If GM President Mark Ruess Has His Way, It Will Happen
General Motors President Mark Reuss may have saved a project even more sacred to him than launching world-
class electric vehicles, reinventing Cadillac’s lineup, from the Lyriq to Celestiq, and bringing the Corvette into the 21st century with a mid-engine layout.
Mark Ruess in his long career that has yet one box to be checked but soon might be, a modern day high performance Buick, perhaps even wearing the cherished GNX nameplate.
GM beat reporter John Irwin reported on April 7 news of a trio of cars on the way — a new Cadillac CT5, the next-generation Camaro and an unspecified Buick. They will all be rear-wheel-drive, with all-wheel drive a possibility.
1st Rwd Buick In This Century
Buick has not marketed a RWD car in its North American lineup this century, so there has been no opportunity for Reuss to revive a legendary performance muscle car that has family roots.
After a classic 1980s Grand National appeared in the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, Reuss talked about his family’s history with the car in a GM blog post.
I’ll just use Reuss’ words to describe how the Buick Grand National shaped his career:
“I joined GM in 1986, and my first job was powertrain integration development engineer for Buick. The first winter I was with the company, I rented an apartment in Chandler, Arizona. Our proving grounds were nearby in Mesa. I loved working for Buick then — my dad had been the general manager, and Buick had really great cars with really great engines, including” the Grand National.
Reuss’ father, of course, was Lloyd Reuss, who rose to the position Mark holds today, GM president. But while he was chief engineer at Buick in the early 1970s, Lloyd, who died in 2023, recognized the possibilities by adding a turbocharger to Buick’s trendsetting 3.8-liter (later 3800) V-6.
By 1976, a turbocharged V-6 Buick paced the Indy 500. The next year, Buick’s 3.8-liter turbocharged V-6 went on sale, delivering V-8 performance with V-6 fuel economy.
A decade later, Mark Reuss was tweaking the vehicle that would become a legendary car not only in Buick history, but in automotive history — the 1987 Buick GNX.
“In Arizona, we had a Grand National we were using as a surrogate for the GNX, which was under development, with the right tires and other mods,” Reuss said. ”Now, this was not my official job, but … one of our electronic techs at Mesa was a good friend named [James] ‘Gabe’ Poplawski, a long-haired, Harley-ridin’ dude – this was a different time in my life when I was single and rode a Harley.
“My dad was gone from Buick by the time the GNX went to production, but if he hadn’t previously given the green light to the Grand National, there would have been no GNX.” In collaboration with ASC, Buick built 547 1987 GNXs. Horsepower from the highly tuned 3.8-liter (231-cubic-inch) turbo V-6 was 300.
The GNX, based on the Regal, was the fastest American car of its era. The only regular production, non-exotic car that could outrun it was the Porsche 911 Turbo, and only by a tenth of a second. And you got a Buick GNX — if a dealer would sell you one at sticker price — for just $27,000.
Today, clean, low-mileage GNXs sell for more than $200,000 — making the car one of the most valuable Buicks ever built.
A Great Way To Close A Career
Gabe had a saying about the Grand Nationals: “Fast with class “Reuss said. “And I think that’s why Grand National, and especially GNX, resonated with customers back then, and why it still does today as strongly as ever — because it’s so fast. It would beat Corvettes, Ferraris, all the exotics — it was the fastest car on the road in America.”
Clearly, after 40 years, Reuss, 62, has more in his rearview mirror careerwise than what’s on the road ahead. He has not made any public comments about retiring, and there’s no reason to think that’s imminent. But the Cadillac and Chevrolet cars are expected to be the first of the trio to launch next year.
If the new Buick appears in 2028 or 2029 and spawns a new Grand National and/or a GNX, it would be the perfect coda to Reuss’ stellar career, one in which he not only honored his father’s legacy of pushing the boundaries of engineering — Lloyd was instrumental in the creation of the GM EV1 electric car — but that also created a dossier thick with world-class vehicles.
Just what does that original Grand National mean to Reuss? In his office at GM headquarters is the well-worn driver’s seat from the very Grand National he flogged at the Arizona test track.
Source: Automotive News