1981 Buick Regal Sport Coupe (turbo): Indy pace car, sinking production

The 1981 Regal received new, more aerodynamic sheet metal, a change this record's own overview presents as the year's headline styling story ahead of any mechanical update to the turbo drivetrain itself. A V-6 Regal paced the Indianapolis 500 that year, putting the model in front of a national racing audience beyond its usual showroom presence. In NASCAR, Buick won the manufacturers' championship with 22 of 31 victories, while Darrell Waltrip won the driver's title in a Buick, a season this record's own overview describes without stating whether Buick's turbo Regal itself, as distinct from other Buick models racing that year, was the specific car campaigned in those victories.¹

Turbo Sport Coupe production fell to 2,891 for 1981. Mid-year, Buick released RPO Y47, a performance package combining dual exhaust, a higher-stall torque converter, and a 3.08 axle, credited with 5 additional horsepower over the standard turbo car. Separately, 150 numbered Regal Indy Pace Car replicas were sold to the public, finished by an outside firm, Cars and Concepts; this record's own production note is explicit that the actual pace cars themselves used a modified naturally aspirated 4.1 V-6 rated at 281 hp, not the turbocharged 3.8 that powered the production Sport Coupe, so the replica and pace-car figures describe two mechanically different cars sharing only their appearance, and the 150-unit replica figure should not be read as a turbo-specific production count. Series-context figures place all 1981 Regal production at 240,200, with 123,848 of that made up of the base Regal and Regal Sport Coupe combined, a figure this record's own production note states includes the 2,891 turbo cars recorded separately, and the remaining 116,352 made up of the Regal Limited.^2,1,3

Prices are given for three 1981 Regal coupe variants: $8,530 for the turbo V-6 Sport Coupe, $8,025 for the Regal Limited, and $7,550 for the base Regal, though this record's own price note flags that the same source's separate price range for the base coupe instead starts at $7,555 rather than the $7,550 given in its price sentence, a five-dollar internal inconsistency within that single source that this record does not attempt to resolve. The turbo four-barrel engine is rated 170 hp at 4,000 rpm; its torque figure is disputed between 275 lb-ft and 265 lb-ft, both attached to 2,400 rpm, a 10 lb-ft gap this record's own conflict entry leaves unresolved by carrying the torque field blank rather than choosing between the two, showing both figures side by side instead.^3,1,2

No transmission listing beyond the automatic already implied by the Sport Coupe's own production scope, no paint colors, no interior trims, no specifications, and no identification details were found in an accessible documented source for the 1981 turbo Regal. An unpublished lead notes that a June 1981 Car and Driver comparison test, "Regal versus Supra," is cited by one of this record's sources as containing performance-test data for a 1981 turbo Regal, but that test itself has not been read, so no figures from it are carried in this record; this record also carries no performance-test data of its own for the year from any source that has actually been read.¹