“I remember taking it to work and wanting to change lanes and all you had to do was just stab the throttle and the thing would “choo-choo” and it would skid over. You didn’t have to move the steering wheel, it would just shift lanes. It was wonderful.”—Steve Pasteiner

Several years ago I was interviewed by Andrew Filippone in regards to my involvement with and my thoughts about the Buick Grand National. Others that were interviewed include Bill Porter, Steve Pasteiner, Tony Assenza, Don Sherman, Csaba Csere, Martyn Schoor, and Doug Nigro. The trailer from Vimeo is a short teaser from Andrew’s documentary.

More information is on Edmunds Inside Line, including links to Andrew’s Facebook page where you can keep up with the progress of the documentary.

Check out the other posts about the Buick Grand National on Dean’s Garage.

Black Air – “Misfit” Teaser from Andrew Filippone Jr. on Vimeo.

Epilogue

The last hurrah for the Turbo Buick was in a Pontiac. In 1989 Pontiac needed a performance boost for the Indy Pace Car and its replicas. So they shoe-horned a Buick Turbo V6 into 1,555 GTAs with all the trick SCCA suspension and brake pieces and finally the Turbo Buick found its way into a host body where the chassis was up to the power. There was no difference between the pace cars and the replicas. Pontiac’s Turbo Trans Am.

The cars I remember my dad having included a Seafoam Green ’51 Ford 2-door, a red and white ’55 Chevy 2-door Del Ray, a gold ’62 Chevy Impala 4-door hardtop, and a tan ’68 Buick Skylark 2-door coupe. I was working at GM Design Staff, and dad expressed an interest in getting a ’78 Turbo Regal. I told him that was an old man’s car (even though he was 68 at the time), and that he should wait a year and get the new ’79 Buick Century Turbo Coupe.

My dad’s 1979 Buick Century Turbo Coupe

I ordered the car for him, and he flew to Michigan in December 1978 to go to my wedding and to pick up the car. His eyes were as big as saucers when he saw it. It was silver with light gray interior, just like the car featured in the brochure that year. He stayed in Michigan for a couple of months, and finally drove it back to California. He and mom took a road trip in the car to Michigan in the fall of 1979. But in early 1980 he was diagnosed with cancer, and died in July, ten days after his 80th birthday. Before he died he trusted Jesus Christ as his Saviour.

I drove the car a few times in California while visiting the hospital, and I remember it being fun to drive. He sure loved that car, possibly because it gave him bragging rights with his brother Harry who always had big, powerful Pontiacs. He finally had a car that he didn’t have to make excuses for.

The Ultimate Buick Turbo that Buick Never Made

The problem for Buick is that they never really had a suitable platform for the Turbo V6. Conservative styling doesn’t really lend itself to performance cars. That all changed in 1989 when Pontiac installed the last of the Buick Turbo V6s in 1,550 Pontiac Trans Ams as Indy Pace Cars and replicas. The cool thing is that there were no mechanical modifications to the actual pace cars. The TTAs had all of the best performance parts available in one package. They were fast and handled like, well, not a Buick. I wish my dad could have seen that one.

Ad for the 1989 Pontiac Turbo Trans Am

Artwork I did of the 1989 Pontiac Turbo Trans Am. There is more automotive artwork at CruiZart.com.

This is my car. Number 297.

The 1981 Buick Regal Indy Pace Car graphics originated as one of a variety of assignments for special promotional vehicle illustrations that Herb Fishel had me do freelancing under the name of Performance Design, including the Buick Grand National. See “Early History of the Buick Grand National and Performance Design” for the background as to how that happened. I was assigned to Buick One Exterior Studio, but the Regal was in Buick Two Studio. One day I was working at my drawing table when Herb walked through the studio toward Buick Two with my pace car sketch under his arm. I didn’t know what would happen since I didn’t think anyone knew of my freelance activities. Nothing was ever said about it, however. Even though I did the concept, Steve Pasteiner, Assistant Studio Chief in Buick Two, executed the design. He held to the sketch pretty closely, perhaps because Herb told them that’s what Buick wanted, I don’t know.

Original concept rendering dated 1980 of the 1981 Buick Regal Indianapolis Pace Car by Performance Design.

This was Steve Pasteiner’s rendering of my earlier proposal.

Publicity photo included with Buick’s press kit.

The 1981 pace car did not have a turbocharged engine, but rather a modified 281 hp 4.1 liter V6. Oddly a sheet was included in the press kit showing Moly’s Turbo Six logo with the following explanation. I didn’t write this, but I do remember something like this as part of the original pitch Herb used to sell the logo to Buick management. Comments in brackets are mine.

About the Buick V6 Logo

This text was on the back of the page with the logo imprint found in the Pace Car’s Press Kit. Molly created the logo.

