. Honestly, I did back in the day and, oddly enough, it all made sense to me. The S-Types, the T-Types, the Turbo-T's, the Sport Coupes, the Grand National's the GNX and so on. Back then I gobbled up anything and everything General Motors dished out, marketed or said with the eagerness of a sophomore. Sigh. Some days I miss that kid. 

Legend has it for 1982, the new front-wheel-drive Century was to replace the old rear-wheel-driver that had been around since 1978. However, it got a last second reprieve from the dumpster as Buick kept the old Century around as a "Regal" through 1984, the wagon through 1983. The coupe they dropped after 1987. They stuffed as many as 5,500 of them a year with one version or another of their turbocharged, 3.8-liter V-6 engine, that made as much as 276-horsepower and 360-pounds of torque. 

Speaking of which, our Facebook Marketplace find here has that famed Buick engine albeit without the turbocharger. In this muted guise, though, it makes 150-horsepower and as such, with some 200-foot pounds of torque available right off idle, in such a light car, it was a hallmark of 1960's-esque performance in those oh-so-depressing (for us GM fans) days of the mid-1980's. 

Along with the non-turbo 3.8, a fact Buick deftly marketed as an "advanced, 3.8-liter, sequential port-fuel injection powerplant", buyers of a 1986 Century Gran Sport got fifteen-inch alloy rims shod with beefy Goodyear Eagle GT's, a "sport-tuned-suspension" that they didn't go into nitty-gritty specifics on and a bevy of appearance features and touches including these interesting front-buckets with head rests embroidered with the same swooshy V-6 found on this car's steroid-fed big brother, the Grand National. 

All these bells and whistles enough to wrestle buyers away from a Grand National? No, of course not. If you wanted a Grand National you got a Grand National and swallowed the higher price of onehard. Buick only made 1,029 of these in 1986 and I'd have to imagine many buyers bought them by accident not knowing what it was they bought or what they bought was pretending to be. That being a Grand National knock-off. Have to say, those non-discriminating buyers could have done a lot worse. Well, domestically anyway. 

Frankly, this car rides and handles with more of a modern aplomb than the vaunted Grand Nat ever did. Not nearly as fast, but powerful cars grow old quickly if they don't ride and handle well. Then, there's the subjective discussion regarding styling. These cars can't, in my opinion, hold a candle to one of the few domestics of the 1980's that are worth a damn. That's saying something given how ambivalent I am towards 1978-1987 GM intermediates. If a Grand Nat rode and handled like this Century Gran Sport, Buick would have really had something on their hands back then. 

Trying to see this car through my then twenty-two-year old goggles when this first came out, it may have gotten a fair amount of attention from me had I been of the means to afford a new car at the time. I may have rationalized at the time that I was getting 7/8's of a Grand National for more than third of the price.  

Then again, I know I'd always long for the "real thing" perhaps trading this in for one. Then regretting it.  Or kicking myself for not by a Honda Accord. 

1968 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe - The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

Some say our dreams are rehearsals for what we face in our waking hours or help to consolidate and analyze memories. Another study found that our dreams come more from our imagination than perception. With regards to nightmares, experts say people who have suffered post-traumatic-stress-disorder are more prone to them.  In any event, the other night I had a dream that I was driving a red, 1967 or 1968 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe similar to this '68 I found online for a dream-world vs. real-world comparison. 

I've read that the color red in dreams indicates that the dreamer may have angst and is experiencing stress in their life. Ok. Whatever. I've long given up attempting to analyze my dreams that do tend to be violent and\or sad. Not always, like the other night, for instance but it happens enough that my wife thinks there's something seriously wrong with me. Well, she's right about that but my strange dreams have nothing to do with that. What got me enough to blog about it was the randomness of that dream. As an automobile enthusiast, of all cars for my inner psyche to unconsciously hallucinate about, it picked one of General Motors few less than graceful styling exposes from the 1960's? And, one that was red and all that supposedly implies?  

Again, I have no idea why I dreamed about that car. The only semi-connection I've ever had to one was a family on the block I grew up on back on Long Island had a gold-on-black, '67 Impala Sport Coupe. That bruiser was without question the most "out there" car in the neighborhood. Eight or nine-year-old me gawked at it in the same way I flipped through a porno magazine for the first time; it was equally intriguing, mysterious and off-putting. I wanted to like the car as there was much I appreciated about the design but I could do without the flying buttress, fastback rear end that looks even larger in red. Full disclosure, red is my favorite color. 

My "dream car" had a red interior so it was fairly airy and bright inside and not this black vinyl tar-pit. Red vinyl was available on these cars; a cloth interior that looked "richer" but held up poorly was available but it not in red. Wow, look at the size of that shelf behind the top of the rear seat and, no, that seat won't fold down (like it should). The fastback roof line no doubt meant things heated up in here as fast as a greenhouse. I'm getting car sick just thinking about it. 

