THE start of the Buick Grand National

[b4black]

THE start of the Grand National, part 1

I short while ago, I spoke with former Buick Designer Steve Pasteiner. If anybody is to be credited with creating the Grand National, it's probably him. He says Buick already had the Regal Somerset , which was, in his opinion, kind of feminine. He wanted to creat a car "for the guys". He drew up the '82 GN and sent it on the Lloyd Ruess, the Buick General Manager and it got the thumbs up.

Today he stuffed my e-mail box with images. They are monsters! 1.5 meg files. Here is one to start with, which I converted to a JPEG and is now 100k.

Original drawing of the Grand National by Steven Pasteiner

Some things to I noticed:
It's black and silver, not charcoal and silver
It's a Turbo!
No BUICK on the ¼ panel, but BUICK GN on the lower door instead
'Grand National' on the fender and no V6 logo
No bar in the of the T Tops
The wheels are Vectors, just like the '84 GN.
The seats are black around silver, as used in the 85/87 GN.

These last two points help convince me even more that the '84/87 Black GN is more derived from the '82 GN then the '83 Red GN. Steve also sent me some great pictures of that car, some of which I have never seen published. And I recently came accross some untouched photos of the 'real' GN Prototype.

I'll try and get some more pictures up soon!

 

[b4black]

Steve also drew up this car, but he says it never was produced. Almost the same as the GN, but in Red.

Original drawing of Winston Car by Steve Pasteiner

They made not have done it exactly, but they sure came close with this car:

Actual Winston Car

 

[b4black]

Re: THE start of the Grand National, part 1

Originally posted by b4black
These last two points help convince me even more that the '84/87 Black GN is more derived from the '82 GN then the '83 Red GN. Steve also sent me some great pictures of that car, some of which I have never seen published.

Updated the '83 Red GN page. There a couple of more Street Regal pictures to come. Notice the funky front end. Steve says this was an effort to make the car more aerodynamic, as Chevy did with the Monte SS. They didn't go thru with because the car was still very competitive (dominate) in 1983. This does explain why the header panel changed in 1984 (just a little smoother than '83).

 

[equalizer442]

could you forward me all them photos, i think i am going to have to build that car. VRober1902@aol.com

ive got a 82 sport coupe t top for a good base, i can get my body man to make me a targa top and sweep the windshield, i can mold the one peace bumpers my self out of fiberglass. screw another drag project, ill sell my 87 and 442 if i have to to finish this project. im inlove with that car.

 

[Two Lane]

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http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2402556453&category=6137


HTH

 

[b4black]

I added a rear 3/4 view of the Red GN.. Note the '83 tail lights.

I also added the original drawing of the '82 Racestopper TR. 1982 Union 76 Parade Car. Pretty cool to compare the drawing to the actual car.

And here is one of Steve's latest creations, the Buick Blackhawk.

E-mailing these would tie up my computer for a long time. If anybody wants them, just right click and save them. That's the easiest/quickest way.

 

[b4black]

I just spoke with Steve again. He started given all kinds of details about the Red GN. And a lot of them contradict the Molly version of the story printed in Dove's book. For example, Steve says the car was painted red in Buick's studio and never was in California (where Molly's studio is located). Here's what he e-mailed me previously about the aero-nose work done by Buick:

The results of the wind tunnel dictated some changes. Partly to generate a production vehicle that would benefit its performance on the race track. The front air dam reduced front end lift and would have made the vehicle more specific to the GN model. Partly because Buick already dominated on the race track, partly because of cost, it was a hard sell and never materialised. The softened grille header translated itself to lower wind resistance, therefore better fuel economy and was adopted to all Regal models. Besides painting this vehicle red, several other colors were tried, black was choosen as a Star Wars influenced Darth Vader. Actually, some of the early prototypes even sounded like Vader breathing.

Now I can't know which version of the story is right. I wrote on my webpage that I believe there might be two Red GN's. I starting to think this is truely the case. There are definately two versions of the Red GN. Either one is an update of the other, or they are two seperate cars. I'll try and get more pictures of the first with the frenched '83 grille.

I also have some good info on the '86 LeSabre GN's and might be getting some pictures of a LeSabre GN concept car built after 1987!

 

[b4black]

Here a pretty good page of pictures of GMP version of the Red GN.

http://www.diecastmuscle.com/portal/store/Makes/Buick/8009

Kinda looks like a Carb/Turbo. Not sure where the '84 tail lights come from. The interior doesn't anything like the pictures I have seen. The aero-nose is not the nose work that Molly claims he did.

 

[b4black]

http://home.flash.net/~rjgeorge/images/prototype/Front untouched.JPG


This image is a little rough. I will redo it once my scanning starts co-operating again.

The picture my look familiar. It is the most commonly reproduced image of an '82 GN. Even Johnny Lightning used it on their diecast 1/64th car. But this picture is a little different. It hasn't been edited yet. Note the background clutter and shadows. These will all be removed before printing for press releases. Also notice the wheels. The center caps have V6 logos. The V6 logo will be edited out and not used in production. The front air dam appears to be one piece, unlike the three piece production unit.


More to cool stuff to come.

 

[b4black]

OK, the wife's in San Diego, I'm at home with two kids and it's Saturday night. What am I doing? Working on my website - GEEK!

I re-did the the Street Regal/Red GN page . Actually I divided it into two pages. If you read them, you'll see there are two different versions of the car. Most likely, IMO, it's because there really were two different cars.

If I'm right, then GMP's car has the wrong nose to be Molly's concept car.

 

[b4black]

Here's one more thing I hope you guys like. Steve told me that the '83 Red GN had large, outlined BUICK decals on it, but that they were hard to see. I blew up the image and there they were! Take a look (I hope you can see it too).

http://home.flash.net/~rjgeorge/images/pasteiner/red gn close up BUICK.jpg