As the Buick V6 becomes more dominant in the market place, the Buick V6 logo will take on increasing significance. The logo represents a “6” which is emphasized to indicate the Buick V6 is unique and special. Additionally, the logo represents a lower case “b” which could be utilized to develop a performance image logotype exclusively “Buick” [That’s really a stretch]. The flow of the logo is also symbolic of the spinning or turbine action of a turbocharger. Turbocharging can also be emphasized by using warm-to-hot color combinations [the advantage of turbocharging is using waste exhaust gas to spin an impeller. But that process also heats the incoming compressed air which is a disadvantage solved to some extent by an intercooler]. The arrowhead draws attention and gives forward, aggressive motion [except it’s facing backwards]. This is complemented by the slant of the logo—again emphasizing aggressiveness. The logo symbolizes the Performance Engine of the Future  [but there is no turbo in the pace car].

I never liked the Turbo logo.

My trip to Indy

There is an interesting story relating to the ’81 Pace Car. Many months passed from the time Herb first carried my Pace Car sketch into the studio and May, 1981. Then one day I received a phone call in the studio asking me if I’d like to go down with the group that developed the Pace Car at Buick to Indy for one of the qualification sessions in early May. I readily accepted, and I was told I would receive a written invitation. So, I thought, Herb must have arranged to have me be included even though my only contribution was only the original proposal. It’s not like I wasn’t part of the real team. Steve Pasteiner also was going, and I met him at the Flint airport the morning of the flight to Indy. I found it odd that I never received the written invitation, but as they checked our names as we boarded the aircraft, my name was on the list. I remember there was some confusion after we arrived. They seemed to be short one set of credentials and a jacket that delayed things a bit.

Me at Indy, May 1981

Back from Indy compete with complementary jackets.

I did learn that another member of the group was an engineer also named Gary Smith, and surmised that the call I received inviting me to the event was a mixup. I figured this out early in the day, maybe even on the plane, and my heart sank. But by that time I was already there. No one ever said anything about it. It was a great day. The best part is that they flew me home.

[Click here to see a gallery of images of the Pace Car garage and the Buick group from Flint on the first day of qualifying.]

I worked on four Indy Pace car paint schemes, all Buicks. The first one was a 1975 Buick Century with the last year of the old couple A-body design. I don’t remember anyone dictating or suggesting the flag graphics on the body side. The body design itself seemed to suggest to me a waving flag, so that’s what I proposed. Studio management bought the idea from the first sketch (probably to get the project over with as soon as possible). The country was anticipating the 1976 bi-centenial, so the paint scheme was in anticipation of all things patriotic. 

Original proposal for the 1975 Buick Century Indy Pace Car

Buick’s buyer demographics was the aging car buyer, and “Free Spirit” was a marketing term attempting to capture more youthful image. I don’t remember where the Hawk silhouette came from. I do remember having a battle over the orientation of the “Free Spirit” hawk graphic. Whenever the graphics was attached to a car, designers were laying the hawk back on it’s tail. I insisted that it be vertical, like the old Richfield emblem. I must have gotten my way.

The 1975 Buick Century Pace Car had a 7.5 litre (455cid) V-8 and was anything but stock. There was really nothing very performance oriented in the Buick production lineup by 1975. The replicas had 350s, GR70x15 radials, and heavy-duty suspension. They shared the same graphics with the real pace cars. I believe that the 1975 Buick pace cars may have been the first to be retrofitted with removable roof panels, or a T-tops. They first appeared on the 1968 Corvette.

1975 Buick Century Pace Car Publicity Photo

Me posing in front of a replica at a Buick dealer in 1975. It’s not that I thought it was such a great design, but I had only been at GM two years.

1975 Buick Century Pace Car on a billboard somewhere in Detroit.

1976 Buick Century Pace Car Graphics

The 1976 Buick Century Pace Car had more extensive styling and mechanical modifications. One thing to note is that the real pace cars and the replicas differed graphically. The replicas didn’t have the front air dam or the blistered hood. The replicas did have the originally proposed side scheme that started at the front of the doors. The idea was to have the shapes coming from the hawk like an abstract stop motion photos of flight. Bill Mitchell made me extend the graphics to the front of the car in front of the hawk for reasons unknown. His change didn’t make it into production. My guess is that it was cheaper to make. I think the shorter graphics look a great deal better.

A bit of trivia. Buick lettering at the time looks like all capital letters, but in fact the “U” is in lower case with the stroke to the right side enlarged to go with the other letters.

1976 Buick Century Pace Car replica with the short graphics

1976 Buick Century Pace Car on the cover of Motor Trend. Photo shows the full graphics that were on the actual pace cars. That car looks pretty good blurry.

The front and rear air dams and the hood blister were modeled in the studio. This photo of the 1976 Buick Century Pace Car model photographed in the Design Staff Styling Auditorium shows the hood blister and front air dam.

Why did the 1976 Buick Century Pace Car have a turbocharged V6?