I distinctly recall the neighbors Impala had "327" badges on the front fender although I don't remember if it was an SS or not. My dream car had a 327 (cubic inch V-8 engine) along with a rumbling exhaust note; my dreams tend to be quite nuanced in the details. Alas, our subject here is saddled with Chevrolet's new-for-1968, 307-cubic inch V-8. Fun fact, the Chevrolet 307 has the dubious distinction of being, cubic-inch for cubic-inch, the least powerful V-8 engine General Motors ever manufactured. Its gross horsepower rating was 200, figure net between 115 and 130 depending on what day the engine was assembled. I've noted before that most cars with V-8's from the halcyonic "muscle car" era were hardly powerhouses. Case in point, this big old sled. 

As a styling exercise or experiment, these big fastbacks made between 1966-1968 are worthy of some praise since GM's stylists, under Bill Mitchell, ran hard for fences pushing the boundaries of tasteful design as far as it could go. In retrospect, I'm surprised these designs got approved in an era when GM styling was, arguably, at it's all time best.  Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buiick (B-bodies) offered similar roof lines that GM discontinued after 1968. I find the "Custom Coupe" and convertibles of this vintage a far more handsome design. 

If dreams are a rehearsal for real world circumstance, as some suggest, why couldn't my dream have been of me in a '61 Impala "bubble-top" or off-roading in a new Ford Bronco two-door? 

1994 Ford Mustang GT Convertible - Heart of Hearts

Ford did a major update to their 1979 "Fox-body" Mustang for model year 1994 restyling it as an homage to the original 1964 1/2 - 1966 Mustang. The results, in my humblest of opinions, were decidedly mixed. Our Facebook advertised find here is a '94 for sale somewhere up here on "The North Coast" for (a breath taking) $16,500. 

That primo asking price no doubt driven by the car's superb condition and its low mileage; there are less than twenty-five thousand miles on its twenty-nine-year old analog ticker. Then again, a 1994 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 or Pontiac Trans Am in this kind of shape with such low miles would probably go for ten-grand more. Oh, did you say fifteen-grand more? Ford chiseled and whittled away most of the cheesey-retro-themed nonsense of these cars for 1999 coming with a car that looked more like an evolution of '60's Mustangs as opposed to a modern (and ugly) interpretation of one. 

My experience with a 1998 Mustang GT convertible was less than clandestine. Back in Dallas years ago, for a minute or two, I thought of ditching my 2001 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS for one. Top up or down I found the structure jittery and shuddering. Top up, the interior noise was deafening and while the ride was fair but the handling I found brutish, crude, disconnected if not numb feeling; some people like that but I'm man enough to admit that I don't. Especially on a daily driver. My Monte Carlo  was a bastion of refinement and civility in comparison. What good is a "cool" car if in your "heart-of-hearts" you really can't stand the thing? I learned that lesson the hard way when I ditched the Monte Carlo for a 2002 Camaro Z28. 

Granted, despite the upgrading for '94, this is still a design rooted in the late '70's and my Monte Carlo  firmly planted in the '90's (if not the '80's). But, forgive me for asking, what's the point of a "sporty car" if it really can't do anything better than a plebian sedan? Not to mention having to put up with all of its inconveniences.

Reminds me of when I had my sexy 2002 Camaro Z28 and I happen to drive a 2003 Honda Accord V-6 sedan. That freaking family car Accord impressed me so much that I promptly got rid of my Z. I regret that move to this day because that Z was one fun weekender, but as a daily driver? Again, I ain't no masochist. Owning that Camaro Z28 was like a middle aged man dating a young, party-girl. Sound fun, no? But if that girl only wants to pah-tay, well, that grows tiresome. Fun at first or once in a while, but sometimes all we want to do is have a simple dinner at home and fall asleep on the couch watching TV. 

This pony is a horse of a somewhat different feather seeing it has Ford's venerated if not mythic "Windsor", 302-cubic inch V-8 and not the modular, 4.6-liter, SOHC engine that replaced the 302, or "Five-Point-Oh" in 1996. A smoother running if not lighter motivator, the 4.6 lacked the raw scoot (balls) of the 5.0 to say nothing of being seriously outgunned by GM's LT-1 and LS-1 engines found in Camaro's and Firebird's. Upside is, there are far more "go-fast", after market parts available for the Windsor engine compared to the 4.6. Ford made available their gigantic DOHC 4.6 they stuffed in Lincoln Continentals and Mark VIII's in these cars starting in 1996 as well. You find one of those in this condition and won't be going for $16,600. 

They say in the used car business there's an arse for every seat and that may very well be true in this case. I found this car around Christmastime and have not been able to find it since. Looks like someone picked it up. I sure hope they know what they're getting themselves into.