Buick GSX 1970 455 Stage 1 option 4-Speed

Buick’s 1970 GSX Stage 1 quietly out-accelerated nearly every rival muscle car of its era, running 13.38 seconds in the quarter-mile, a time Motor Trend called the fastest they had ever tested. The secret was not the modest-looking 360-hp rating on the window sticker, but 510 lb-ft of torque from a reworked 455 Stage 1 V8. Only 678 GSX models were built in 1970, making this yellow-and-black example a rare piece of Buick’s brief muscle car peak.

Black and yellow.. classic GSX muscle!!

Motor Trend tested a lot of muscle cars during the genre’s golden years, but one 1970 model earned a claim the magazine had never handed out before: the fastest muscle car they had ever put through the quarter-mile, bone stock, straight off the showroom floor. It was not a Hemi Cuda or a Boss 429 that took that title; it was a Buick, a brand better known at the time for building cars for golf-course parking lots than drag strips. Buick backed the achievement with a factory horsepower rating that, on paper, looked almost conservative compared to its rivals. The real number that mattered was hiding somewhere else entirely.

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The Torque Number Buick Did Not Advertise Loudly Enough

The GSX’s 455 cubic-inch Stage 1 V8 carried a factory rating of just 360 horsepower SAE gross, a figure that undersold what the engine actually delivered, because the real story was 510 lb-ft of torque arriving at only 2,800 rpm. Stage 1 hardware included a more aggressive hydraulic camshaft, revised cylinder heads and valvetrain components, recalibrated carburetion and ignition timing, and dual exhaust, all tuned for hard acceleration rather than quiet cruising.

13.38 Seconds, Bone Stock

When Motor Trend strapped test equipment to a stock 1970 GS 455 Stage 1, it ran the quarter-mile in 13.38 seconds at 105.5 mph, a time impressive enough that the magazine called it the fastest muscle car they had ever tested to that point.

A Rare Color, a Rarer Car

The GSX package launched for 1970 as a hardtop-only option, initially offered in just two colors, Saturn Yellow or Apollo White. Buick built only 678 GSX examples that year, with just 187 finished in Apollo White, meaning the majority, including yellow-and-black cars like this one, wore Saturn Yellow, the shade most closely associated with the GSX to this day.

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