Stories about your first experience with a Turbo Regal?

My first experience with a Grand National was due to a girl I dated in High School. Her father owned a GN, and she was always bragging about how fast it was. I drove a Corvette, and then my Chevelle, so I was always like "right, whatever".

Her father used to take us out to dinner all the time, and once in a rare while if the weather was nice, he would pull out the GN. I always thought it was a beautiful car, but never had any serious respect for the power it made. He would briefly get into the throttle to pass cars, but never beat on the car.

Well, one night, he let his daughter borrow the car. Now, mind you, she's in LOVE with the thing. She has always talked about how much faster it is than my cars, so there was only one thing to do..... :D

I brought out the Chevelle, which had a mildly built 350 in it at the time with all the basic bolt ons, which was enough to handle your garden variety mustang. We pulled up to a light together, with no one around (about 12:30 in the morning). I looked over at her, and told her "I'm about to break your heart, darling". She just sat there and smiled. The light turned green, and I jumped about a car on her. I had just about started to laugh when all of a sudden I heard that turbo spool over the sound of my exhaust, and suddenly she was at my door. And then even with me. And then a car out. and then 2. and then 3. And then we blew past a cop running radar on the side of the road :eek: :p

Well, he grabbed me, and she drove the few remaining blocks to her house. After he finished writing me a nice heavy ticket, I drove to her place and parked it. She was sitting there, leaning against the bumper of the GN, smiling, not saying a word. I quietly walked into the house. There was just nothing to be said ;)

After my WS6 was stolen, I sat long and hard and thought about what car I wanted to get. I had the Chevelle, so I didn't want another convertible to go cruise in. I had my project/race car in the RX7, so I didn't need anything crazy. I needed something that was comfortable, had A/C, a nice radio, and got decent gas mileage. I was actually all set to buy a truck to tow the race car, when my friend Alex (blackshoebox) mentioned that another friend of our was selling a very clean, very fast GN. Since the day of the beating I took, I had always wanted one. Well, I drove the car, and that was that. I am now the proud owner of a 1986 GN. :)
 
Warp 6!

Rewind back to 93 I was in a rebuilt 305 tpi Formula 5 spd good solid car.
Up in front of me was a GN with Warp 6 on the plate and he smoked a mustang in right in front of my eyes. The mustang had spray the buick looked stock nuff said.
 
The very first exposure I had to a TR.....

I have always owned an 83-87 Regal, several of them. Just because I liked the style of the body.

I was 17 yrs old and I always hung out at my friends garage after school. The other mechanic had a good friend that always talked about his 87 Turbo T. He brought it in one night and I was like yeah right, v6...give me a break. (Mind you I was building my first V8 355 to put in my cherry 84 Regal LTD.) I remember him having the hood up and saying, yeah this is the intercooler ( pointing at it) I had no idea what he was saying. I still was like, this is puny...v6 c'mon.

Then he left out of the parking lot real slow and nailed it going sideways through 2nd and 3rd. All while thinking a mack truck was pulling out.....I was hooked then.

I played around with my V8 Chevys for awhile and got bored.

I was 21 yrs old and bought the first TR I looked at. It was a WE4. I remember the smell of it. The feel of the steering wheel. Then handling. The power. Oh, damn I better quit. Anyways. I sold it last year and now I'm building an 11 second street GN. :cool:
 
Summer of 98, Texas Raceway in Kennedale. I lined my 95 Z28 6spd(cat back, cold air-high 8's on street tires and pump gas)against a light blue Regal with an out-of-place hump on the hood. I ran my typical 8.90 and watched him run an 8.20. He showed me the taillights the whole way and pulled me hard on the top end. I found him in the pits and started asking about mods. He told me he just had a K&N, downpipe, hotwire kit, racechip, racegas, and running 21lbs. of boost. As he was studying his laptop, he commented that he was about .2 sec. slower than usual:rolleyes: . I did some research, read some magazines, then I bought mine in Oct. of 98. I put a downpipe, hooker exhaust, and adjustable actuator on it, and ran an 8.60 with a slipping trans. Seven months later, I traded the Z28 in for a Tahoe(for the wife).
 
""Oh Yeah Wanna BET.....wait till the wife gets in the picture
Stay single!""

I don't know about that...I have (2) V8 75 Chevy Monza's, 73 Vega GT, 91 S-10, (4) Hotairs, 86 442, and a 99 4Runner. Wife is happy with the choices so far. Up to date, there have been at least 26 cars that I have owned and she only suggests that I need to get rid of some.:D
 
In '86 I cruised around in my daily driver, a 70 AAR Cuda. My friend had a 70 HEMI Cuda. He bought a new Turbo Regal in 87. I then came back in town in 90 and finally saw his 'new' car. Our Cudas were fairly stock but ran great. I thought nothing new could touch them, so I did not believe the #'s he said he was getting.
Well one day that year we drove down to the local drag strip in his T. Dispite a larger turbo and some other mods it was a confortable, smooth, nice air-conditioned trip. THEN I get out and he knocked off mid 12's on the street tires.:eek: I will never forget that day!

