Story by Eric Rood
Despite some outward appearances, the Semi-Sentient Centenarians’ Lemons car is not an E36-chassis BMW. We know, it’s tough to pry apart the classic Bavarian livery from the car, but this is actually a 1996 Buick Century–a 1996 Buick Century that regularly beats up on BMW teams. Now on its third owners–the first two ironed out some …
hahaha. this thing rules. my mom's old Impala had the 3500 in it and I wondered if they were related. i bet that would be an absolute riot with a Series II 3800 supercharged
Funny. Today I was on a Teams meeting with a lady who had an unbroken string of BMWs, including a Z3, but is entering retirement in a Buick. Can’t say I blame her, they’ve kinda picked up BMW’s styling mantle these days...
carry on
bummerworld cracked me up
Quite an impressive underdog. Looks like somebody took the saying "A GM car will run badly longer than most cars will run at all" and applied that to endurance racing.
I wonder if any Regal GS or Grand Prix GTP bits would help with handling?
Did A-Body cars ever have the option of a manual transmission with any of the flavors of V6?
JesseWolfe said:Did A-Body cars ever have the option of a manual transmission with any of the flavors of V6?
Not sure, but there are plenty of people swapping manual trans into fwd cars and fieros with the 3500. So, it is 100% possible with factory parts (other than maybe axles or a trans mount).
In reply to JesseWolfe :
1984-88 Pontiac 6000's had a 5 speed Getrag 5T40 as an option with the 2.8L V6. Chevy Celebrity may have had that option as well. Very rare today since most have been crushed or rusted out by now.
I had an '85 Century with the 4-pot. I lasted a week before the engine died. Then another week on a replacement motor before the transmission died. Then a week after that, the exhaust fell off, taking the rear bumper with it. I abandoned it in front of the dealer's service entrance and threatened to sue until they gave me a refund.
pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) said:I had an '85 Century with the 4-pot. I lasted a week before the engine died. Then another week on a replacement motor before the transmission died. Then a week after that, the exhaust fell off, taking the rear bumper with it. I abandoned it in front of the dealer's service entrance and threatened to sue until they gave me a refund.
You mean these were NEW?!?
The car in my profile pic is a 98 LeSabre that we made into a Lemons car. We raced it once and didn't even get 30 laps before the engine siezed from oil starvation. We met someone else at rhe track with a 90's Buick, they were pretty cool. They had another car's worth of spares in their trailer and seemed to always need them.
In reply to ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) :
I'm on the team that built this car haha, and let me tell you I came into this being no fan of anything GM. Our biggest goal from the beginning was to finish the race, and we really somehow outdid ourselves. So far neither engine has missed a beat, the biggest issue we had with the first engine is that once it got hot, the starter would get hot too, and it wouldn't be able to crank the engine unless we let it cool down for 5 minutes. This was a crappy problem to have because we also learned that the fuel systems on these cars are god awful, I guess the designers of these Buick Century's weren't anticipating sustained 1G turns because anything below half a tank and we would get fuel starvation, which in a manual isn't a huge deal because your wheel speed can keep the engine going in the meantime, in an automatic it just means the engine shuts off.
Also we just learned of this car's heritage, apparently it has been racing in Lemons since 2012! The first team called themselves The Order of the Mystic Lemons Racers, they were a bunch of Mason brothers apparently.
Our next race is coming up soon December 11th-12th at Road Atlanta, wish us luck!
My son got his Grandpop's 2002 Century when he turned 17 and we immediately started auto crossing it and entered the GRM 2021 Challenge. We drove it from NJ to Gainesville, beat it mercilessly then drove it back with the only issue being the Goodyear all-season tires falling apart. It has a K&N drop in and a Cherry Bomb muffler but otherwise stock and never fails to be a ton of fun while turning in the Slowest Time of the Day. Racecar.
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