Suddenly, the 1987 Buick GNX is the hottest car on the planet. All it took was rapper Kendrick Lamar featuring one in his Super Bowl halftime show.

Naturally, half the posts were reactions to his standing on the hood (Oh, the humanity!). In reality, the car shown was not a real GNX (it had a sunroof, which was not offered on the GNX.

But whether it was real, a converted Grand National, or Regal in drag, the 1987 Buick GNX is now the hottest automobile on the internet. Anyone who likes cars is having their social media feeds blown up with images featuring Lamar and the black Buick. Even my wife heard about this and she has less interest in cars than almost anyone I’ve ever met.

(According to Martyn Schorr, retired Buick PR guy and the man who literally wrote the book on the GNX for Buick when it was new, Lamar does own a real GNX.). Lamar even named his 2024 album “GNX,” so the Super Bowl timing was no coincidence.

So, the short story is Buick made 547 GNXs in 1987. Horsepower was rated at 276 and torque 360 lbs-ft. (Some early articles said it made 300 horsepower.) There were a bunch of suspension upgrades to make it hook better than a standard GN, including a longitudinal rear ladder bar and 16-inch wheels and tires.

How quick were they? According to Car and Driver, 13.5 at 102. Road & Track reported 13,8 at 104. Motor Trend quoted Buick engineers, who said 13.4 at 104.

This is from an original Buick ad for the GNX in 1987. These knew about what they spoke.

How much power did they really make? Like lots of muscle cars, the older the GNX gets, the more powerful it was.

If you use Car and Driver’s times and 3,545-lb curbweight (minus driver), that’s somewhere around 285-294 horsepower, depending on if you use elapsed time or trap speed to calculate the number.

If you use R&T’s quicker time, that comes out to 291-311. Of course, adding the weight of a driver to the equation, would reduce those numbers, but for 1987, anything close to this was shocking.

Today, those numbers seem quaint. Still, the GNX was the Challenger Demon 170 of its day. Nothing looked tougher or went quicker in a quarter-mile from a domestic automaker.

Thanks to Kendrick Lamar, the GNX is back in the news—and getting quicker and more powerful as you read this—not to mention more valuable.