The ’76 pace car had a turbocharged 231 CID V6, almost half the size of the 455 in the ’75 car. It developed around 306 hp. Why did Buick use a V6, and how did Buick get involved with turbocharging? Everything was downsizing in the ’70s, and Buick needed a smaller engine. Instead of developing a small V8, they bought back the V6 that was developed in the early 60s from American Motors where the V6 had found a home in various Jeeps. They reinstalled the tooling for the engine in the original room where it all started. According to Mike Knepper, Motor Trend June 1976, the turbocharging program came along by accident. During the same time that the ’76 Indy Pace Car program began development, an Explorer Scout post sponsored by Bucik decided to try turbocharging the “new” V6 engine as its latest project. One Buick engineer who had been volunteering his time to help the Scouts mentioned the project to another engineer working on the pace car project. According to Mike, “You can fill in the rest of the story, from ‘Impossible,’ to ‘Let’s try it,’ to ‘It works.’” The output of the engine tripled from the stock V6 thanks to 20–22 psi of boost.

Glen Stringfield’s 1976 Buick Century Pace Car purchased from the original owners in Ohio.

This particular Grand National has a junkyard dog menacing look about it.

Herb Fishel worked under Vince Piggins at Chevrolet’s performance group. In the late ’70s, Lloyd Reuss and Buick Motor Division lured him away to start their own performance department. Herb would make frequent trips from Flint to the GM Tech Center at Warren, Michigan, attempting to get Buick Exterior Studio design and modeling support to create special performance vehicles. Buick Studio, run by Jerry Hirschberg, had its own problems with complying with Design managment requests and other corporate pressures and had little interest to help Herb with his projects that would simply rob time and talent from higher priorities. Whenever there was some performance oriented project, Jerry would always involve me in the project. Frankly, I was the only designer in the studio more interested in performance cars than my career. I had been in Buick Studio from late 1973, transferred from Pontiac Studio, and had designed the graphics for the 1975 and 1976 Buick Century Indy Pace Cars.

Frustrated with Buick Studio’s lack of complete cooperation, Herb approached Buick managment. After presenting his case, managment asked if there was any other way to get these projects accomplished. That’s all Herb needed to hear. Herb approached me to see if I was interested in doing projects on a freelance basis. Performance Design was created as a way for me to work for Buick independently of the studio. I left General Motors in 1988 and kept the name Performance Design as my freelance design business.

I created a variety of concept renderings for Herb using Buick Century and Regals. There were concept cars, race car paint schemes, and one vary notable concept, the Buick Grand National. The GN might have been Herb’s idea, I’m not sure, but he had me work up a rendering showing what it might look like. The rendering is dated 1980.

Rendering showing three Grand National proposals, dated 1980. Notable features included body colored bumpers, chrome steel wheels (on the red car), and black moldings.

Herb also had Moly Designs working on the GN concept, and he and Herb developed the all-red GN proposal. Moly Designs created the turbo-6 logo. I remember seeing that car on display for review on the Design Staff viewing courtyard. My original GN concepts had three GN proposals, one was all black, and another was all red with a black stripe. Moly was able to capture the feeling of the GN idea and added refinements of his own in executing one of those concepts. I remember that his all-red prototype better captured the essence of what Herb was after than any of the two-tone themes that were beginning to become a trademark of Design Staff’s idea of what a performance car was supposed to be. The whole idea of trying to make a performance car out of a Buick was a bit obtuse anyway, seeing that Buick had no real performance platforms like Chevrolet or Pontiac. Kind of like making a race horse out of a camel.

Original Grand National styling prototype created by Molly Designs for Herb Fishel and shown to Design Staff and Buick Division management. There is a similarity between Molly’s car and my sketch. Wisely, Molly left off the stripe.

During the ’70s all of the production studios were split except Cadillac. There were three Chevrolet studios, and two Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick studios. Buick One ended up with the Electra, LeSabre, and Riviera, and Century while Buick Two had responsibilites for the Skyhawk and Regal. The 1978 Regal body design was actually done by N. Gray Counts who was a designer in Buick One. Steve Pasteiner was the Assistant Studio Chief in Buick Two. Any official studio work done on any of Herb’s specialty Regal vehicles would have to go through that studio. But at first Steve only executed concepts that were developed as a result of Herb’s involvement with Performance Design, including the 1981 Indy Pace Car. Steve got the credit for it because he did a rendering based on my proposal, and excuted the scheme in the studio. Credit for the 1981 Regal Indy Pace Car wasn’t that important to me, and since I was in Buick One, I had no influence on it’s execution. Besides, I wanted to keep a low profile because of the extracurricular activites with Buick.

Original concept rendering dated 1980 of the 1981 Buick Regal Indianapolis Pace Car by Performance Design.

There is a rendering by Steve Pasteiner that shows a two-tone GN, reportedly being a 1982 Grand National. I don’t remember the rendering or the car, but the GN never really changed from its original sinister one-color paint scheme. Probably the two-tone proposal was done to try and recapture the momentum and influence that Herb was gaining with Buick. There were a lot of two-tone paint scheme proposals floating around the studios in those days.

If all Buick had going for the GN was paint and graphics, it would be relegated to the scrapheap of history. But of course the Buick 3.8 Turbo provided the concept with enough power to come to the forefront of performance cars in the mid 1980s. That was the the decade of radical downsizing due to the influence of governmental regulation. GM’s performance marks had yet to catch up with the new rules and figure out how to build performance cars again. So the Turbo Buick was the first to step up to the plate and hit a home run.