Buick Grand National to Return in 2015

Noticing a Buick rolling down the street didn’t always inspire thoughts of retirees and elderly drivers, and about thirty years ago, the  was known as a powerful brand offering bleeding-edge technology and fast cars. An impressive level of research went into improving various aspects of the vehicles like the fuel injection system.

GM was so intent on creating a racing brand out of Buick that they even promoted a special marketing campaign designed to compare Buicks to Corvettes. A successful run at the Brickyard and the resulting turbocharged engines gave the Buick Grand National a reputation for speed, and even allowed the company to boast a quarter-mile time that bested the Corvette.

Since its brief heyday of 1980s power, Buick has exuded an aura of retirement, golf clubs, and leisurely Sunday drives. With the reintroduction of the Grand National in 2015 along with the GNX sedan, the company looks as though it may want to launch the brand back into the spotlight as a more exciting vehicle designer. Crawling out of its current level of reputation might be a difficult prospect, but with the impending 2015 lineup, the company has as good a chance as ever to change the way people think about Buicks.

The Grand National will come with an available 3.6-liter V-6 offering 321 horsepower or a turbocharged 2.0-liter four cylinder engine with 272 horsepower while the GNX will come with a twin-turbo 3.6-liter V-6 boasting 400 horsepower. As with its 1980s predecessor, the GNX will only be available in black. It remains to be seen whether fans of the Grand National will again refer to it as the “Darth Buick” (since it was originally released during the Star Wars era). Each vehicle will be available with an automatic transmission, and manual will be offered for the turbo engines. An eight-speed Hydra-Matic is due in 2014.

Despite a lack of a V-8 engine, it’s likely that the Buick vehicles will stand up appreciably in performance against the competition that includes Cadillacs and Camaros. Depending on the vehicles’ acceleration, the cars could catch the attention of the Europeans as the possibility of all-wheel drive could create some competition with Audi. The expected builds of the vehicles may inspire buyers to wait until the 2015 model year to invest in one of the new Buicks.

The inclusion of these performance vehicles in GM’s future lineup isn’t too surprising since the man who helped to implement the monster 1980s Buicks, Lloyd Reuss, has seen his son carry on his legacy as the current president of GM North America. Mark Reuss was just in his teens in the 1980s, but it’s clear that he intends to bring back Buick’s reputation for speed and performance with the 2015 lineup.