At this very moment, Buick is cooler than it has been in decades, so let’s all take a moment and really drink this in. This is all thanks to the Super Bowl LIX halftime show, featuring hip-hop superb-star Kendric Lamar and a stunning, gleaming black, handsome Buick GNX. Since hopefully the GNX will be reaching many, many more eyeballs and brains than one has in decades, let’s just take a moment to talk about this car.
What makes the GNX interesting, at least to me, is the fact that this iconic car was based on something pretty pedestrian and boring at the time, the (second-gen) Buick Regal, which was the coupé version of the Buick Century. These were pretty much everywhere in the ’80s, and I don’t recall anyone being particularly excited by normal Regals back in the ’80s.
But the GNX was no normal Regal.
Just for reference, this was a “normal” Regal, and this was how it was marketed:
Good thinking, sensible shoes, 16 shades of beige; not exactly an imposing black turbocharged beast.
We wrote about the GNX and its re-discovered fame thanks to Kendric Lamar back when Lamar’s album, named for the GNX, was released.
So, why is the GNX such a big deal? The name comes from the Buick Grand National, which was a Regal with a turbocharger bolted to its 3.8-liter V6. Starting as a paint-and-stickers trim package in 1982 and then becoming more “real” in 1984 with the addition of the turbocharger and sequential fuel injection giving a very respectable 200 hp.
Then, in 1987, the Grand National Experimental – the GNX – hit the scene. This time, Buick did a lot more to the car, as our own Thomas described back in November:
“So, what makes the GNX so important? Well, it started with the Regal Grand National, a midsize coupe rocking a turbocharged 3.8-liter V6 and often known for a popular black monochrome look. Model year 1987 was the end of the line for the rear-wheel-drive Regal, so Buick built 547 black Grand Nationals with the interior trim package and sent them to ASC McLaren for some special tweaks. We’re talking about a special T3 Garrett turbocharger with a ceramic impeller, a sizeable intercooler, a high-flow exhaust system, a reworked 200-4R automatic transmission with a new torque converter and valve body, a panhard bar to keep the rear end located, 245-section front and 255-section rear tires on mesh wheels, and some big flares to cover the new rubber. Pushing 16 psi of boost, the GNX was officially good for 276 horsepower and 360 lb.-ft. of torque, and unofficially good for a whole lot more.”
So, yeah, the GNX was something special, and was all the more special because of its lineage to the car your Aunt Cassie may have been driving for years.
Tonight is likely the most attention a Buick Regal has had in a sporting event since 1981, when a Regal was the Indy 500 Pace Car. Now, of course, it’s cooler, thanks to being immortalized in song:
As long as we’re talking about Kendric Lamar, I may as well link to his pretty incredible Drake diss-track song, which has that bitingly clever line about trying to “strike a chord and it’s probably A minor.” Ouch.
Anyway, mazel tov to the Buick GNX, getting some renewed appreciation after all these years! It’s a genuinely cool car with real presence that still holds up today.
Oh, and for more information about Lamar’s own GNX (number 191 of 547) and more GNX info, our pal and NASCAR pit crew champ Bozi Tatarevic has a great thread about it:
Kendrick Lamar owns an authentic 1987 Buick GNX.
GNX stands for Grand National Experimental and only 547 were built. Kendrick owns number 191.
He is deeply ingrained in Grand National lore and has even mentioned internal GM build codes for the GNX in the past. pic.twitter.com/wNhQ7Ejg1x
— Bozi Tatarevic (@BoziTatarevic) February 10, 2025
This was a fantastic intersection of two worlds for me. My son is super into Kendrick, not in to cars. I’m super into cars, don’t care much one way or the other about Kendrick. This was an awesome moment of our two worlds crossing paths and giving us a great conversation we were still having this morning.
“Fake GNX” was my first thought as he stood on the hood. This car is all nostalgia, and not much else. I drove a genuine GNX once. Nice acceleration between stop lights, with fun turbo sounds and boost kick. Otherwise it was pure 80s/GM shite. The irony is how many turbo 6 engines are now in modern cars.
