Buick Regal Grand National vs Chevy Monte Carlo SS vs Olds 442

From the July 1985 issue of Car and Driver.

You can’t take life too seriously when you’re looking at it from the inside of a Monte Carlo SS, a Buick Regal Grand National, or—to a lesser extent—an Olds 442. These cars are for taking big numbers. friends and copious amounts of beer to the beach. Nobody worries about Central America or school prayer when he’s driving down the highway in a car that’s the rolling embodiment of everything the Beach Boys sang about in the Sixties.

Television and the weekly news magazines would have us believe that every young person in America in the sixties and early seventies was at the barricades, throwing tear gas canisters back at the police and praying that the old VW bus could get across the border. Canada. The truth is that the vast majority of children never even saw a barricade or got a whiff of tear gas. Hordes of America’s flaming youth drank beer, raised hell, drove around in cars, not unlike the three we have here today, waiting to see if they were going to be drafted to Vietnam.

Nostalgia is what these three vehicles are all about. When you’ve driven any of the three for more than about five minutes, you start to wish you’d brought all your Frankie Valli/Del Shannon/Jan and Dean/Lovin’ Spoonful cassettes with you—not to mention everything. ever produced by Phil Spector or recorded by the aforementioned Beach Boys. With “My Little Runaway” blaring from the speakers, you don’t really worry about the fact that these cars have been left in the dust by modern automotive technology. You don’t even care too much if some adolescent in an Omni GLH Turbo does the same thing.

We’ve long admired the looks of the Buick Grand National and the Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS, and we were finally moved to bring GM’s three more-or-less muscle cars together for a test over the rather pleasant weeks we spent driving a Old 442 through the snow drifts and demolition of a nasty Michigan winter. It’s possible—to some extent—to predict the good, the bad, and the ugly high-speed dynamic characteristics of a car based on its behavior at lower speeds on snow and ice, and the 442 behaved admirably when on the local low is tossed around. -coefficient surfaces. So, as the weather started to clear and spring made an appearance, all three of us lined up for a nostalgic run through what’s left of Muscle Car Land.

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1985 Buick Regal Grand National

The Buick is by far the meanest. It’s also the fastest, because it carries slightly less weight, and because its turbocharged V-6 engine makes 20 more horsepower than either the Olds or the Chevy (200 to their 180). The Buick certainly makes the biggest impression on the mob. It truly carries the same sense of menace as an attack helicopter, and its exhaust note has a sweet, moaning rap that’s guaranteed to raise a young man’s pulse by about fifteen points.

The Chevy looks more like a NASCAR container, and of course that was the idea. As clumsy as a standard Monte Carlo looks, it’s nonetheless one of NASCAR’s most successful racing forms, and Chevrolet’s stylists didn’t have to do much to capture the character of the race cars in the SS. Everything about the Chevy skews toward that perception, except the interior. The paint-and-sticker scheme, the wheels and tires, the suspension adjustments, the front and rear aero aids, and a burbling V-8 rumble all combine to enhance the Darlington 500 effect.

The Olds does not seem to have its heart in this competition. Aside from its wheels and tires and a handful of 442 decals, it could be any other Cutlass two-door sedan. Likewise, the interior is all Cutlass, so the car appears to be less of a theme car or character car than a regular Cutlass with some worthwhile performance options. In fact, we’d be delighted to see all the old front-engine, rear-drive Cutlasses come out of the factory equipped like our 442. . . Then the Oldsmobile division could devote itself to creating a 442 performance and personality package that would really make a statement.

The Chevrolet, the Buick, and the Olds all share a common body, as well as an automatic transmission, front and rear suspension, brakes, tires, and front seat frames. Each division could fiddle with spring and shock rates, anti-roll bars, bushings and steering ratios, and to install its own engine and torque converter calibrations. (None of the three offer a manual transmission, worse luck.) When you drive all three back-to-back, the extent to which their respective divisions have been able to differentiate them from each other is surprising. All three driver’s seats feel the same, which is to say substandard, and all control ratios are more or less identical, but after that the three cars start to separate.

