The Buick That Out-Torqued Everything

Buick spent the 1960s selling comfort. Quiet cars, deep seats, soft rides, the sort of machine your dentist drove to the office. Then in 1970 the division nobody was afraid of rolled out a yellow coupe with a rear spoiler and a 455 under the hood, and for one model year it made more torque than anything else sold in America.

The GSX was a package rather than a separate model. Buick started with the Gran Sport 455, then added front and rear spoilers, a hood-mounted tachometer, blackout hood stripes, a heavy-duty suspension, power front discs, G60x15 tires and a Rallye steering wheel. It was offered in exactly two colors: Saturn Yellow or Apollo White. Nothing else. If you wanted a GSX in green, you wanted a different car.

The 510 Number

The engine is where the story lives. The Stage 1 version of the 455 carried a factory rating of 360 horsepower, which almost nobody in the business believed, and 510 lb-ft of torque at 2,800 rpm, which everybody believed the moment they drove one. Motor Trend ran a Stage 1 through the quarter mile in 13.38 seconds at 105.5 mph, straight off the showroom floor on street tires with a full interior. That was quicker than most of what Detroit sent them that season, and it came from the brand that advertised ride quality.

It made more torque than a 426 Hemi, and it made it 1,200 rpm sooner.

Then it was over almost as fast as it started. The GSX landed late in the 1970 model year, insurance underwriters were already strangling the whole category, and Buick built just 678 of them. Of those, 479 carried the Stage 1 engine, 280 behind the automatic and 199 behind the four-speed. The package came back for 1971 and 1972 in softer form, with compression down and the ratings down with it. The 1970 cars are the high-water mark, and they are the reason a division famous for hushed sedans still comes up whenever anyone argues about the hardest-hitting thing Detroit ever put on a showroom floor.