Posts Tagged: Buick GSX
A rare 1970 Buick GSX Stage 1 — one of only about 400 ever built — just resurfaced after years hidden away, its wheels rusted solid and its Saturn Yellow paint buried under dust. The Stage 1’s 455 V8 once held a 33-year American torque record, and the man who rescued it is now working to prove this is the real thing, part number by part number. Here’s the story behind one of Buick’s rarest muscle cars finally seeing daylight again.
A numbers-matching 1972 Oldsmobile 442 W-30 squared off against a Buick GSX Stage 1, a Pontiac Trans Am SD-455, and a Hemi Road Runner in a strict Pure Stock Drags shootout. Only Chevrolet’s chronically underrated L88 Corvette could put it away. Here’s how the torque-heavy 455 stacked up against three of Detroit’s most famous engines – and why it still gets called one of the most underrated muscle cars ever built.
A 1970 Buick GSX in rare Apollo White just went through MCACN’s five-hour Vintage Certification process — one of only 187 built in that color, and one of just 32 with California emissions. Host Dan Vasic walks through what separates a genuinely original survivor from a car that’s been quietly refreshed. The GSX’s story turns out to be as much about engineering as paint.
The 1970 Buick GSX and Hemi ‘Cuda came out of opposite corners of Detroit’s muscle car playbook: one built for country-club buyers, the other stripped down for the strip. A rediscovered Muscle Car of the Week rivalry video puts their numbers side by side, and the torque column says more than either brand ever advertised.
Chevrolet built 69 Camaro ZL1s. Dodge built 503 Charger Daytonas just to satisfy a NASCAR rule, and Shelby finished exactly one Super Snake before the project died. Here is what the production records actually say about all five of these blue-chip legends, including the one that was never a one-year car at all.
Buick spent most of its history selling comfort, not speed — which made it stunning when Motor Trend called the 1970 GSX the quickest American car they’d ever tested. Built in just 678 examples with a Stage 1 package that delivered more torque than any rival muscle car of its era, the GSX remains one of the most underrated performance cars Detroit ever built. Most people who saw one on the street in period had no idea what they were looking at. Watch to find out why.
Brad Conley owns one of the actual Stage 1 prototype show cars Buick used to prove the GSX deserved to exist before the division ever built one for a customer. Host Kevin Oeste finally met his own childhood dream car face to face at the 2018 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Chicago — and Conley did more than let him look. Watch to see what happened when the owner invited him to sit inside.
Buick nicknamed the 1970 GSX Stage 1 the “Hemi Killer,” and this Saturn Yellow, unrestored survivor still backs it up on Friday night cruises, according to its owner. One commenter recalls jump-starting the car decades ago and getting a very confident answer about how it runs. See why Backyard Barn Finds’ Parker keeps returning to this one.
Buick wasn’t supposed to build a car that could embarrass a Hemi, but the 1970 GSX Stage 1 in Saturn Yellow did exactly that — including a documented 1984 grudge race where a GS beat two different Hemi-powered cars in a single day. Only 678 were built, and Motor Trend once clocked one as the fastest car it tested all year. Watch the full story behind the numbers.
Motor Trend tested a great many muscle cars during the genre’s peak years, and in 1970 it handed a title to a car almost nobody expected: the quickest stock quarter-mile machine the magazine had ever run. It was not a Hemi or a Boss. It was a Buick, from a brand associated with country club parking lots, and its advertised horsepower figure was the least interesting number on the sheet.
Buick built fewer than 700 examples of the original 1970 GSX, a Grand Sport-based muscle car so quick it later sparked a magazine controversy over whether it actually out-accelerated the Hemi ‘Cuda. Backed by slogans like A Brand New Brand of Buick, the GSX carried Buick’s big-block ambitions through 1974, when the 455 V8 was dropped for good. Read on to see how Buick’s rarest muscle car nearly out-ran a Mopar legend.