Buick Special: Fact or Fiction

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I love the Buick Special. Great handling, great brakes, nice engine, and six gears! But I have been looking into the Buick Special, and I have found no real data of a 1962 Buick Special. Does somebody know the story behind the mystery?
 
This really belongs in the 'Cars In General' forum, since we're just talking about the car (that happens to be in GT4)... so away we go... :)
 
The Buick Special in the game is modelled after a real car - an expensive, very well built, and totally custom hot rod. Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at the number of people who think it's supposed to be regular 1962 Buick.
 
Didn't it win some sort of award to be in the game? And I'm almost certian I made a thread about this exact same thing a few months ago with lots of info.
 
Duke
The Buick Special in the game is modelled after a real car - an expensive, very well built, and totally custom hot rod. Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at the number of people who think it's supposed to be regular 1962 Buick.
Click to expand...

Lol. Nice point.
 
I thought that was the same reason the HPA R32 was in GT4?
 
hy62spe.jpg


The regular 1961-1963 Buick Special/Skylark range and its bretheren - the Pontiac Tempest and Oldsmobile F-85 - were interesting cars themselves and very ahead of their time.

They had rear-mounted transaxles, aluminum V8's displacing 215ci's (this engine later became the Rover 3.5L V8) and there was even an available turbocharger.

But the high cost of the cars compared to their other "compact" competitors meant that they were never big sellers, especially compared to their remote cousin - the simpler Chevy II/Nova. In 1964, they gained a bespoke "midsize" platform that they shared with the Chevy Malibu/Chevelle.
 
Expanding on (and making slight corrections to :) ) what Layla's Keeper just said:

Tempest was the only one to use the rear-mounted transaxles. It shared them with the Chevrolet Corvair: like the II/Nova it was another "remote cousin" (the Corvair was in-and-of-itself extremely unique, possessing a rear-mounted all-aluminum air-cooled Boxer-6). F-85 and Special used regular longitudinal transmissions and solid axles.

Tempest also used the largest displacement four-cylinder engine (that I know of, anyway) in a production car: 3188cc (3.2L). It was basically a Pontiac 389 (6.5L) V8 cut in half.

F-85 had a model, introduced in 1962, called Jetfire. It used the very first application of a turbocharger to a production car engine. Corvair's Boxer-6 was eventually turbocharged as well, released shortly after the Jetfire (unlike the Jetfire, which required an alcohol fuel additive to prevent detonation, the Corvair used a regular ol' turbocharger).

The Special was the first American car to use a V6: a distant relative of the modern day "3800" V6.

[/nitpick]
 
didnt it win something at sema one year? and thats how it got in, but then for the next time pd couldnt be bothered with remodelling a whole car so found a fairly stock looking golf :grumpy:
 
The Buick won an award at the SEMA show, then the HPA Golf won an award at a different show, thats how thoes two were given the chance to be included.
 
Thats an awesome car, I love the name. I just wished that it had the hydraulics on GT4 so when I could just slam that ass and send sparks in the air.
 

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