GN long term test on Insideline.com

[RoseyT]

http://www.insideline.com/buick/grand-national/1987-buick-regal-grand-national-long-term-test.html

"Chuck" mentioned in the first paragraph i bet is TroGNman on here. I remember his 86 GN when his little brother drove it to our high school on one of the last days of the year (June 1986). I'll never forget him pulling out of the parking lot with the trademark squeeling of the tires at the top of first gear and the second gear scratch. I was forever hooked on TR's ever since.

 

[williamsGN]

Nice photos.. thanks for the link

 

[troGNman]

Hey Tommy, thanks for that bit of nostalgia! That sent chills up my spine.

I know Scott from way back and he was just starting to drive.... 17 going on 18 and a junior at Cedar Ridge HS. He had a sweet Silver '69 Camaro RS vert with a 350/auto at the time (heckuva a first car, huh). His dad Joe Oldham was the editor for Popular Mechanics magazine and would do some features in Cars Illustrated too. Joe had a then-new triple black '86 convertible Corvette with the L-98 and auto. I recall the convertibles for some reason were the only Vettes to get the aluminum heads and all convertibles were "pace car replicas" according to the small winged badge on the dash. Scott would bring out the Vette and get soundly trounced by the GN every time. It was a good performance benchmark he would say.

Scott would get to drive the test cars for the magazines. E-Town Raceway Park of course was the test track for the 1/4 mile, but real world testing was done on Double Trouble Road or Miller Air Park in South Toms River every Saturday nite into the wee hours of the morning. Also, there was the occasional stop light challenge on RT37 and bench-racing at the Roy Rogers.

Scott moved on to bigger things in auto journalism and is now at Edmunds Inside Line on the west coast. I still keep in touch with him ocasionally. I wish I had a better shot of this 25 year old set of pictures. It's from when we compared my '86 GN with a verrrrry low number GNX with Michigan manufacturer's plates.

 

[TurboRegal84]

Very neat!