The story behind it....
Now this is just too cool having my car featured.
Thanks for the complements guys, much appreciated.
I’ll add a little history behind my GN. I’ve posted the info before, but I’ll write it again.
I bought it in the April of 2001 with 23K miles on it, from a guy that used to post here, under the name “990 T”, from just north of Boston. Most people would consider it an
”impulse buy”, and to be honest, it kind of was. This was at a time when I had just gone through a divorce. I had gone almost 5 years without owning a high-performance car, and I wanted to get back into that game so badly, it was driving me nuts. I needed to fill the void that had been created with the sale of my ’87 IROC in ’96. I had always promised myself that I would buy a brand-new Camaro before they went out of production, since I had two before and loved them (second and third gen cars), but never had a new one. After pricing out an ’00 M6 T-Top SS in Sunset Orange Metallic with some of the SLP options, then figuring out that I would realistically spend another $5-10K in mods, I realized that I would end up with one sweet ass car, but it would have cost an arm and a leg to buy, and mod to my liking….I won’t even get into the insurance costs.
I had the day off one Friday and was browsing the TurboTrader on GNTtype.org, when I ran across it. I thought it was a mistake, a mint ’87 GN with 23K miles for only $13,500? I had done
some research about TR’s on the internet, so I thought this was a pretty good deal. And I knew people priced high, and finagled with the buyer from there. I had remembered these cars well from high school, and always thought they were awesome, but never really thought about buying one (that “gotta have a V8 mentality”, ya know?). Until now. So I called Jon (the owner) and talked with him and made arrangements to come and see the car.
On Saturday afternoon a good friend of mine Jeff and I took the trek up to look at it. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts for two large coffees, and hauled up there in his brother’s ’99 Trans Am (a forth gen F-gody….how’s that for irony?). As soon as we turned the corner onto the street, I could see it, and that was it.
I was buying that car. All black and sinister looking, and clean. We checked it out, and Jeff drooled over the guy’s grey ’87 Turbo T, with front mount pipes visible under the bumper. I just marveled at the GN I was about to buy. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It had some old-school mods (red top injectors, Pit Bull chip, ATR exhaust, Kenne-Bell ram air, and an ATR Torque Arm, but uninstalled). I drove it around town and on the freeway and even with three people in the car, I couldn’t get over the rush of the turbo cramming air into the little V6. I had always owned V8’s, but never had I felt such torque from a near-stock engine. I offered him $12,500 and he accepted. At that point, I had pretty much forgotten about buying a new Camaro. The GN was different, fast, bad-ass looking (IMO), had street cred (to those true car enthusiasts who knew what a turbo Buick was) and unlike a Camaro, would probably go
up in value. All I could think during the whole ride home was “I just bought one of baddest-ass American musclecars ever!” On Wednesday night, I drove back up with my Mom & Dad, and drove it home. I’ll never forget that ride. Sun was setting, air was cool, and I got some stares and thumbs up along the way. Finally, I had a musclecar again.
I’ve modded it, but nothing too wild (yet). I’m still not done with it, but I doubt it'll ever go faster than 10's. I still think about the new Camaro sometimes, and wonder if I made the right decision in buying the GN. Sometimes I still want one. I almost sold the GN once. But all it takes is one drive, one roll into the throttle to feel the rush of torque pushing me into the seat, turbo whistling, world going by at an ever-increasing rate, to sway my mind. Sometimes in the winter when I don’t drive it, all it takes is a trip to the garage to see the GN sitting there, waiting for cool springtime air and clean, abusable asphalt to make me realize that I absolutely bought the right car.
There’s more info on the actual mods on my Cardomain page. Thanks for reading the story.
Steve
