(Burnout photo by Bryan Hiberman) – If you are being genuinely honest with a $5,000 budget, you will struggle to do better for an all-around vehicle than this 1999 Buick Regal GS. I can hear the detractors now: It’s from the “Bad GM” era. Ok, you are correct, it is. The plastics suck and a good amount of the interior is crap. But the seats are heavenly, the gauges are nice and readable, and as long as they aren’t ragged out beyond all reproach, what do you honestly care in a $5,000 or under car? Besides, compared to most of the cars that came out of GM during that time period, Regals have managed to fare pretty well. GM W-bodies suck. Front-wheel drive sucks. Not every front-wheel-drive car sucks. I know plenty of people with stories involving black-and-silver Dodge Omnis and a severe ass-kicking during a streetlight drag race. And I personally can recount just about every ass-kicking I doled out with a 2001 Regal GS Joseph Abboud edition I owned about ten years ago. GM W-bodies aren’t the most inspired design, sure. But they aren’t as bad as, say, a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am, and the Regal GS has one of GM’s most successful engines ever under the hood: a 3.8L V6, mounted transversely, with an Eaton M90 supercharger bolted onto the top of it. 240 horsepower from a front-driver stock is plenty decent, and the 3.8 can be tweaked and boosted into something absolutely jaw-dropping. It’s a four-door grandma’s car! So? Do you know how much fun it is to blow away 1990s Camaros in Grandma’s Regal? Trust me, you’ll be laughing like an idiot for hours after you see some kid in a New Edge Mustang sulk off because you took him at the lights and kept pulling ahead while he mis-shifted. And you’ll be doing it while sitting in the leather seats, with the air conditioning on. And afterwards, you can cruise home, pulling decent MPG numbers.
Now, finding an unabused Regal GS might take a little work, but this black/silver gem is being put up for sale by an older owner who doesn’t drive as much anymore. Or, at least, that’s the story, considering the shape under the car cover next to it makes us immediately think “Grand National” for some reason or another. At $3200, we’d jump on this in half a heartbeat. A second car, a cheap family car, or the most hilarious sleeper you can concoct- your call.
Craigslist Link: 1999 Buick Regal GS
* Only a visual representation of what may be, not the same car.
BMT…Those FWD’s won’t handle extra power very well. Torque steer will rip the steering wheel out of your hand since they were never designed for that.
Your project makes better sense BMT.
they actually do not have tourqe steer as bad as you would think plenty of them making 400+hp and running 11’s as daily drivers
my old 2001 Grand Prix was perfectly fine and went down the track straight and you could blip the throttle going down the road with out it veering off into the trees. and i drove it in the winter with ice and snow on the ground with 300+hp
I’ll second that. They understeer like a mother on an autocross, but the torque steer is very manageable, especially when you compare it to classic examples like a Shelby GLHS.
Plus, torque steer isn’t terribly hard to fix anyways. Guys make 600hp on Hondas and they go straight as arrow. Always wanted one of these GSs or a Bonneville SSEi. Maybe when my daily driver Subaru dies I’ll go searching for one, although I’d rather not drive one in the NY winters
Go to zzp performance. Lot’s of 3800 performance parts. These are a descendant of the gn 3.8 motor.
These make good commuter cars, and these were some of the nicer versions. If the car is in good shape its worth the asking price.
Now, what’s up with the G-body under the car cover?
Seen plenty of these W-body’s run at E-town, NJ. They’ve been into the 10’s. How streetable they were is another story.
the fastest w-body is a daily driven grand prix GT that runs low 8’s with a single turbo making 880wheel HP
I’ve been looking for one of these or an SSEI Bonneville at the correct time for a while now. Never seems to work out.
W bodies suck but I love the Regal GS because of it’s boring styling yet phenomenal powerplant. The H bodies were better inside and out, but larger. I had an 98 Oldsmobile 88 I bought for $500 and could spin the front tires, and have no tourqe steer due to the subframe and axle design. Phenomenal, underrated cars. I loved that thing. (late 80s-99 Bonneville, 88, and Lesabre sit on the H platform)
GM started something special with these cars, and promptly moved on instead of refining them. Sure it’s FWD and auto only, but that’s also part of it’s beauty. Drive it all the time in leisure, then plant it on the floor when a punk rolls up and never miss a shift. 1999 also used the “performance shift” button with increased transmission line pressure and higher shift points. With tuning and a shift kit, it will literally bang-shift the gears. Under steer in a FWD car can be overcome knowing the dynamics involved. Higher rate springs all around, leave the front sway bar soft, toss in a stiff rear sway bar (SLP made the biggest) and it will move very quickly around corners. I took a 2000 GTP to autox events and got tons of snickers. At the end of the day, it very easily kept up with lightweight and super stiff purpose built VWs, Hondas and the like. They were always curious to crawl around it afterwards to see what kind of voodoo it was packing. BUY IT OR I WILL!
Excellent platform for fun and daily driver too. Had a 97 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP that with some easy mods was a lot of fun. Strut tie bars front and rear (OE GM pieces too, not expensive!) helped the handling a bunch, intake, and fixing some nasty OEM exhaust routing helped performance too. Wasnt the fastest thing on the road, wasnt the slowest either. Got great gas mileage, but best of all, with 4 studded snows on it it was a BEAST in the snow. Buh Bye subaru…