2004 Buick Lesabre Custom Sedan 4-door 3.8l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

1987 Buick Grand National was made to be Kevin Hart's 'Dark Knight'

The Meguiar's booth at the SEMA show isn't the only place comedian and actor Kevin Hart is combining cars and cinema, his "Michael Myers" 1969 Plymouth Road Runner brooding in the car care products pen, while his SpeedKore "Hellraiser" 1970 Dodge Charger also menaces. Hart bought a 1987 Buick GNX last year and put it on Instagram with the caption, "Sundays are perfect for old school drives…. If you know you know." Looks like old G-Bodies are perfect for restomod builds, too, which we all already knew, but this car isn't the GNX that featured on social media. This is the 1987 Buick Grand National, one step below the GNX and half the price at the time. It's nicknamed "Dark Knight" and it's one of the stars of the Magnaflow exhaust booth at SEMA. Going back to work with regular collaborators Dave Salvaggio of Salvaggio Design and Sean Smith, of course there's a lot involved in the overhaul. Still, we appreciate how the team stayed true to the ethos of the Grand National in ways that made the build more complicated than it already was. Take the engine. The original came with a 3.8-liter V6 wearing a single turbocharger to register an official output of 245 horsepower and 355 pound-feet of torque compared to the GNX's 276 hp and 320 lb-ft. Instead of swapping it for a V8, it's been replaced with the 3.6-liter twin-turbo V6 from the Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing. And instead of leaving both turbos on, the engine junkies plumbed a single turbo in a layout recalling the 1987 engine even as it cleans up the original Chutes 'n' Ladders mess of tubes. We didn't get an output rating for the setup. The Cadillac's twin-turbo mill makes 472 hp and 445 lb-ft. in the CT4-V Blackwing. We would bet Dark Knight's engine's pretty close to that with the single large turbo at the prow, plenty of juice for a car weighing 3,545 pounds. Exterior upgrades include a custom front fascia with a carbon fiber hood and splitter. The interior shows the same tasteful restraint, polished design and nicer materials draped over the stock 1980s layout. That shifter controls GM's 8L90 eight-speed automatic instead of the original four-speed auto.  Elsewhere, Salvaggio did the same here as with the Michael Myers Road Runner, creating a custom frame to increase rigidity and get the car closer to the ground on its 19-inch HRE wheels in the Buick's original weave look.

GM recalls 51k Enclave, Traverse, Acadia crossovers over fuel gauge inaccuracy

With all eyes fixed on General Motors in the wake of the ignition recall debacle, the auto giant has been carefully calling in a wide array of vehicles to fix anything and everything that could prove problematic. Just the other day it issued two separate recalls - one concerning the Cadillac SRX and another its heavy-duty pickups - and now it is issuing another.
This time the vehicles in question are the Buick Enclave, Chevy Traverse and GMC Acadia, three fullsize crossovers based on GM's Lambda platform. In an estimated 51,640 units manufactured between March 26 and August 15, 2013, the engine control module has been found to incorrectly display the level of fuel in the tank.
As a result, owners are being notified to bring their vehicles in to their local dealers to have the ECU reflashed to fix the problem. View the full details in the announcement below from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

2017 Buick LaCrosse priced at $32,990

Buick has announced the starting price for its totally redesigned LaCrosse sedan, and it's looking competitive. According to the company's consumer website, the base trim will start at $32,990, while the vehicle featured on the page is helpfully listed as "As Shown: $45,560." Buick is being coy about the standard equipment list, but we do know a few traditionally higher-end options will be free of charge, including an eight-inch touchscreen that's compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and HID headlamps. General Motors' 4G LTE wifi is a no-cost feature (although you'll need to shell out for a data plan, eventually). The optional extras list, which will include goodies like adaptive cruise control, hasn't been published yet. Underhood, all LaCrosse models will get eight-speed automatic transmissions paired with 305-horsepower, 3.6-liter V6 engines. The new powertrain, plucked from the Cadillac XT5, has stop-start and cylinder deactivation as standard to save fuel, although it's still too early to predict where the LaCrosse will fall on the EPA scale. Front-wheel drive is standard, but all-wheel drive will be available for a unknown premium. Buick says the sedan's reasonable starting price backs the company's "position of attainable luxury." And that's true. At $32,990 the LaCrosse is $560 less than the $33,550 base Toyota Avalon, $355 less than the $33,345 Nissan Maxima S, and $850 less than the $33,840 Kia Cadenza. Only the antiquated Ford Taurus, at $27,985, can undercut it. On the opposite end, the LaCrosse is $6,945 less than a front-drive Lincoln MKS and $6,060 less than a Lexus ES. Starting prices are useful tools for comparison but they only go so far – we'll have to wait until next month, when full details are released, to see how truly reasonable the LaCrosse's price is.