Retro Review: 1987 GM Muscle Cars: SS,

MotorWeek’s retro review of 1987’s GM muscle car lineup, headlined by the turbocharged Buick Grand National, has become an unlikely favorite for a very specific reason: the comments are full of viewers whose skeptical parents dismissed these cars new, only to come around decades later once the numbers finally sank in. Behind the period-correct broadcast delivery sits a real engineering story about squeezing genuine performance out of the tightest emissions era muscle cars ever faced. Watch the full segment to see 1987 performance judged entirely on its own terms.

Twenty-eight years is a long time to wait for something you laughed off as a kid, and one commenter in this video’s replies did exactly that: their father dismissed a certain turbocharged Buick as “just a tweaked V6, nothing special” back in 1987, and it took nearly three decades before that same commenter finally tracked one down and bought it for themselves. MotorWeek’s retro dive back into 1987’s crop of GM muscle cars is full of small moments exactly like that one, a broadcast built for a very different automotive moment that somehow still explains, better than most modern content ever manages to, exactly why this specific era of GM performance refuses to fade away quietly.

Why 1987 Was Such an Unusual Year for GM Performance

By the mid-1980s, the classic muscle car era was long over and emissions regulations had gutted horsepower across the industry for the better part of a decade, but 1987 marked a turning point where GM finally started clawing real performance back through turbocharging and fuel injection rather than sheer displacement. MotorWeek’s retro review captures that transitional moment directly, a lineup of cars that were not trying to recreate 1969, but were instead proving that genuine performance could still exist within the tighter regulatory and economic constraints of the late 1980s, using turbochargers and computer-controlled fuel injection where earlier generations had simply relied on cubic inches.

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The Grand National’s Reputation, Explained by a Skeptical Father

The commenter’s story about their father dismissing the car as “just a tweaked V6” captures exactly the perception problem the Buick Grand National faced when new: a turbocharged six-cylinder engine felt like a compromise to buyers raised on big-block V8s, regardless of the actual numbers on paper. That skepticism, understandable at the time, simply did not age well once the numbers caught up with the reputation. The Grand National’s turbocharged 3.8-liter V6 quietly out-accelerated V8-powered Corvettes of the same model year, a fact that took years to fully sink in with buyers who judged performance by displacement rather than by actual results on a real drag strip.

“Quick” at 9.4 Seconds — A Line That Aged Strangely

One viewer quotes MotorWeek’s own period description of a car as “quick” at a 0-to-60 time of 9.4 seconds, and finds it almost funny by modern standards where far more ordinary cars beat that number easily. That comment is not a criticism of the review, it is a snapshot of how dramatically performance benchmarks have shifted, and a reminder that period-correct broadcasts like this one are valuable precisely because they preserve what counted as genuinely quick at a moment when the entire industry was still recovering from the malaise era’s horsepower drought, a stretch of automotive history younger enthusiasts often underestimate entirely.

The Monte Carlo and G-Body Loyalty Still Running Strong

Alongside the turbocharged Buick, the broadcast covers GM’s entire G-body lineup more broadly, and the comments underneath it reflect a real, lasting affection for those cars specifically, not just the Grand National everyone remembers first. One viewer singles out the Monte Carlo and G-body platform in general, calling them “timeless” despite the era’s reputation for compromised performance. That loyalty has only grown over time, as G-body cars have quietly become a foundation of the modern resto-mod and drag-radial scene, prized for a relatively lightweight, easy-to-modify body-on-frame construction that accepts a modern LS swap far more readily than many of their unibody contemporaries from the same decade.

Why MotorWeek’s Format Still Holds Up Decades Later

Part of what makes this clip endure is MotorWeek’s format itself, dry, data-driven, and delivered without the enthusiast hype that modern car content often leans on. That restraint means the review reads as a genuinely neutral historical document rather than marketing, which is exactly why muscle car fans trust the numbers it reports even when, in hindsight, those numbers look modest. A host reciting 0-to-60 times in a measured, unhurried broadcast voice carries a kind of credibility that an excited modern reaction video simply cannot replicate for today’s audience, no matter how much production value gets thrown at it.

The Slow-Burn Appreciation Arc of 1980s Turbo Muscle

The pattern across the comments, someone dismissing these cars new and coming around decades later, mirrors a broader shift in how the collector community treats 1980s performance cars generally. For years, turbocharged G-bodies were overshadowed by their 1960s ancestors in both price and prestige, but rising auction values for clean Grand Nationals and the ultra-rare GNX variant over the past decade show that appreciation catching up quickly, driven in large part by exactly the kind of buyer who grew up hearing a parent dismiss the car, only to go looking for one themselves the moment they had the means and the space in the garage.

What This Review Gets Right About the Era’s Engineering

MotorWeek’s period reporting also captures a real, substantive engineering story that is genuinely easy to lose in hindsight decades later: GM engineers were solving genuinely hard problems in 1987, extracting real power from smaller displacement engines under tighter emissions rules than any muscle car era before it. The turbocharged Buick V6 in particular represented a serious technical achievement for the time, a preview of the turbocharging strategies that would eventually become the industry standard across nearly every performance car segment decades later, long after naturally aspirated V8s stopped being the automatic default answer for anyone chasing real power.

Why This Clip Keeps Finding New Viewers

A broadcast originally aimed at 1987 car shoppers now functions as something closer to a time capsule, one that lets modern viewers watch an era of GM performance get evaluated on its own terms rather than through the lens of nostalgia. That honesty is exactly why comments like the father-and-son Grand National story keep showing up under this video years after upload, viewers using an old broadcast to reconnect with a car that took an entire generation to finally earn the respect it deserved, one skeptical father and one converted commenter at a time.

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