These cars were nice but I believe the biggest issue with them is parts….because not much were produced….
I know that the car community adores these cars… but I want to share another opinion.
My friend bought one, and had it done up, fresh suspension, new turbo, etc. Got a ride in it…. and I was thoroughly underwhelmed. The chassis still felt like a grandma car, it didn’t feel stiff, it just felt cheap. The seats were horrible; pretty much zero lateral support. And then there’s the performance. It’s not even that fast – on stock tires most of them did the 1/4 in the 14s; for reference that’s about the same as a new Toyota Camry, and people aren’t worshipping that.
It’s my opinion that the only reason people praise these things was that domestic manufacturers had been churning out utter garbage for quite a while, and this car was slightly better than the rest of the competition.
But if I have a choice I’m choosing an 88 Honda every single time, even a base civic hatch is more fun to drive.
The Honda will get better fuel economy than this brick…as much as I like Grand Nationals…
I’m a Honda person and this is a bad take, sorry. A 14 second 1/4 mile was insane for the time, and really no manufacturer had any idea what “lateral support” even meant. The domestics had been making garbage for a long time prior to this, but it doesn’t change the fact that the GNX was extremely impressive for the time. And it also looked amazing.
Weird lede photo – Where’s the rest of the car?
Clearly his production team used an old Regal bodyshell that had been painted black and had the bottom cut out – as you can see by the platform that’s beneath the body.
And no – I didn’t watch.
It was used like a clown car, dancers were coming up through the stage and coming out of the door and the “trunk”
I came here to say you guys are gonna do a piece about that Buick, right? And you already had. Nice work! I had forgotten that they did the GNX. Buddy of mine in high school had a grand national. That thing was sick. Now the real question: was that an actual GNX or a regal painted up to look like one as a TV prop?
That’s my question. Considering it was just a shell that the dancers climbed out of, clown car style, I’d hate to think it was an actual GNX when more pedestrian Regals are still a dime a dozen.
I’ve had my wagon come second place in car shows behind Buick GNXs quite a few times in the 80s/90s categories… Pretty much confirms that’s not gonna change anytime soon LOL
Now, the value of GNX has rocketed to the end of the galaxy…
“I don’t recall anyone being particularly excited by normal Regals back in the ’80s”
By the early/mid 90s all the G body cars were pretty popular with us dumb kids fresh out of high school. GN and GNX were reserved for the posters on our bedroom walls.
Our budgets were limited. A mid 80s Regal with Cragars, tufted velour interiors and a swapped in smog era 350 with “camel hump” heads and the biggest cam Super Shops had on the shelf got us a pretty decent runner.
I feel like he is 4 years late to the GNX, run the jewels heavily featured one in a previous album/videos/promotions. I know nothing of the modern hip hop world and only know run the jewels because they opened for rage against the machine. Is he known for copying the ideas of other artists?
https://youtu.be/Sff7Kc77QAY
Nah man, I think it’s RTJ who are always far ahead.
Oh man, Jason! You’ve just unleashed the “sports ball” hounds, lol.
Also, In the same vein, I just don’t get this guy. Like, he doesn’t even have a cool voice. I don’t care if the song stinks, but I can listen to Dre, Snoop, Em, Ice-T, Cube, Xhibit or whomever because their voice is fun.
This guy? He just sounds like a bratty baby to me. It’s all good, and I’m glad he is making money, but….fuck this guy, lol.
Also, I will add that unless the black commentariat wants to say their take on it that opposes my view, I’ll say my part as a Detroit kid.
This Lamar fool casually tossing around N-Bombs as slang, because he “didn’t say the ‘r'” is about as believable as a prison rat. He embraces the racism, and should not be celebrated. As I posted before, good for him for finding his hustle, but man, is it a shifty way to make money.
Also, if I’m not mistaken, he’s mad at a Canadian who is also rich and somehow we are supposed to care about something? lol.
No, thanks.
It’s one thing for a black recording artist to casually toss around n-bombs in a hip hop song. I have some feelings about that, but it’s a free country with a First Amendment.
