Gaari Means Car. Car Reviews & Car News

Although known as a “professionals” car tied to a very uninspiring image, Buick has sometimes come out with fascinating and exciting automobiles that shocked many in the industry. Cars such as the GSX, Grand National and the GNX were just a few performance cars made by this “boring” make which created image envy in the industry. Saying all this however, “Buick Muscle Cars” unfortunately does not do justice to Buick’s performance past for a few key reasons. Firstly, I found very little new and exciting information in this book. This book mainly focused on year-to-year engine and minor cosmetic changes made to the cars which easily could have been summed up in easy to read bullets instead of long drawn-out sentences. I expected a story telling me about the people involved, the changing industry and the trends of the time which inspired models such as the GSX. However, this book was written in a time vacuum with no discussion on what was going on in the industry at the time nor outside of it (except of course to briefly interject about how the government and insurance eradicated performance). There also seemed to have been a little too much focus on newer models which frankly, really didn’t belong in this book as this was not a history of Buick but of Buick’s performance cars (90′s Skylark’s and Regal’s with non-supercharged V6′s really have no place in a book aptly titled). Another issue was the quality of writing which I found to be poor. Although I do not wish to refer to a dictionary for every sentence, I had hoped that the authors would have refrained from using phrases such as “no way” and “could it get better than this” in a book such as this. On the positive, this book did discuss models such as the Wildcat and Centurion, two cars rarely mentioned in current literature, and many of the photos were of a high quality. Overall however, “Buick Muscle Cars” was a very disappointing book. The writing quality was poor, the information provided lacked any emotion and the book was written in a time vacuum never telling us why the GNX, GSX and other models came to be. I would recommend that you save your money on this one and hope a more comprehensive book on Buick Muscle Cars comes out soon as Buick rightfully deserves to have its performance history told in an exciting and informative manner (such as David Newhardt’s excellent coverage of Mercury in “Mercury Muscle Cars”, in the Muscle Color History Series).
Rating: 2 / 5