Buick Gran Sport |
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Wikipedia: Buick Gran Sport
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Buick Gran Sport page on 28 September 2019, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The Gran Sport name has been used on several high-performance cars built by Buick since 1965. In the GM brands hierarchy, Buick was surpassed in luxury and comfort appointments only by Cadillac, which did not produce performance models. As a result, the Buick GS series were the most opulently equipped GM sport models of their era.
The 1965 Skylark Gran Sport was the intermediate Buick Skylark with the Gran Sport option added. Although a 300 in3 (4,916 cc) V8 was already offered in the Skylark, the Gran Sport had the largest engine permitted by GM - a 401 cu in (6,571 cc) Buick V8 (called a 400 by Buick because that was the maximum engine size allowed in intermediate body cars). This engine produced 325 hp (242 kW) and 445 lb·ft (603 Nm) and was known as the "nailhead" engine. Buick sold more than 15,000 Skylarks with the Gran Sport option that first year, and almost as many the next. It was renamed the GS 400 in 1967, and the Gran Sport became its own model in (about) that same year along with a new "400" engine quite different from the famously reliable but becoming-obsolete nailhead engine design that was first introduced in 1953. Sales fell somewhat in the face of increasingly higher-performance and more popular muscle cars from other marques when compared to those from the more stodgy and expensive Buick. Buick, however, stepped it up a notch when introducing the Stage 1 option in 1969. This limited production (less than 1,500 cars in 1969) version delivered 340 hp (253 kW) and 440 lb·ft (597 Nm).
The name Gran Sport replaced the GS moniker with the 1973 Gran Sport, and was again revived in the late eighties on the FWD Skylark model with various performance options added.
Reference Desk
The Crittenden Automotive Library's "Reference Desk" is a collection of materials that cannot be shared due to copyright restrictions. Information from these resources, however, can be shared. Go to the Reference Desk page for more information.
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1972  Book | 1972 Buick Owner's Manual (Skylark, GS, Sportwagon); General Motors Corporation |
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1970 GSX Built by Steve Jahnke Photo ©2010 Bill Crittenden February 2010 Meeting of C.A.R.S. in Miniature View photo of 1970 Buick GSX Model - 3,483KB |
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1970 GSX Built by Steve Jahnke Photo ©2010 Bill Crittenden February 2010 Meeting of C.A.R.S. in Miniature View photo of 1970 Buick GSX Model - 3,184KB |
