A Buick Grand National Like Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Car Was Once Sold For $550,000
Kendrick Lamar is a car guy with a penchant for a specific car. Lamar’s latest album GNX is named after a rare 1987 Buick that he owns.
If you’re not familiar with it, the GNX was a special version of the Buick Regal Grand National built through a collaboration with ASC/McLaren. It featured a 3.8-liter turbocharged V6 that was officially rated at 276 hp and 360 lb-ft, but was understood to be significantly more powerful than that.
Just 547 GNXs were sold and they remain highly sought-after collectables, with auction prices often exceeding $250,000. Lamar recently purchased the car featured on the cover of his album, which he said was a tribute to regular Buick Regal his father owned when he was born.
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“My pops put me on to rap,” Lamar told Complex in 2012. “When I was born, I came home from the hospital in an ’87 Buick Regal while my pops was bumping Big Daddy Kane.”
Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance opened with him standing on the roof of what appeared to be a GNX as the driver’s door and trunk opened to let out several dozen dancers.
A behind the scenes story about the show’s production in Wired suggested that an actual GNX had been purchased and gutted to create the effect, but follow-up reporting by automotive journalist Bozi Tartarevic discovered that it was actually a standard Grand National that had been modified to look like a GNX. Obi Wan Kenobi would’ve felt the collective sigh of relief coming from the world of car enthusiasts.
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Buick sold more than 20,000 Grand Nationals in 1987, so it’s not nearly as rare as the GNX. Nevertheless, cars in good shape can be worth quite a bit. As this story was being written, an example with 6,000 miles on the odometer was sold on the Bring A Trailer auction website for $73,000, while Hagerty puts the value of a typical concours-quality car at $89,000. However, that’s far from the all-time record price paid for one.
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The very last Grand National built in 1987 as the model was being discontinued crossed the block at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale, Ariz., auction in 2022 looking almost as fresh as the day it rolled off of the assembly line. The black coupe had just 33 miles on the odometer and arrived with all of the protective plastic interior coverings that it was shipped with.
Several members of the factory team placed their signatures on the engine, which is also signed by Lloyd Reuss, the Buick executive who spearheaded the Grand National program and later became President of General Motors, and his son Mark Reuss, who is GM president today. A celebratory cardboard sign from the factory that said “built by the best good luck” was included with the lot.
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The car sold in Scottsdale for a whopping $550,000, which beat the $308,000 record price paid for a GNX at the same auction for a 568-mile car. As for the final GNX that was built, car No. 547 last traded hands at the 2017 Mecum Auctions event Kissimmee, Fla., where it sold for $220,000 with 68 miles on it, which now looks like a steal.
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