CarBrandLogos archive · Buick · 1973

BuickRegal

A soft personal coupé that turned into the fastest American car you could buy.

Photo: AJM STUDIOS · CC BY-SA 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Buick history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Buick Regal, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Regal began in 1973 as an upmarket version of Buick's mid-size Century, part of General Motors' Colonnade generation — heavy, opera-windowed coupés for buyers who wanted a personal car without paying Riviera money. It sold well and gave no indication of what was coming.

'88-'89 Buick Regal · Bull-Doser · Public domain

Design and engineering

What came was the turbocharged V6. Buick had persisted with the six-cylinder engine through the muscle era, and by the mid-1980s the rear-drive G-body Regal was carrying a turbocharged, intercooled, fuel-injected 3.8-litre in the all-black Grand National. In 1987 the run-out GNX version, developed with McLaren Performance Technologies, was quicker to sixty than a contemporary Corvette or Ferrari, and did it while looking like a taxi that had been left outside a fire. It has been a collector car almost from the day it went off sale.

1980 Buick Regal · Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA · CC BY 2.0

1982 Buick Regal Wagon two-tone green, front right

In production

Afterwards the Regal returned to type: front-wheel drive from 1988, a supercharged version for buyers who remembered, then a gap, then a revival from 2011 as a rebadged Opel Insignia — a genuinely competent European saloon that Americans largely ignored. In China, where the Regal has been sold since 1999, it did far better and became one of Buick's core products. North American production ended in 2020, replaced in the range by the LaCrosse and then by crossovers.

1982 Buick Regal Wagon two-tone green, front right · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0

At a glance