When General Motors launched the Buick Grand National, it did so in a way that didn’t attract too much attention. Many in the automotive media dismissed it off the bat, at least until they take the turbocharged V6 G-body for a drive. All of the sudden the car sort of made sense, in an Olympic Sprinter trapped in a geriatric body sort of way.
“A strange and curious misfit”, is the first line uttered in this teaser for “Black Air”, an upcoming documentary about the Buick Grand National, and the place it inhabits in history. With release of this documentary slated for December, Jalopnik managed to wrangle an exclusive teaser that we’re now sharing with you as well.
With a turbocharged V6 and a blacked-out body, the Buick Grand National was a genuine attempt by GM to build a performance car off of the G-body platform. Ultimately though, it was that very platform that held the Buick back. While the turbo V6 engine was immensely powerful, keeping pace with high-priced exotics of the day, the handling just couldn’t hold up.
And yet the Grand National remains quite revered among gearheads, precisely because it represented something different from the worst days of GM’s badge engineering. The teaser video interviews some pretty important gearheads as relates to the Grand National, and we hope the full movie has plenty of sound clips of the GN’s amazing motor in action. If any 80’s GM car deserved a documentary, the Grand National is it.
If you want to see Jalopnik’s exclusive clip, you’ll have to make the jump to their site. For more info on the Black Air movie, check out their website, gnmovie.com.