8. Buick GNX
The 80’s are generally considered the dark age of the muscle car and American performance, but there were a few bright moments. One of the cars that restored people’s faith in the muscle car movement in the 80’s was the mighty Buick GNX. The story of this model is an interesting one. Back in 1982, Buick started experimenting with turbocharging its line of standard V6 engines.
The results were satisfying, so Buick permitted their engineers to develop a performance version to deliver better acceleration figures. They came up with the Buick Grand National with 175 HP, which wasn’t impressive, but it was a start. In the next couple of years, the Grand National got a bigger engine and more power. It jumped from 175 HP to 200 HP, and then finally to 235 HP.
With those numbers came acceleration times of under six seconds, making those black Grand Nationals seriously fast cars. But in 1987, they introduced an ultimate version they called the Grand National Experimental or the GNX. It featured the same 3.8-liter turbocharged V6, but with 275 HP and a 0 to 60 mph time of 4.7 seconds. At that moment, the Buick GNX was the fastest accelerating production model in the world.
The price of $29,000 was expensive, but there is a widespread belief that some owners paid for their GNX simply by street racing them for money. Unfortunately, they only produced the Buick GNX for a year, making just 547 of them. Today, people value these cars just as much as they did in the late 80’s.