05-23-2010, 06:14 PM
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It’s times like this when I begin to feel my age. You see last night I was at a car show and my buddy rolled in with his 1986 Buick Grand National. The car is beyond pristine and draws a crowd wherever he takes it. As we were standing around the car a few teenagers came up to us, looked at the car and then asked what it was. We looked at each other dumbfounded, then looked back at the kid and asked his age… 15 he said, followed by “I was born in 1995?. OH MY GOD!!
[attachment=1459]
I mean I don’t feel old, nor do I think I look old, but God all mighty, how the hell does anyone on this earth not know what a Buick Grand National is? The kid obviously saw that we were perplexed and then just stared at us as if to say, “Ok old man… I said I didn’t know what it was, so educate me”… and that’s exactly what we did. We popped the hood and explained that in the mid-1980’s this was America’s top gun. We talked about the 3.8 Turbo V6 and how still, in it’s current form the car would go out and run 0-60 in about 6 seconds and blitz the quarter mile in a tick under 14 seconds.
[attachment=1460]
The cool part was this kid was really interested in the GN, he commented on the old school piano style gauge cluster, the sofa like seats with no bolstering and then asked why the car only had 16 inch wheels… amazing. Our conversation only lasted about 15 minutes, but then at the end, something wonderful happened. One of the other kids in the group, after listening to us explain what the Grand National was, made a comment to the fact that a new Subaru STi would probably smoke the old Grand National. His friend (the 15 year old we spoke to) then turned and said, “So what?’' Everyone’s got an STi but this thing (the GN) is bad ass…”. I swear at that moment I felt like Yoda talking to Luke in the Empire Strikes Back… then I remembered that it came out 30 years ago. For some reason though I didn’t feel the need to tell him that.
It’s times like this when I begin to feel my age. You see last night I was at a car show and my buddy rolled in with his 1986 Buick Grand National. The car is beyond pristine and draws a crowd wherever he takes it. As we were standing around the car a few teenagers came up to us, looked at the car and then asked what it was. We looked at each other dumbfounded, then looked back at the kid and asked his age… 15 he said, followed by “I was born in 1995?. OH MY GOD!!
[attachment=1459]
I mean I don’t feel old, nor do I think I look old, but God all mighty, how the hell does anyone on this earth not know what a Buick Grand National is? The kid obviously saw that we were perplexed and then just stared at us as if to say, “Ok old man… I said I didn’t know what it was, so educate me”… and that’s exactly what we did. We popped the hood and explained that in the mid-1980’s this was America’s top gun. We talked about the 3.8 Turbo V6 and how still, in it’s current form the car would go out and run 0-60 in about 6 seconds and blitz the quarter mile in a tick under 14 seconds.
[attachment=1460]
The cool part was this kid was really interested in the GN, he commented on the old school piano style gauge cluster, the sofa like seats with no bolstering and then asked why the car only had 16 inch wheels… amazing. Our conversation only lasted about 15 minutes, but then at the end, something wonderful happened. One of the other kids in the group, after listening to us explain what the Grand National was, made a comment to the fact that a new Subaru STi would probably smoke the old Grand National. His friend (the 15 year old we spoke to) then turned and said, “So what?’' Everyone’s got an STi but this thing (the GN) is bad ass…”. I swear at that moment I felt like Yoda talking to Luke in the Empire Strikes Back… then I remembered that it came out 30 years ago. For some reason though I didn’t feel the need to tell him that.