FAST 4 BUICK GRAND NATIONAL

I fast man thanks for tuning in I'm Craig Lieberman and I've been taking on cars since 1980 I've owned more than 40 cars in my life some where heroes is some more zeroes but never in my wildest dreams would I ever guess that three of my cars would go on to star at a motion picture franchise my Supra my GTR and my maximum all had starring roles and universals Fast & Furious movies over the next three years I'd serve Universal as a technical adviser I helped choose the cars procure the parts oversee their build and support both production and post-production I've got some great stories to tell and that's why I created this channel I hope you like the video when I was about 13 years old I started paying closer attention to cars in general as I was getting closer to the legal driving age most of my neighbors had generic cars some had crappy cars one had an AMC Gremlin and one had a few nice cars my parents of course had horrible taste in cars my mom drove a 1979 Chrysler LeBaron station wagon and my dad had a Datsun 810 but my friend's mom had a 1979 Buick Regal this was the car that got me to school on days that I didn't skateboard to school like most American cars of that era in the 1980s my neighbor's regal was a land yacht but it was certainly better than riding in a station wagon with fake wood siding the Buick Regals interior was drab and featured a huge monolithic dashboard and a lame 85 mile an hour speedometer the seats were huge and then where were wrapped and plush blue velour but this interior reminded me of my grandmother's living room there was really nothing special about it but all cars of that era pretty much had the same type of interior interior trim pieces in this car were chrome-plated plastic bits with a couple of strips of fake wood trim decals I mean we were talking it was just bad bragging and it was like riding in a boat and it was it felt like the suspension was made from marshmallows if you wanted to stop in this car you better plan well ahead these were my impressions from my first experience with the Buick Regal a few years later I was dating this girl named Debbie Debbie's dad and I got to talking one day and I told him that I was into cars he proceeded to tell me about the cool car he'd just bought a Buick Regal grand national I knew the name Buick Regal but not the grand national I sort of smirked and I softly said you know I've been in one of those and I didn't find it really fast or sporty or even sporty looking he proceeded and went on to tell me the many reasons that his car was special what he described was mostly interior trim bits eventually he told me that this model was faster than that year's Corvette I immediately called BS he walked me out to the garage and there it was dressed in black this regal looked liked it belonged to Darth Vader being twenty years old and knowing everything as all of us do at that age I commented that the car looked cool but I doubt it was any more impressive than my neighbors regal stupid comment I admit it hop in he said and we drove over to her a little section of straight road about a mile away he did a brake stand something often referred to back in those days as power braking to spool up the turbo and once he lifted his foot off the brake the thing took off like a bat out of hell I had up until that time had never been in a car back now at the time the automotive press claimed a 4.8 second zero to 60 time for that car this number was impressive for the time but after a few years experience faded from my memory and I forgot all about the Buick Regal Grand National fast forward to 1994 and I was at lacr with my supercharged Mustang this car had a built 347 a Vortech cog drive s trim supercharger and had supporting suspension and fuel system mods it was legit cars 540 horsepower or so in my third race of the day a Buick Grand National lined up against me and I remembered this car all the memories came rushing back and I remembered Debbie's dad Grand National and I knew that they were quick for their day but surely a v6 couldn't run with a drag prep supercharged v8 right wrong here in an 11-5 to my 11 for and his car looked bone-stock suffice to say my first experience with the modified Grand National was very memorable over the years the Grand National has become a legend building its reputation at Friday night drag races all over the United States of America the remarkable thing was that this car came from Buick a company more experienced in building cars for grandparents rather than building sports sedans yes I'm well aware of the GS not since the 1960s had Buick built anything even remotely exciting the first Buick grand debuted in 1982 with the weazy four-point liter v-6 that made only a hundred and twenty five horsepower it wasn't until 1984 that the first Grand National to feature the legendary 3.8 litre v6 turbo was released over the years though the Buick Grand National got even better here's a quick summary of the history of this car in 1982 it had the 4.1 liter v6 120 525 horsepower no turbo going on to 1983 there was no grand national sport model was released and it was called the T type it made 190 horsepower in 1984 and 85 the 3.8 liter turbo v6 was making 200 horsepower in the grand national in 1986 the 3.8 same 3.8 v6 turbo is now up to 235 horsepower in 1987 it was bumped up to 245 but also in 1987 the Buick Buick released the GNX model with the same motor but now tuned by ASC McLaren although rated at 276 horsepower it's really a little over 300 horsepower the GM exit stats were the most impressive of all the Grand Nationals it did 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds according to the automotive media the quarter-mile flash by 13.5 seconds which was hugely fast for that time and in fact and its final year production in 1987 the Buick Grand National was faster than a Ferrari f40 a Porsche 930 turbo and the Chevrolet Corvette in the quarter mile that's some serious jobs this car proved itself over the years at drag strips all over the US it was a formidable competitor on the street and out on the track and when you lined up next to one you never knew what you were getting General Motors however in their infinite wisdom killed the Grand National off and brought us a crappy ugly poorly built replacement Buick Regal with a wheezy 3.1 liter v6 engine and mounted on a front-wheel drive chassis and that was the end of the Grand National tenor models did however build upon the success of the Grand National a few years later when they introduced the GMC Typhoon SUV