Octane Fix Online Issue 09

When I say this is rare, what I’m saying is that over a four-year production time from 68-72, only 664 of these tough-as muscle cars were actually built. GM decided they needed to take on the Hemi’s and win, so they took the stock big block 455 that the other Buicks had, threw the heads away to bolted on new pairs with bigger valves, higher compression, specifically tunned 4-barrel quadrajet carb, then slipped in a more aggressive cam shaft to really slam some stunningly high torque to the tarmac and still have good mid-range horsepower. Like every true Muscle car should, GM slotted a 4-speed gear box in behind and in this case the crunchy Muncie M-22 4-speed box to shift that torque to the positraction axle in the rear. They called these models the “Stage 1”. GM went on to produce the Stage 2 after, which included factory headers etc to