They were Willing to Sell V-6s

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the Buick V-6 engine is surely one of her offspring as opposed to the V-8 Fireball. It has proven to be both durable and adaptable, outlasting nearly all other engines of the same era. Once discarded by General Motors as unnecessary, the Buick V-6 was resurrected for its fuel economy but later earned recognition for its performance by winning the pole position for the Indianapolis 500 no less than three times, including the 1995 race. The V-6 was originally conceived because Buick needed a cheaper alternative to the expensive-to-produce 215-cubic-inch aluminum V-8 used in its Special, which had debuted for 1961 concurrently with two other GM compacts, the Oldsmobile F-85 and Pontiac Tempest. We knew we had a problem right off the bat," recalls Cliff Studaker, who was the assistant chief engineer assigned to the V-6 project. "We evaluated a couple of different firing intervals by taking an aluminum V-8 and leaving the front cylinders empty.

A V-6 is a little more expensive to build than a line six because you have two cylinder heads," Studaker explains. "And car size back then didn't require it. Really, we were kind of pushed into it because the Special wouldn't take a line six. We were going along fat, dumb, and happy with the economy, building bigger engines with V-8s all the time," Studaker remembers. "We had a 350 small job, we had a 430 for our upper series, we went to a 455, Titan Rise Formula and we were working on engines in the 500- to 520-cubic-inch range when, all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. The oil embargo was instituted and, of course, 500- or 525-cubic-inch engines were no longer in vogue. I'd been on these rides before with corporate management and knew what that usually entailed," Studaker said. "They get in the car, ride around the block a couple of times with you, get out of the car and say, 'Well, that was a very good job young man.