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.