It is hard to believe life has come to this, but alas, with the economy being what it is, and the snowball affect in its wake, I have no choice but to put my amazing Black Beauty up for sale. This is one, if not the only super cars from the 80's. It is a 1986 Buick Regal Grand National, with a 3.8 Liter V-6 Intercooled Turbo. From the factory, they were claiming 235 Horsepower and 330 Lb.Ft of torque. Of course those numbers are not necessarily accurate. The factory was famous over the years for detuning performance cars on paper for insurance reasons.

That being said, they were capable of getting from zero to 60 mph in roughly 4.9 seconds and did the quarter mile Drag strip in under 14 seconds at over 100 mph. They were sleek and beautiful and the power that you could get out of them with only a very limited budget was amazing. Just by changing a chip in the cars cpu (computer), you could shave 1 second of that quarter mile drag strip time. And yes, it is the same car that is in the latest version of "Fast & Furious", the movie.

Then you could always put a bleeder valve on the vacuum line to the turbo waste gate and double the boost the turbo was producing and decrease those times on the quarter mile drag strip even more. Not to mention if you wanted to spend some money, there were bigger turbos, and bigger intercoolers, bigger injectors, the list goes on, and all of this stuff was just "accessories" for the engine, we still haven't pulled the engine out of the car and started to work on it.

Bottom line, if you had more money then you knew what to do with, you could make this amazing car run in under 8 seconds at your local quarter mile drag strip, and those times are achieved at over 170 mph, all in less then one quarter of a mile of road. Truly amazing cars, this can not be denied.

There are those who call it a "brick" as far as their aerodynamics, or a cumbersome, rattling dinosaur of a car, that doesn't handle the road worth a darn, but I'd have to argue it. Sure in today's world, we have cars that are more aerodynamic, and perhaps better built as far as quality, and can go around a turn at 100 MPH, most of these cars are built by non-US factories, even though I hate to admit that, but I'd still rather have an 86-87 Grand National over any of those cars, any day.

To me, this is one classy car that you could show up at the fanciest ball, wearing a tux and dressed to the nines, and would look fabulous stepping out of this car, with your gorgeous date in her amazing attire for the evening. They are comfortable for a "sports" car and even "green" by today's standards, getting about 25 MPG on the highway, did I mention when this car was built and how fast they are?

Compared to American Muscle cars from the 60's and 70's, this Grand National handles like a dream, and rides the road with almost a Cadillac type ride. Well, I may have stretched it a bit with the Cadillac type ride, but ask any one who has ridden in great muscle cars from era's gone by and had the privilege of riding in a Grand National, and I'd bet they almost would have to agree with me, to a certain degree anyway.

All though, they Grand National made is debut in 1982, it took until 86-87 to perfect it, so these are the two most sought after years for this car. The fact that the car performed so well, was its ultimate demise. You see, one day at the track, some higher up GM executives, notice that this little Black car from the Buick line was spanking the Corvette down the drag strip ever single race. Stock car for stock car, the Corvette just couldn't win the race against the Grand National. And the Corvette was the "flagship" car of the GM line and even cost more money. So they were faced with the question of, "why would anybody spend the extra money on a Corvette just to lose a race to this cheaper little black car?", so there you have it, they made the decision right then to pull the plug on this amazing little Black Beauty, or so the story goes.

They made 5512 of these speed demons in 1986 and just a bit over 20,000 in 1987, so in the world of cars, where millions of individual models are made, this is considered a very rare and unique car. They are becoming more and more collectible with every passing day. As a matter of fact, the 86 model becomes an antique at the end of this year, which I'm sure will lead to a spike in value. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

One final note, in 87, the last year for this amazing line of vehicles, they did the Grand Daddy of them all and called it the GNX, which stood for Grand National Extreme, and Extreme it was. They essentially grabbed 547 of the Standard Grand Nationals off the assembly line and sent them off to Mclaren, where they did a number of upgrades, to an already bad to the bone car and make this the ultimate car in the Grand National line.

I can write a whole other Hub on the GNX and all the upgrades it has, so I'll just leave it as the Ultimate Grand National ever build and I have seen them sell for over $100K in recent times, and I assume they are only going to continue to go up in value. Generally, you could only get the 86-87 Grand Nationals and GNX in one color, and that was Black, but I have heard that there was one specially custom ordered GNX that was white, however I have never seen it, so it could just be a rumor. If it does exist, I would imagine it is by far the most valuable car out of all of them.

The beautiful car you see pictured above is rolling in the 25K mile range at this point. It is an all numbers matching, original car. I bought it between 5 and 6 year ago, and have a receipt from the dealership I bought it from stating that the car is in "original condition". It sat at that dealership on their air conditioned showroom floor for about 13 years before I bought it. I unfortunately am not the original owner of the car, so I can't swear that it is all original beyond a doubt. Based on the title, which states 17K miles, I'll swear by the miles at least.

It is immaculate inside and out. There are a few minor scratches on the outside, but nothing major, and at every car show I have had it in, which is quite a few now, I always get an amazing response from the crowd. This car is about impossible to pull into a parking lot without creating a small crowd of people gathering around wanting to talk about it or ask questions about it. So if you are in a hurry, it will get you there and back fast, but you may be stuck there a while shooting the B.S., so you may not get home as fast as you might wish to.

I'm in need of cash, so I can survive the summer at my business, so I'm advertising this Black Beauty for sale at this point. I hope to hit the lottery, but I accept that this is about the only hope I have at raising cash in a hurry. I'm asking $19K for the car, which is less then I paid for it and way below what it is insured for, which is $25K.

I liken it to trying to sell one of your kids, except I can't get arrested for selling this.. LOL   If anyone is in the South Florida area and interested in a very sharp and clean Grand National, you owe it to yourself to contact me and have a look at this Black Beauty.