Years later I delivered a friends T to a show and fell in love with the car (I never drove my other friends car back in '90). So alittle later I bought mine.
 
I grew up on Long Island, NY and on the weekends we'd journey into Brooklyn to watch the late nite street racing on Fountain Avenue's infamous eighth mile. It was there that we learned first hand how fast this 'new' car actually was, despite how agonizingly quiet it seemed. A brand-spankin' GN with dark tint, skinnies and slicks boiling the hides in our makeshift waterbox in the middle of the nite is an image I'll never forget.
The street racing articles and road tests published in now-defunct magazines like Cars Illustrated and Street & Strip Supercars also contributed significantly to the legend of the TR, at least in our area.
I also remember an older guy named Vinny Guido (his real name, I think) who would show up weekly at Nathan's cruise nite in Oceanside, wearing his bermuda shorts and flip flops, standing in front of his brand new, slick n' skinny-equipped GN, ready to race anyone for anything. There was always some serious iron at that show - big block Camaros with no hoods and slicks, various 5.0's, etc. We were all impressed that ol' Vinny wasn't the least bit intimidated. He never opened his hood, but I do remember a roll bar. I wonder what ever happened to him and that car.
 
I can't remember my first experience with TR's, but I can remember reading about them when I was young, and wanting one. I do remember one night I was out cruising my Formula, and I was parked with some buddies, and some guy comes pulling up to the light by where we were at in a NICE 87 GN. Super clean. He had a killer stereo in it, and was playing "Stayin' Alive", which I thought was funny (Disco, wtf?), but it had some rims and was just so BLACK. I never got that picture out of my head. I love black cars.

I do remember the first time I raced my GN. I was at the local street races, and my car was stock. I mean no chip, no K&N, nothing. I had stock tires even. This dude in a S-10 with a 355 in it wanted to race me. I said sure, but you'll probably win, its stock. I let my buddy ride along. He'd never ridden in a GN before. I let the guy get the jump, and my buddys like "Wtf dude? You awake?" I said "Its OK, watch this!" I layed in the throttle, smoked the little tires, and blew his doors off! I beat him so bad I let off at half track and still won by 5 cars. NOBODY would race me again that night, not even the fast guys. They were scared.

Even today, my friends that have known me and the car for years, still shake their heads and say "A V6?! I just don't get it!" with this look on their faces like I just made frogs fall out of the sky.
 
Race at track YES
Race on Street DEPENDS on situation.
I don't go for the ricer bob N weave race. But if
I am first at lights with another lane next to me
I will do a 0 to 60 blast if all looks clear ahead of me.

Pronto & me were driving to a Car show one Sunday
this little orange ricer comes up behind REVVING.
He pulls around & we catch lights.
I just TOYED with him. Those are the most fun races :)
 
I graduated high school in 1984. My closest friend in high school was a huge Mopar enthusiast and had a 440 in a 62 Plymouth he built with his dad. I on the other hand was really into the Corvette/Camaro world. We would banter all the time over which was better and why. Well, like I said, I graduated in 1984 and bought a Camaro right away and drove it for a few years thinking it was fast (not as fast as my friend Plymouth though).
It was 1987/1988 and my old high school buddy starts talking about these black Buick Grand Nationals taking over at the track. I couldn't believe it, the cars he was was raving about were the cars I had been reading about beating the Corvette in all the magazines. Before his tale about lines of black Buicks knocking out all the old muscle cars at the track, I already had the attitude that "I can't believe Corvette is letting a piece of *** V6 Buick beat it!" I was sick and tired of hearing about these bogus power pretenders.....atleast in my mind. Then, in 1989, my Mopar buddy pulls up to my house in a 1987 Black Turbo T he had just purchased. I was shocked at his defection and told him I couldn't believe he would.....how did I put it?....."Buy that V6 crapper". He said "you have to let me take you for a ride". Which I did. He went up my street in the biggest cloud of smoke I had ever seen and then let it rip all the way to the middle of 3rd on the way back. I think I was even more shocked than him when the words "I HAVE TO HAVE ONE OF THESE THINGS" escaped my ear to ear grin. I've been a Buick guy ever since.
 
