The 2012 Buick Regal GS…and the car that inspired it.

General Motors’ oldest brand has been on a steady diet of rejuvenation over the past couple of years. Indeed, it can be said that Buick has shed its once stodgy reputation as a brand manufacturing vehicles for those “well over 40 years old” and has been dipping its feet in the near-luxury and innovative SUV segments.

Take Buick Regal for example…

A good example of the division’s evolutionary attitude is the 2012 Regal GS, a return to the “GS” moniker for Buick based on the standard 2012 Regal but ultimately inspired by the 1970 Buick GS Stage 1. The “GS,” for those enthusiasts who may not know, stands for “Gran Sport” and the first Buicks to wear the designated badge rolled out in 1965, attached to the Skylark nameplate. With a minor ?check of the option box,” a buyer could get the Gran Sport package ? but by 1970, the Gran Sport was more of a stand-alone entity, with the “Stage 1” subpackage representing the “best of the best” in Buick performance offerings.

This was a very rare car indeed – a Buick GS Stage 1 convertible in the 1970 model year was available in limited number, with only 232 vehicles in total production (164 automatic versions and 68 manual versions). But make no mistake, these Buicks came loaded and ready to hit the streets with hot cams, hot valves, the Muncie four-speed transmission…this was quite the muscle car in its day, with many classic car enthusiasts and historians believing it could compete against any other race-ready machine from its competitors of that time.

And while Buick was positioned by General Motors to be a division that sat comfortably under Cadillac ? the “more affordable Caddy” line more prestigious than Pontiac, Oldsmobile or Chevy – the brand?s drag racing circuit-ready muscle cars like the GS Stage 1 stood out in a way most people would never associate Buick with. Ironically, the GS wasn?t pretending to be a sophistication-touched sports car like the Corvette but rather was built to compete against models like the GTO and 442 – and so this uniquely cool car, though a bit out of character from what Buick was meant to be, boasted some pretty heady roots in the muscle car realm. The Stage 1 possessed the largest engine Buick ever put in a vehicle up to that point in its 455 cubic-inch beast, pumping out 360 horsepower – but understood by many involved in the muscle car scene back then to be higher than that.

For 2012, Buick attempted to bring back the performance charm characteristics of the Gran Sport legacy in its Regal GS, yet this model appears to have been sculpted to modern day audiences what with its front-wheel-drive layout, 270 horsepower and four-cylinder powerplant, with some added bonuses like 20-inch wheels and a sole transmission option of a six-speed manual. From the inside out, Buick’s Regal GS has a German sedan-esque look and feel, with many car enthusiasts citing the similarities between this version and its smaller Opal/Vauxhall Insignia OPC/VXR brethren as well as the 1970 Stage 1 and its similarity to the smaller “pony cars? of its era – for all intents and purposes, both cars were meant to play in different arenas outside their own.

At the end of the day, to General Motors’ Buick division, it?s all about driving.