and the GMC syclone small pickup instead of the 3.8 these V vehicles used a 4.3 v6 turbocharged making 280 horsepower and you would see these things all over the drag races United States now all this background I felt was important for those fans around the world that may have not known the history of this card in fast-forward the Buick Grand National finally got its moment in the spotlight as the movie opens Dominic and his crew find themselves in the Dominican Republic the plot has them hijacking a gasoline truck of course fast for was not filmed in a Dominican Republic and in fact this scene was filmed racing along Templin highway a winding mountainous Road to the north of Los Angeles in the Santa Clarita Valley Templin highway connects interstate 5 with the north end of Castaic Lake a few miles north of Castaic how do I know this because I grew up in this area and used to drive on this road often in fact it was hardly a neighborhood cops up there in the scene though DOM and Letty are leading the crew during an attempt to dislodge some of the trailers from the back of this trailer train I've never seen a tractor pulling v trailers anywhere in the world but the concept has its precedent that aside audience is suddenly si Han wait wasn't he killed in Tokyo Drift oh yes he was but fast for and the movie timeline is out of sequence too as a reminder to watch the films in their timeline order it's one two four five six three seven eight and so in this timeline Han is not dead yet of course he never really died in any case this scene opens with the Grand National and fans of this cars went nuts of course the scene required plenty of Hollywood magic and trickery for starters you probably guessed that Vin Diesel didn't actually drive these cars in Reverse at least not for long driving in Reverse at speed is a favorite gag in action films but it doesn't happen as it is shown in the movies in fact most cars even today can barely manage to do 20 miles per hour in Reverse movie magic is liberally applied here in this case in order to pull off the backwards driving scene Dennis McCarthy and his team built a backwards Buick let me explain basically they took a pair of Buick Grand Nationals one was in 1985 the other one was in 1986 and they put the engines in the trunk and then mounted a dashboard and steering columns were right in the back seat where the right rear passenger would be sitting they had to get a tiny driver of course into the back seat in order for this to work by using this configuration Dom could be sitting in the front and pretend to turn the steering wheel wall on the backseat there's a little person actually driving the car if you look carefully at this shot you can see the rear wheels turning instead of the front wheels something's got to be a mess right you'll also notice that the camera angles are set up so that you can't see the backseat driver you can tell from this shot that there's an engine and what is supposed to be the trunk in total there were eight cars used they had to reverse driving cars then they had the hero one car which was a 1986 Grand National they had three stunt cars according to the VIN list two of them were 84 Buick Grand Nationals and one was an 86 Grand National again according to the VIN list one of the stunt cars car number 2.2 is the only one that had a v8 engine a v8 was used in order to be able to get the car off the line fast enough because the 3.8 had turbo lag and they needed his car to really just jump off the line and they couldn't do it with the original setup this same car had a camera mounted inside the car so that they could show the drivers foot going from the gas pedal to the brake pedal and all that so it was used for those kids those cut-in shots the car on the VIN list labeled whle implies that this car was supposed to be a wheelie car so presumably the wheelie was removed from the script otherwise it wouldn't that said nay leave the car that way the buck car of course is used for green screen shots and of course we have the two reverse driving cars both of which still exist all of the cars had major suspension changes so that they could get a nice low stance this included Hotchkiss suspension and major changes to the suspension geometry in order to lower the cars about three inches to get that nice right height to make sliding the car around easier Dennis McCarthy and his team added some CNC slide brakes and an extra set of wheel wood calipers to the rear axle so what happened to these cars after the movie like so many others that most have bounced around between auto collectors and car museums as of mid 2020 here's the information I have about the whereabouts of these cars the hero one car was offered at the Meachem auto auction in 2015 velvet collection still has one of these cars at their Museum in Branson Missouri Volo has or used to have very recently the stunt car with the v8 the desert collection has one of the reverse driving cars at their facility in Orlando Florida the second reverse driving car is unaccounted for as of mid 2020 as it has changed hands quite a few times and frankly we just lost track a private collector the same guy who owns my Maxima has the car with the side damage on it similar vehicle service it still has one of these cars if my information is correct and the Hollywood star cars museum has one of these at their location in Gatlinburg Tennessee these cars would still be collectible even without their movie pedigree so it's nice to know that these cars still exist so if you want to seem you should go to some of those museums I mentioned the Grand National is still a favorite among Americans who are live and into cars back in this era this was Buicks last great hurrah as the Buick brand has deteriorated into a shadow of its former self frankly though Buick has never produced anything close to the Grand National and probably never will as the world moves towards SUVs and hybrids thankfully Dennis McCarthy and Universal help give this car its moment in the spotlight and immortalize this legendary car on film will always have that I suppose that's going to be it for this time so thanks for watching [Music]

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Views: 173,856

Rating: 4.9269629 out of 5

Keywords: The Fast and the Furious, Vin Diesel, Buick GN, Buick GNX, Fast and Furious GNX, The Fast and The furious, Fast 4, Fast and Furious 4, Buick Regal Grand National, Jay Leno, Celebrity Cars, Volo Auto Museum, The Dezer Collection

Id: 0MKjSNktO1M

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020