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1985 Oldsmobile 442

As we said, the Oldsmobile is the least imposing of the three. It’s powered by a five-liter version of the old Olds 350 V-8, and the emphasis is on low- and mid-range torque. The cast-iron engine is dressed with the same Rochester four-barrel carburetor found on the Chevy, and the power flows through the same four-speed automatic transmission, but that’s where the similarity ends. The factory specifies tire pressures of 35 psi all around, and that made the 442 a little hard and stiff. Still, the overall feel in the 442 was one of softness and unmuffled wheel movement. So we were a little surprised to find that the Olds was quite happy when driven quickly on our test roads—Southern California’s Mulholland Drive and Angeles Crest Highway—even when the pavement was rough and the shoulders crumbled. Much like the true muscle cars of days gone by, with their limp suspension and vague steering, one simply tossed the 442 into the corner, allowed the suspension to compress all the way, and then cruised around on the rubber bump stops. Worked well, despite all sorts of early warnings of impending disaster.

The Buick was another matter entirely. The Buick, based on its exterior and its great V-6 engine, promised everything, but was really unfortunate when the road got rough and twisty at the same time. The shock absorbers just seemed to give up. And since the engine’s performance has been superior to that of the other two so far, it only took a tiny bit of throttle to get yourself well and truly into the next turn. After about three such corners, filled with storm and stress and flying elbows, we learned to modulate the pressure on the hard pedal.

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1985 Buick Regal Grand National

Buick’s 3.8-liter turbo V-6 is a great engine looking for a great car. Its performance is so good that it cries out for a more stable platform than the one offered by the Grand National. Let our technical editor describe it in more detail:

“Although it has only three-quarters the displacement and uses the same pushrod valve gear of its competitors’ V-8 engines, the Buick car easily outperforms them both. The source of its power is a computer-controlled AiResearch T3 turbocharger, which allowed up to generating 15 psi of boost under favorable conditions The proper amount of fuel to match the blown engine’s deep breathing is determined by the same computer, using a mass air flow sensor and various temperature and pressure sensors Each cylinder’s dose of fuel is then very accurately measured by sequentially firing electronic injectors. The computer also determines the optimal spark timing and ignites each cylinder’s charge with a high-precision, distributorless ignition system. The result of this exotic technology is a nice, round 200 horsepower and 300 pound-feet of torque.”

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1985 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS

The Monte Carlo’s L69 engine is an American classic: a 305-cubic-inch version of the 30-year-old Chevy small-block V-8. Think of it as either the carbureted Z28 engine or a plain old Chevy V-8 with a 9.5 compression ratio and a Corvette camshaft. Either way, it makes a very pleasant 180 horsepower. Not as spectacular as the Buick’s turbo V-6, but more than enough for styling and profiling, it moves the Monte Carlo along at a pace that would have been unthinkable five years ago.

These cars are true enthusiasts’ vehicles, because they really don’t make a lot of sense. They are performance cars that don’t really go that fast; flash cars with the look and the smell and the roar of race cars, but the soul of mom-and-pop sedans. But it’s amazing how much fun they are. And that’s the whole point. People stare at them. They look great. The Buick is about perfect as car graphics go, but the Olds and the Monte Carlo have their own songs to sing.

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1985 Oldsmobile 442

Each of the three deserves a better interior. The seats just don’t get it, but our guess is that the target customers for the Olds and the Chevy don’t worry too much about seats and ergonomics—they’re for Porsche people and other posers. However, the Buick is different. First, it’s a little more expensive, and it’s so black, so sleek, that one really should pull open the door and be amazed by a beautiful high-tech interior, including an updated package of analog instruments.

The Monte Carlo SS was our overall favorite, with the Buick a very close second. The Monte Carlo doesn’t drive as fast or look as mean as the Buick Grand National, but the Monte Carlo offers its driver a nicely balanced portfolio of acceleration, braking and handling, and NASCAR style. It’s clear Chevrolet put a lot of thought into this car, because it delivers. The decals and special finish mask no disappointments. The car is what it says it is, and does what it looks like it should do. It rolls down the highway just like a grown-up car, but handles the swings and bumps of the Angeles Crest and Mulholland Drive like a great big sports car. It should be sensational to deliver the beer and friends to the beach for this weekend’s volleyball tournament.