It is quite another to invite a white concertgoer up on stage with you, hand them a microphone and encourage them to perform the song with you, then stop the entire show and call them out for repeating the racial slur THAT YOU PUT THERE, THAT BOTH OF YOU ALREADY KNEW WAS IN THE LYRICS BEFORE YOU INVITED THEM UP IN FIRST PLACE.
Asshole.
https://www.pnj.com/story/news/local/2018/05/22/kendrick-lamar-stops-white-hangout-fest-fan-using-n-word-stage/633920002/
My dude, two of your examples were in a group called NWA. And the other two, are directly related to NWA. Which didn’t stand for neighbors with attitude. The word is common slang in the black community of Los Angeles pre the rise of rap music. Did rap music probably spread the usage, sure. But that happened long before Kendrick was even in the womb. Arguably, Kendrick’s usage since “To Pimp a Butterfly”, has been an ironic reflection of societies need to attempt to tokenism him into a character since he’s increased fame. And a purposefully hostile usage plays into this.
I would have never known about NWA until now. Nobody in Detroit had ever found out about them. Thanks!
“Arguably, Kendrick’s usage since “To Pimp a Butterfly”, has been an ironic reflection of societies need to attempt to tokenism him into a character since he’s increased fame. And a purposefully hostile usage plays into this.”
Putting that degree to good use, I see. lol.
”Straight out of Compton, Crazy Mother F***** named Ice Cube – In a gang called N**** with Attitude” is the first line off their first album. They didn’t hid it. And that album is easily the single biggest foundational piece to West Coast Rap.
I will say, Kendrick’s entire thing is to be provocative and confrontational to systematic racism and injustice. And him being accused of racism. Is exactly the point of the performance as of piece of art. Kendrick has a very familiar art direction. If anything it was toned down last night. But, anyone even somewhat familiar with Kendrick knew he would try to take the comfort of Super Bowl and inject a very direct message. And clearly it has worked, because we’re talking about it. If anything, if the NFL didn’t want a performative art piece purposely challenging to the public, they shouldn’t have hired maybe the best guy at doing exactly that.
Also, the Chiefs didn’t exactly give us a whole lot to talk about.
As a former Detroiter who came up in the early 90’s…yeah, we knew very well who NWA was.
Thank you. I was an early, semi-closeted white fan of hip hop from the late 80s until the early 2000s when I got busy with career and life and listening to new music took a back seat to everything else.
Jumping back into it now after a 10-15 year break, it’s all the same repetitive stuff from almost everyone. Quasi-trap beats on everything, limited rhyme creativity, and the language is worse than ever — and for the wrong reasons. The funny thing is this is a lot of the same type of comments my parents’ generation had about hip hop in general, but the key difference is that I have a real frame of reference (I’m not comparing Dre to Lawrence Welk!).
To be clear, I’m not saying it’s all bad, but the most popular stuff is pretty terrible, both in structure and message.
Oh, I wasn’t closeted about anything. There were no closets in Pontiac, those were for fancy people. ha. I mean, now there are golf courses and the like, because of land value, but not back then.
We treasured big cardboard boxes because they were stages waiting to be made on a somewhat slated hill of a front yard on a dirt road. My whole world for a time was living among and with the kids of the factory worker. It was better than Christmas on the day you got to go to work and see/hear/smell actual work getting done!
You consistently have the worst opinions on this entire website.
For anyone wondering, I did some internet sleuthing and figured out the car used was a Grand National. This Wired article says they did cut a GNX up and says the car was purchased from a dealer in Riverside. I found a Bring a Trailer listing for a Grand National in Riverside that I noticed looked identical. Looked up the dealer online, Effortless Motors, and found their Instagram profile where they confirm it was the Grand National they sold that ended up in the show. Sucks it wasn’t just a base Regal, but glad it wasn’t an actual GNX at least.
I adore the engine that went into the GNX. The rest of the car, not so much…
It’s an overweight, inefficient thing. I’ve read that engine can be tuned to over 600 horsepower and remain reliable as a daily on stock internals.
