1965 Buick Skylark Gran Sport: The 401 That Buick Called a 400

Car Life's May 1965 issue put three General Motors intermediates through its tests one after another. The Oldsmobile Cutlass 4-4-2 ran on pages 28 to 31, the Buick Skylark Gran Sport on pages 32 to 35, and the Pontiac GTO on pages 42 to 45. A year earlier only Pontiac had been in this business. By spring 1965, three divisions were selling big-engine performance packages on the same A-body, and Buick had brought the biggest engine of the three: 401 cubic inches against Oldsmobile's 400 and Pontiac's 389.^1,2,3

The rules had just moved. Ate Up With Motor's GTO history records that after the 1964 GTO broke the corporate displacement limit for intermediate A-bodies, Pontiac general manager Pete Estes was, in that history's phrase, slapped on the wrist, and the limit was hastily raised to 400 cubic inches. Buick's largest engine that fit was its 401-cubic-inch V8. Wikipedia's account of the Gran Sport records the result: Buick called the 401 a 400, because that was the largest engine General Motors allowed in its intermediate cars. Over-Drive's fact sheet dates the Gran Sport option's appearance to January 1965. The badge number, in other words, was chosen with the rulebook in view.^4,5,6

The engine was a known quantity. The 401, which Buick called the Wildcat 445 for its torque, had been the standard engine of the 1963 Riviera, and in the Gran Sport it kept its ratings: 325 gross horsepower at 4,400 rpm and 445 lb-ft at 2,800 rpm on 10.25:1 compression, with a bore and stroke of 4.1875 by 3.64 inches. Car Life described the package around it as the 401 with an all-synchromesh three-speed, a stronger chassis and rear axle, revised springs and shocks, oversize tires on six-inch rims and special trim. Car Life priced that package at $200.53; Over-Drive's fact sheet gives $236, and neither states its date or basis beyond that.^2,6,7

Buick put its engineering emphasis where a heavy engine needed it. Old Cars Weekly's history says all three body styles, the pillared coupe, the hardtop and the convertible, used a beefed-up convertible-type frame to resist torque flexing, along with heavy-duty shocks and springs, a stiffer anti-roll bar, heavy-duty upper control arm bushings, dual exhausts and 7.75 by 14 tires. Over-Drive adds nameplates on the grille and rear roof pillar and a heavy-duty cross-flow radiator. Buick's own advertising, as Old Cars Weekly quotes it, called the car 'a howitzer with windshield wipers,' an unusually blunt line from a division that usually sold refinement.^8,6

Buyers chose their gearbox and gearing from a short list. A three-speed manual was standard; Over-Drive lists a four-speed at $199 and the two-speed Super Turbine 300 automatic at $231, with standard axles of 3.23 behind the manuals and 3.08 behind the automatic. Old Cars Weekly gives the available ratios as 2.78 to 3.73. Car Life's test car was an automatic with a switch-pitch converter and air conditioning, listed at $2,751 and priced at $3,829 as tested, and it weighed 3,700 pounds at the curb and 4,030 pounds as tested. That was a Gran Sport ordered as a comfortable car.^6,8,2

Even so equipped, it was quick. Car Life's automatic Gran Sport reached 60 mph in 7.4 seconds, ran the quarter mile in 15.3 seconds at 88 mph and reached 121 mph. Motor Trend's test, as Old Cars Weekly summarizes it, recorded 7.8 seconds to 60, a 16.6-second quarter mile at 86 mph and 116 mph from a 3,720-pound car. The two magazines tested different cars under different conditions, and neither set of numbers belongs to the other. Together they place the Buick in the same company as its corporate cousins.^2,8

The May 1965 Car Life issue makes that comparison possible on the same pages. Its 4-4-2, a Cutlass Holiday hardtop with the 345-horsepower 400 and an automatic, listed at $2,784 and ran 7.8 seconds to 60 and a 15.5-second quarter mile at 89 mph. The magazine's data-panel GTO, a Tri-Power four-speed with a 4.11 axle, ran 5.8 seconds to 60 and 14.5 seconds in the quarter. The Buick was the heaviest of the automatics, the cheapest by list price of the two tested automatics, and two-tenths of a second quicker in the quarter mile than the Oldsmobile. The manual GTO with its 4.11 gears was in another bracket.^1,3,2

Over-Drive's compiled production table counts 15,780 Skylark Gran Sports for 1965: 11,351 sports coupes, or hardtops, 2,282 pillared coupes and 2,147 convertibles. The hardtop took about 72 percent. The Gran Sport had no separate series number and was counted inside the Skylark V8 totals, so it was about 17 percent of the 91,270 Skylark V8s and under 8 percent of the 205,437 Buick Specials and Skylarks built that year. Put another way, roughly one Skylark V8 buyer in six took the package. Wikipedia's round figure, more than 15,000, agrees. The underlying Buick record is not named by either, and the count remains a reported figure from one lineage.^9,6,5

Among its rivals, Buick finished a respectable third. The Standard Catalog figures reproduced by MuscleCarClub.com count 75,352 GTOs for 1965, nearly five for every Gran Sport. Over-Drive's Oldsmobile table counts 25,003 4-4-2s, so Buick built about 63 Gran Sports for every 100 of Oldsmobile's cars. Chevrolet's 396-powered Z16 Chevelle, built late in the year, reached only 201 cars by ChevelleStuff's count from Chevrolet reports. Buick's own Riviera Gran Sport, the other car to wear the name that year, came to 3,354 by the Riviera Owners Association's figures, so Buick sold roughly 19,000 Gran Sports of both kinds in the name's first season.^10,11,12,13

The first Gran Sport was the start of a line. Wikipedia says Buick sold almost as many the following year, and the Gran Sport idea went on to the GS 400 and the GSX. In 1965 it was, by the numbers, a modest success built on a clever label: a 401 that Buick called a 400 to stay within a rule rewritten after Pontiac broke it, a convertible frame under every body, and a list price that undercut the Oldsmobile in Car Life's side-by-side issue.^5,4,8,2,1