Saw a car today I've never actually seen on the road before..

John Welsh said:

Boy, I bet those tire suck on cold pavement!  

The cold air coupled with a turbo would be magical

dculberson said:

As big as the mythos is around these things, I'm surprised you can get these for $20k. I guess the GNX is the big money car, but still seems like these would have gone higher by now.

The problem is they're all modified.  So the values are artificially depressed.

The REALLY super-clean ones have either been sitting in a vault since the 1980s, or have been driven a quarter mile at a time, if you know what I mean.

There is a drag racing series for these cars, with different classes.  The "stock appearing" class requires iron heads and a stock-appearing turbo.  They still run low 9s/high 8s and make in the region of 900-1100hp, but at that level, the engine block lifespan is not "if" but "when".  At that point it's an all-boost motor:  I have been "told" that they will see 30+ pounds of boost and 100+psi of pressure in the exhaust manifolds.   Erk.  And still the weak point is the engine block splitting up the middle.

spitfirebill said:

If they are a unicorn, it’s because they stay locked up in a garage.  I remember when they were new.  Mainly the GNX’s were the horded ones.  

I have worked on dozens of cold-air GNs, and I did extensive work on a convertible T-type Riviera (one of 100-ish!), and I have never seen a GNX in person, let alone worked on one...

The GNX is the Subaru 22B of the Buick world.  People talk about them, but they don't actually exist as much.

I did do some mild work on a 13k mile GN that had GNX-clone wheels, which are readily available aftermarket.  I felt dirty working on it, but MAN do these cars wake up with a pre-turbo intake, a downpipe, a Red Armstrong chip, and some adjustment of the wastegate rod. At least the owner kept all of the return-to-stock parts.

I think seeing a G-Body shuffling in general is rare these days unless you're at a local circle track

I helped move a low-mile non runner into a garage for a friend in my neighborhood a little over a year back. It was her late husband's back in the day. It got torn down for upgrades and became the project that never got finished. Boxes and boxes of hi po parts with it....

dculberson said:

As big as the mythos is around these things, I'm surprised you can get these for $20k. I guess the GNX is the big money car, but still seems like these would have gone higher by now.

Nice GNs were strangely locked at $16.5K from 1996 to 2016 and only now are starting to creep up a little. They're like Tengen Tetris on NES which has held steady at $40 since 1990.

Ages ago I had one of these blow past me on the freeway. I had just changed lanes. Why? Bright sunny day and looky there "wet" pavement just in my lane. I have a suspicious nature. The feller in the GNX did not, he stayed in that lane and floored it as he went by me in my ridiculous hotrod datsun 510. Well, he hit that oil slick and went backwards into the berm...

DirtyBird222 said:

I think seeing a G-Body shuffling in general is rare these days unless you're at a local circle track

Depends on where you're located. They were all over east TN, especially the Cutlass. Very rare to see one here in Texas.

The0retical said:

There's actually a fair number of them here in Eastern PA. 

Agreed.  I wouldn't say they're common, but I see GN's with some frequency during a given year. But I'm also a child of the 70's and 80's and remember reading about them when they were new and the hottest US car on the market.

In reply to irish44j :

By 80 westbound  from  Vacaville,ca. To Fairfield,ca. A sharp lime green pacer.no 2 lane