It deserves to power an Oldsmobile Aerotech, GM Ultralite, GM Precept, or GM EV1, any of which converted to RWD. Tuned for 600+ horses with a manual transmission.
Imagine a car that can rip off upper 10 second 1/4 miles, and get 50+ mpg highway when driven conservatively.
Now imagine that it’s 1987, and that you are damned lucky that GM let you build the damn thing in the first place.
General gonna General.
OK, so drop one into a third-gen F-body, hey the Firebird why not? Oh, GM did that, and it was the fastest Pontiac in history until the Holden abomination came along.
Or drop one in an H-body Monza/Starfire/Skyhawk whatever, without even modifying the motor mounts.
The 3rd gen F-body was more aerodynamically efficient than and lighter than a GNX by a wide margin, accounting for its performance advantages over the GNX using the same engine, but the 3rd gen F-body still has twice the road loading of the proposals I initially made.
Imagine what could have been without all that extra mass and wind resistance to slow the car down…
Thinking they put a sacrificial hood on there to prevent dents from standing on it. But who knows. Either way dudes got taste. GNX
I don’t think it was a real car, or wasn’t a real GN. Either a full stage prop, or a plain Regal dressed up.
He wouldn’t wreck a perfectly good $80,000 car just to show off, would he?
Agreed, I’m pretty sure it was a stage prop, especially since pretty much the whole 30-40 backup dancers came out of the driver’s door. Unless they came up the back and went through the passenger door (which would look weird to the “back” side of the stadium), they came up from underneath the shell/plinth the “car” was sitting on. Note it’s not sitting on its wheels.
Should have read father, never mind…
I don’t think that’s all that much money when you have a 8 figures worth of cash to get the job done.
I don’t think this was a real GNX. The featured Buick had a false bottom to allow for roughly 14 hip hop dancers to get out of the car ala Big Apple Circus. So I’m guessing a prop Regal in GNX cosplay. I hope…
Wired had an article with the team that helped design the halftime show. Apparently it was a real one they gutted.
https://www.wired.com/story/true-story-behind-kendrick-lamar-super-bowl-halftime-show/
Of course right after posting this I see from Bozi’s social media it was a Grand National made to look like GNX before his team bought it. It was this one.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1987-buick-grand-national-226/
Yeah, I read that Wired article this morning and rightly clutched some pearls over the assertion that they gutted an actual GNX, but there has been enough online sleuthery following to deduce that while the production team *thought* they were buying a GNX, they just bought a Grand National clone.
I also doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of non-car people trying to find the cheapest “GNX” out there didn’t really get the memo of what a GNX was, or if they did someone probably told them that they couldn’t be spending $100k+ on a stage prop.
Too bad the GNX was featured during halftime, I’d turned the channel well before then.
Same here. I always change the channel during the halftime “extravaganzas”, then tune back in to watch a football game. I’m glad he likes the GNX, though.
So what game did you tune in to? Typical Super Bowl: all hype, no game. All hat, no cattle.
The most exciting thing I watched this weekend was the England-France match in the Six Nations rugby tournament. Replays on Peacock in the USA.
GNX and Monte Carlo SS had some pretty nice lines that still hold up today, which was pretty rare for that era in the mainstream domestic US.
You took time away from that highly engaging game to write this article?
The quest for content waits for no man.
I would have found it difficult to turn away from that nasty Eagles defense repeatedly making Mahomes run for his life.
The second I saw the GNX I knew there would be an article here. Love that car. I wonder how much of the one on stage was actually real car.
It was a real car! Wired magazine has an article that says it was not only a real car, but an ACTUAL GNX- but it looks more like this was the car – https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1987-buick-grand-national-226/
And yes, they gutted it, and yes it’s no longer drivable, which if it was an actual GNX would have obviously been pretty insane to do.
I was wondering if that was a real GNX or a facsimile.
Thank you for this article. My mom texted me a few mins ago asking what car that was in the halftime show but since I don’t catch the ludicrous displays I had no idea, until you posted this. Now she knows 😉