1973 Buick Century Gran Sport GS Stage 1 in Gold & 455 Engine Sound

Phil Roitman’s 1973 Buick Century Gran Sport Stage 1 just earned a perfect 1,000-out-of-1,000 score at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, and commenters say its 455-cubic-inch idle might be the best-sounding exhaust note from any 1973 car, period. Roitman has owned the Harvest Gold Gran Sport since 2005 — and he holds another distinction too, having been the very first guest ever filmed for this YouTube series four years before this appearance. Watch to hear the engine note that has viewers arguing Buick built the real sleeper of 1973.

A perfect score doesn’t happen by accident, and neither does the kind of exhaust note that makes commenters call a nearly fifty-year-old sedan the best-sounding car of its model year, full stop. This 1973 Buick Century Gran Sport carries both: a flawless 1,000-out-of-1,000 judging score at one of the country’s biggest muscle car shows, and a 455-cubic-inch idle that apparently stops people mid-sentence. It also carries something else worth knowing before the engine even fires — a connection to the very first episode of the YouTube series filming it, four years before this particular video was made.

1973: The Twilight Years of the Muscle Car Era

By 1973, tightening emissions regulations, rising insurance premiums on high-performance cars, and the looming oil crisis were already squeezing the life out of Detroit’s muscle car lineup, and most manufacturers had begun quietly detuning or discontinuing their most aggressive performance packages. Buick’s Gran Sport survived into this transitional period longer than many of its rivals, offering the Stage 1 package as one of the last genuinely serious performance options a buyer could check on a mainstream mid-size sedan before the muscle car era wound down almost entirely by the mid-1970s.

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The Gran Sport Stage 1: Buick’s Answer to the GTO and Chevelle

Buick introduced the Gran Sport line in the mid-1960s specifically to give the brand’s more conservative image a genuine performance option against GM stablemates like the Pontiac GTO and Chevrolet Chevelle SS, and the Stage 1 designation represented the top performance tier within that lineup — a package built around Buick’s largest available V8, upgraded internals, and suspension tuning meant to back up the numbers rather than just look the part.

The 455: Buick’s Torque Monster

Powering this Gran Sport is Buick’s 455-cubic-inch V8, an engine built around massive low-end torque rather than screaming high-RPM horsepower — the kind of engine that made Buick’s big-blocks feel effortless rather than frantic under hard acceleration, and part of why the Stage 1 package earned respect even from owners of more conventionally aggressive rivals. By 1973, the 455’s output had been dialed back from its earlier peak years, but the fundamental character of the engine — deep, torque-heavy pull and a distinctive, uneven idle — remained intact enough that people who know these cars can apparently still pick one out by ear alone.

Judged Perfect: What a 1,000-Point Score Actually Means

Achieving a perfect judging score of 1,000 out of 1,000 points at a show the caliber of the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals is an unusually high bar, requiring correct paint codes, factory-matching trim, period-appropriate hardware down to the fasteners, and mechanicals that not only run but present exactly as they would have leaving the Buick factory in 1973. Judges at this level typically deduct points for even minor deviations from factory specification, which makes a flawless score a meaningful indicator of just how thorough this particular restoration actually was.

Owned by the Same Man Since 2005

Phil Roitman has owned this Harvest Gold Gran Sport since 2005, which by the time this video was filmed at the November 2017 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals meant well over a decade of ownership and, presumably, years of the detail work required to bring a car to a perfect judged score. Long-term single ownership like this tends to produce more thoroughly documented, more carefully restored cars than examples that have changed hands repeatedly, since the same person is accountable for every decision made along the way.

A Sound Commenters Say Beats Every Rival From Its Year

One commenter went so far as to call the exhaust note on this Gran Sport the best-sounding note from any 1973 automobile, of any make or model — a bold claim in a model year that still included plenty of big-block competition from Chevrolet, Ford, and Chrysler, but one that speaks to how distinctive Buick’s 455 sounds compared to its rivals. Another commenter described the car as “unassuming,” at least until that idle kicks in — a fitting description for a Gran Sport, since Buick’s understated styling has never demanded attention the way a Charger or a GTO does.

From Premiere Episode to Perfect Score, Four Years Apart

What ties this particular video together is a detail the host shares directly: Phil Roitman was the very first person to agree to have his car filmed for the debut episode of this YouTube series, four years before this Gran Sport appearance. That kind of continuity — a return guest whose car has, in the intervening years, gone on to earn a perfect judging score — is the sort of long-running relationship that a car show and its regular attendees build over time, and it adds a layer of history to this video beyond just the Buick itself.

A Genuine Muscle Car Wearing Buick’s Badge

There’s an inherent tension in a Buick wearing a genuine muscle car badge, and it’s part of what makes the Gran Sport story compelling on its own terms. Buick spent decades cultivating an image built around comfortable, quiet, conservative transportation for an older, more affluent buyer — the brand your grandparents drove, not the one racing at a stoplight. The Gran Sport Stage 1 existed specifically to complicate that image, giving Buick dealers something to point to when a customer walked in wondering whether the brand could compete with GM’s more overtly performance-oriented divisions. That tension between Buick’s staid reputation and the Gran Sport’s genuine credentials is exactly why a car this well restored, this well documented, and this late in the muscle car timeline still draws a crowd: it’s proof the brand meant it.

The Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, where this particular car earned its perfect score, has grown into one of the largest indoor gatherings of its kind in the country, drawing thousands of cars and tens of thousands of attendees to Rosemont, Illinois each November. A show at that scale means judging categories are deep and competition within any given class is genuinely stiff, which makes a perfect 1,000-point result carry more weight than it would at a smaller regional show with a handful of entries in the same category.

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