With the recent find of 1970 GSX #477 I got to thinking about how does a guy find these rare cars since all records for 1970 and 71 are so missing or fouled-up, so I deduced simply by word of mouth when a car goes up for sale, and legendary existence, obviously not by documentation research, which then led me to my Question for this thread, Where are the 1972 GSX's? How many are still known? Hey, there are records for 1972, and there were only 44 made, so we should know exactly what Zone and maybe even Dealer they went to? Also what would the Trim Tag say to denote a GSX since color isn't the clue as in 1970 with the Q-Q? And 1 more question came to mind as with the Q-Q paint code for those 1970 GSX in Saturn Yellow, what was the Apollo White paint code?
Mark has some awesome details about GSXs. http://www.buickgsx.com/ http://www.buickgsx.com/1972 GSX Original Information.pdf Troy
Apollo white was 10. So a white GSX should read 10-10 (white upper and lower). But code 10 wasn't exclusive to GSX's. A white Skylark or GS that white with no vinyl top will also have a 10-10 paint code which was Glacier white. Someone refresh my memory, but weren't all 44 GSX exported to Canada? Therefore they should all have GM of Canada docs? How many are still out there after 46 years that didn't get junked, trashed, raced to death, wrecked, parted out in the 70's, or rotted to death? Who knows. I bet its a handful. Im sure there more GSX's that are still in hiding.
Don't forget there could be a 10-B as well.Vinyl tops were available on 71 and 72 cars. And..Any or all GSX pieces could be ordered on a 72 unlike the 70 models. I know a friend who tells me there is a white 72 GSX in Maryland..
I see the breakdown by exterior color and top; is there a way to correlate that with the interior colors, and maybe the engines? I remember a poster idea a while back with all the color combos but don’t remember if that was ‘71 or ‘72. It’d be cool to see it again, and for both years if it has or can be done. Patrick
Thanks Troy for that info, I didn't know that was around. So anyway, how can a Trim Tag ID a GSX? And does the SLoan Museum know where they were all sold like with all the other GS's?
Yes, but correct me if I am wrong, without a vehicle's identifying number, you are left with searching all the Sloan records in bulk - a real 'needle-ion-a-haystack' proposition. I assume Sloan can look up a particular vehicle by either VIN or body number ... possibly? Regardless, the VIN for certain .... which means you need the VIN to pull Sloans records (for authentication). As for where these cars maybe today or were last known to be on the "grid", you'd need the VIN for sure and have to either search one end or the other of the "chain of title" (I.e., a Prior Owner or the last Owner ... similar to a real estate title search) .... or you could possibly use a states'/provinces' DOT/DMV info to locate the last known Owner. That is about the only type of database which would be comprehensive enough and reach back in time far enough to have any chance of being remotely successful 50 years after production.
There are currently seven 1972 GSXs in the registry. As for looking for information from Sloan I did exactly what you indicated. I did not have VIN numbers so I had to go through the microfilm looking for them. The microfilm has the sales codes of all the options and GSX was a 45, 4T or 4U. So you have to follow the 4 column and scroll through all the cars built at the flint plant (several hundred thousand) one at at time. It was microfilm and they had small hand controlled reader that showed up in black and green like a monochromatic screen. It took me roughly 40 hours to scroll through information. I took a week of work and sat there all day for a week looking. It was tedious to say the least. I had to record the information by hand. On another trip to Sloan I help them get the microfilm converted to a digital format so they could do the research on a computer using PDFs. each page from the microfilm was turned into a page in a PDF. The data is supper tight and faded in some places so we could not run OCR on it. It is basically images. I think it was over 12,000 pages on the two microfilms that had to be processed once it was converted. That is where all the data I got came from. I could probably do a breakdown by color and interiors but as you can see from the data there were a lot of unique color combinations and so just about every car was a one-off. There is a poster done by a friend of mine. It was posted on the board 2-3 years ago. I thought it was really cool. Mark
Awesome info Mark.....I would love to see pictures of those 7 known but I can't see the pictures on the registry.
I double checked because it has been awhile and there are actually 10 GSX in the registry. I do not have pictures of all of them only what people have sent me or I have gathered when cars came up for sale like the Sunburst Yellow car on ebay a couple years ago.
There's 2 '72 GSXs in our province a silver one and a gold one, both belong to the original owner/family.
I bought an ol' beat up 72 GSX St. 1 from a lady in Crestview FL, which has been my project toy for the longest time now. It's painted over, but it looks like the underlying color was a metallic blue of some sorts. It still resides here in Florida with me.
