Posh muscle – Buick GS

Just about everyone wanted a piece of the muscle car action in 1968, including GM’s marque Buick, the renowned manufacturer of executive ‘boats’ for lawyers and doctors. Classic American looks at Flint’s hairy-chested offering…

Back in the Sixties and early Seventies it wasn’t uncommon for teenage boys (and possibly some girls!) to go hang out at their local car dealerships and groove on the far out and totally awesome muscle cars. They’d steal brochures, sit in the cars on the forecourt, annoy the salesmen … and dream of owning and driving these incredible machines. Typically they might go and hang out at the Dodge or Plymouth dealership, Chevy or Pontiac or even Ford… but Buick? “No way man, that’s way too square, that’s where my granpops gets his Electra every three years, or Ma her station wagon… !”

That all changed with the introduction of GM’s handsome new A-bodies which were rolled out in 1968. Built on 112-inch wheelbase chassis, Buick’s version, the Skylark, like all the other divisions, had a ‘hot’ version in the shape of the GS (Olds had the 442 version of its Cutlass, Pontiac the GTO version of its Le Mans etc.). Buick wasn’t the obvious destination for someone seeking out a fire-breathing muscle car, but Buick stepped up to the plate with some pretty hot, exciting interpretations of its Skylark.