Gale Banks
He never said he was the Godfather of the GN. He was approached by those at Buick to help in building a twin turbo Indy Pacecar. Believe they went with Buick's Rivy as the Regal would look just like another Bucsch GrandNational racecar that was successful in the early 80's. Buick didn't want Bank's and the Team to just paint up and turbocharge and put decals that said Indy Pacecar on a plain old regal. Buick had the Indy series,Bucsh series they were quite involved in racing.
So they took their Luxury 2dhtp car which would have more appeal at least for leading Indy that particular Sunday,so they went with a twin turbocharged Riviera, think BANKS and the gang got well over 400hp, through this endeavor and who knows exactly who but the idea of a turbocharged production musclecar was given birth.
Buick was so involved in all types of racin during the early 80's and basically in the late 80's suddenly pulled out almost all Factory Sponsership and as we all know the LAST BUICK HOORAY was the GNX. It's almost Ironic that Big Cooperate sponserships were Changing as well . From Bucsh GrandNational Series to Winston Cup . Nascar must of sold the copyright name cheap to Buick and that the name for this newly birthed idea of a turbocharged production MUSCLE car would be named GRAND NATIONAL. Buick had the INSIGHT to get the GN name and to put it on their last REAL MUSCLECAR.
Think the one Book that we all own has this TT Indy Pacecar in it if I remember it's been years since I cracked it open. More then coming up with the idea of a turbocharged car was the name given it. The regal was definately successfull in the Busch series but they all ran sbcmotors, I'm sure this was an area that burned Buick. The Regal had one of the lowest drag coef. of the cars running back in the day.
So why not use that low coefficient Regal and throw in one of those lil V6 torque monsters that had proven themselves in INDY,GTA,racing, etc,etc. They got 400 ponies out of that pathetic Riviera, so why not TurboCharge an LC2 and make the SBC they had to run in the Busch GN series look anemic in the torque dept.. Lets paint it black have Mclaren and asc do some tweaking give it a sinister name like GNX and we at Buick will have a MUSCLECAR that will whip anything they can do with the SBC/Vette. Think this was an internal battle and Buick served GM Notice with a BOOSTED V6. The top dogs/brass at GM got the finger from Buick in the way of the Grand National/GNX. That's my story and I'm stickin to it!
Banks only holds 4 records, Fastest gasoline pickup a Syclone that went 210 at Bonneville, Fastest passenger car TT Firebird forgot the mph, Fastest TTDiesel pickup just started playin with diesels but it went 222mph,then with another turbocharged streamliner, all Bonneville runs, he's been playin with turbos longer then some of us have been alive.
