Few cars demand as much adoration or respect as the Buick GNX. Introduced as a parting shot in the ’80’s horsepower wars before the rear-wheel-drive G-body platform disappeared forever, the GNX created a sensation. Now sitting in The Vault of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles is a 290-mile Buick GNX.

Sitting in The Vault with about 299 other cars is this three-digit mile 1987 Buick GNX. (Photo by Chris Vopat)

The 290-mile Buick GNX is just one of two GNXs at the Petersen. The other is owned by General Motors, and is on display in the new Totally Awesome! exhibit, which celebrates the cars of the ’80s and ’90s.

Very little is know about this GNX, but it was last sold in 2017. (Photo by Chris Vopat)

Totally Awesome! explores the intersection of automobiles and popular culture in the last two decades of the 20th century. As much as ever, motor vehicles of this era were powerful symbols of personal expression, social status, and technological advancement. For those who lived it, this was the dawn of the second great era of high-performance muscle cars, an era that continues to this day (see the introduction of the 1,250-horsepower Corvette ZR1X).

The GNX was a high-performance version of the Grand National, a vehicle few in the hobby saw coming until its taillights were ahead of you. It was developed in partnership with McLaren Performance Technologies and ASC, and only 547 were built.

The interior of the 290-mile GNX. (Photo by Chris Vopat)

More importantly, it was a thumb in the eye to the corporate big-wigs at GM who were determined to take its entire lineup of cars to front-wheel-drive (while at the same time driving the company to irrelevancy).

How Quick Was It?

Performance was staggering for its era: Car and Driver achieved a 13.50 at 102 mph, which was quicker than any non-Callaway Twin Turbo Corvette of that era. On a cold day in Michigan, the kind on which Grand Nationals and GNXs thrive, the guys from Popular Mechanics went 13.4 at 104 in Buick’s GNX engineering prototype.

The GNX was officially rated at 276 horsepower and 360 lb-ft of torque, but in the aforementioned stories, horsepower was said to be 300. It was electronically limited from the factory to 124 mph due to its handling and aerodynamic limitations.

The 290-mile GNX was last sold in 2017 and our photographer, Chris Vopat, had little info on it other than it obviously has not been driven very much since the sale. Less is known about the GM-owned GNX. Our man Vopat was not in a position to violate the sanctity of the car in the Totally Awesome exhibit.

The good news is you can buy tickets for both the Totally Awesome exhibit and The Vault (its one of 300 cars in there), so you can see the 290-mile Buick GNX and the GM car in person —and a whole lot more.