The last Buick Grand National ever made is heading to auction at Barrett-Jackson’s flagship Scottsdale, Arizona, sale scheduled for Jan. 22-30, 2022.
The Grand National was Buick’s muscle car for the 1980s. A performance version of the Buick Regal, it used a turbocharged 3.8-liter V6 instead of a traditional V8, extracting a surprising amount of performance from General Motors’ aging rear-wheel-drive G-body platform.
The turbo V6 was good for 245 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque, coupled to a 4-speed automatic transmission. Buick also launched a GNX closeout special (short for Grand National Experimental) for the 1987 model year, which upped output to 276 horsepower and 360 pound-feet of torque.
The 1987 model year was the Grand National’s last because GM dropped the G-body in favor of a new front-wheel-drive platform for the Regal. A standard Grand National rather than a GNX, the last car was built on Dec. 11, 1987, marking not only the end of the car’s production but the end of production at GM’s Pontiac, Michigan, assembly plant, which had been building cars since 1927.
The last Grand National has been treated as a celebrity since it rolled off the assembly line 34 years ago. It’s been kept in a climate-controlled storage space and only brought out for special appearances, such as Buick’s 2003 centennial celebration in Flint, Michigan. It also appeared in the 2012 documentary “Black Air.” Today, it shows just 33 miles, according to the auction listing.
While there can only be one last Grand National, several other low-mileage examples have emerged from hibernation recently. Barrett-Jackson featured a GNX with just 8.7 miles earlier this year, and a 49-mile exampe went up for auction in 2018.
This article was originally published by Motor Authority, an editorial partner of ClassicCars.com.