about 4 years ago, somebody i met through a friends girlfriend had a GNX (yea it was a real one). i had no idea what it was, he just told me it was fast. we were rolling up rt 35 in middletown and we came up to a porche. kid says "watch this" and stomped it at about 50. tires lit up a little and then we took off like a shot. i still didnt know much about the things until about 3 months later. my father starts telling me about buying a GN from a long time friend who was dying of cancer. the guys son was a jerk off and he didnt want his son to get the car and beat it to death(the only thing this guy loved more than his car was his wife). its an untouched '87 that was always garage kept with under 23k on the clock. this thing even had the original tires, wiper blades and plugs and wires. so push came to shove and my pop bought the car and i was told i would never drive it. that didnt last too long, since i was the one that cleaned it and prepared it for every show.

the second time i drove it my parents were in the car and i raced some guy across an intersection. since it had those original tires, they were quite bald and i went across the intersection sideways. my dad was about to kick me in the nuts.
 
Banged a chick on my hood one time. I'd consider that a "first experience" with my first GN. :D
 
my first experience in seeing one was when my best friend in HS ran his TPI TA against a relatively stock GN, both on bald tires but after the GN hooked it just left my friend.....after that I knew I would always own one, then in college i knew I was going to be able to get one my junior year and a guy down the street from a friend had one for sale so i asked him to take me for a ride and holy jeez! i was amazed. his was an 11 second car but i didnt know that at the time, a year later i bought one with all the basic recipie mods ran 13.6 at the track first time out, my first street race was an 11 sec stang that crushed me so that sucked, but I havent lost much since then.
 
Okay here goes...

A little over a year ago I barely knew what a GN was. I was a die hard mopar fan :rolleyes: and even though I'd heard of them and saw pictures I basically had no clue. Then one day on moparts.org I stumbled upon a thread about someone getting scammed and eventually roasting the troll. I clicked the link and it forwarded me to this very site. The thread, of course, was the now famous Joe 1320 vs. Joe Cippola thread. While reading the 20-some pages I read a few of the signature lines also. I was amazed at how fast these things were going in the 1/4 and most of them had very few mods. I also remember trying to figure out what the hell a scanmaster was. I just kinda forgot about it until one day I was having an instant message conversation with a friend pointing out a new Chrysler car. I don't remember what the car was but I told him it was so sick looking that if mopar made it I would become the world's biggest Buick fan overnight. I was joking at the time, and I don't even think they made the car, but it renewed my interest to the point that I did some research here and gnttype.org. It ended up being LOTS of research, and I decided I wanted one. I saw one in person at a local track (VERY nice astro roof car that was being used as a TOW RIG for a 60's camaro race car!) and talked to the owner a bit, but I never really examined one until I had already sold my favorite two cars at the time and hunted one down. I bought it and even though it's probably the worst time in my life to buy one (while planning marriage and looking fo a place to live,) it's the best thing I ever did. I will have to be in severe financial difficulty before I let this thing go. To put it in perspective, my daily driver has a heater core that is almost completely plugged. I live 17 miles from where I work, and it gets very cold here, but I wont spend the money to have a new heater core put in because that's money I could spend on the Buick!
If Joe Cippola hadn't decided to scam Joe Bowen I would probably still be working on my 383-powered 65 Fury station wagon and still wouldn't have a clue what these cars really are.

bob
 
When I was young, my parents were never really into neat cars. They always drove K-Cars or cheap beaters, but my grandpa always had some cool cars.
My friend got a model car, which happened to be one of the original Grand National kits. He put it together, and it looked familiar to me.
I remembered that my grandpa had bought a 87 Regal. We lived far away and rarely got to see them. But, when we did it was a ritual that they took us kids out to eat in the Buick. I fell in love with the car then.
My grandpa passed on in 94, then my grandma in 95. My parents wanted to sell the Buick, but I wouldn't let them. I got it just as I turned 16 and took my license test in her.
It had the 307/200-c combo, which wasnt bad, but it wasnt great. I modded it a little, all the while telling everyone that someday it would have a turbo-6. My first year of college I came up on a GN in town. He revved it at a light and lit the tires going up the highway. I knew I was on the right track.
I did a lot of research, and after convincing my mother to loan me the money to do it, I found a wrecked 87 and did the swap over.

My first real race in it was to my best bud. He has a built 69 442, and that car is scary quick, sounds like it will run 10's. We go into the city for a little street running, and he whoops on everything in sight, but I just hold my cards. On the way home I ask him to line up with me. We have friends along with us, and everyone thinks I am nuts. He had sticky tires, and I was on street tires, so I tell him to give me the go. Sure enough, I layed waste to him. We turn off and get out. All our friends are picking their jaw up off the ground.
Soon enough, the wolf in sheeps clothing will rise again!
 
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