With our recent eBay Find, an original Stage I GSX with a 455 and 4-speed, our publication has begun what could possibly be an ongoing festival of everything Buick muscle. That GSX in particular was one of the rarest specimens of Buick grunt that we’d stumbled across in a while, but if that wasn’t enough news to tickle our GM, luxury-muscle fancy, the General really got us going with recent news of the “Vstar,” twin-turbo V6.

We’re all here with the understanding, of course, that the Vstar nameplate is actually one that belongs to Caddy and not Buick, but for some reason, the incorporation of General’s first ever twin-turbo motor just seems to coincide with rumors of a new Grand National and GNX manifesting. For these reasons, everything that was good about GM performance during the Hairspray Decade seems to be coming back in a brutal way from the automotive “grave.”

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The G-body fleet wasn't the only lineup from Buick to be offered with the automaker's 'T-Type' package, and in fact Buick even extended the nameplate to such makes as the LeSabre and Riviera.

By “Hairspray Decade,” we’re just assuming that you’ve already figured-out which we are speaking of. Just in case you don’t get it, however, all you really have to do is think of two cultural icons: Pac Man and Grand Nationals. If you would say that these are two icons that smack of the ’80s, then you would be absolutely correct!

What is probably taken for granted, however, is that the use of the letter “X” was not the only race-inspired designation to come from the walls of GM’s “family car” manufacturer, and in fact Buick’s “T-Type” specialty series was one that dates itself back to the mid-1970s, during a time when the manufacturer was trying with blazing fury to establish a more youthful and exciting image.

The “T-Type” code was not one that the automaker made exclusively for the Regal fleet, but it was one that extended Buick’s new high-performance image to other pseudo-luxury makes, such as the Riviera and LeSabre. But what made Buick’s T-Type program unique in the ’80s was that it was one that marketed itself by using the word, “turbo,” instead on relying on the performance of the cars themselves.

Because Buick’s “T-Type” fleet was relying so heavily on the “turbo” notion in order to sell, while transforming the company’s long-lived image of formal to one of sporty, the program in itself was one that seemed to be rather ambitious from a business standpoint. Though “ambitious” as it was, it did establish a turbo performance market for Buick, and at the time, the automaker was responsible for the production of half of America’s turbo cars, standing by themselves to boot.

Buick then became America’s–and no doubt the General’s–turbo performance innovator, but it wasn’t without the help of former Buick head manager and Chevy chief engineer, Lloyd Reuss, that the T-Type program became a nationwide success. That’s because starting in February of 1981, Reuss urged Buick to use their new performance program to enforce a more muscular aura for the automaker.

That series of meetings would result in the T-Type lineup for 1983, seen in our featured promo video from the sales year in at least a few different forms. But whether a T-Type LeSabre is your Buick tuner classic of choice, or you prefer to go for the “big gun” with the G-body Regal, one thing that can definitely be said is that Buick would have never been able to morph in the ’80s from “boring” to “bad-ass,” were it not for the incorporation of the company’s turbo 3.8 V-6, and the “T-Type” program that made the whole thing happen!