Is a Buick really faster than a Hemi? conspiracy theory...

I know and have read the HotRod article that states a 70 GS Stage 1 spanked a Hemi GTX. I don't really believe this for a few reasons:

1- I'm not a Mopar Man, but I always thought the GTX was a tug-boat. Comparable to the Charger. I think it would be a closer match up if the GTX raced a Riv.

2- Chrysler got alot of flack about using the Hemi for a street motor. Maybe a few big-whigs down at chrysler wanted the Hemi to get beat so the government/insurance companies loosened up on them. afterall, it wouldn't be the fastest motor on the street anymore.

3- I'm sure whoever supplied the test Buick to HotRod made sure the car was running it's best... and then some. It probably more than the average Stage 1 motor.

4- When I here the word Hemi, the first car I think of is the Cuda,
or Charger. Yet, I've never seen an ET for a hemi 'cuda or Charger. I bet these cars would trounce a Stage 1.

5- Factory horsepower ratings- Hemi was an 11.0, 425 horse at 4000 RPM. With dual 500cfm AFBs. I bet it made 425 horse @4000. I bet it made much, much more at 6500. While the Buick made 370 at 5000. Bottomline is the Hemi had more power.

6-Why would they pick a Buick? The LS6 is faster than a Stage 1, by a .25 or so. I fthey wanted to do a corporate head to head test why wouldn't they use the best of the best?

7- The Hemi is generally considered the grand-daddy of all muscle car motors. If a little 'ole Buick beat it, should the 455 be recoginzed as the greatest? A hemi has to be the one motor that is more expensive to build than a Buick. This whole spectrum is quite opposite. The hemi is the recoginized as the best, and the buick hardly gets any attention.

I think Chrysler Gave us a win. they threw the fight. they dropped in the second round. Are us buick people just kidding ourselves? I hate to say, But I think we are. I bet, if there was any way possible, if we could pull 2 bone-stockers, absolute stockers for a re-match the tables would be a bit different. What do you guys think of all this? Joe

 

R U Joking

Are you serious or joking with this thread?

 

Not to mention, are you talking about original magazine times or current times? Bone stock or stock appearing?

I don't think you'll find a single person WILLING to 'let' a GS take the win light!! Especially in the Mopar camp!!!uzzled:

Ask the Stock Appearing guys if they wouldn't mind if Greg Gessler's car wasn't there.:Brow:

I'm with Brian on this one...hopefully you're just messin' with us.:grin:

 

Just goes to show that anything can beat anything on any given day.

Hemis have all the bells and whistles to go fast, sometimes it's just the combination doesn't get it right.Did the Hemi didn't show particularly outstanding in the enginemaster's challenge either?

The original contention of Richard Lasseter was that Buicks could run with Hemis on any given day, which was proven. Nobody said they would unquestionably and repeatedly beat the hemi.

I bet Gessler could build a Hemicar that would beat the snot out of his GS :laugh:

 

stage 1 faster than hemi

436, i was 17 years old when these cars came off the showroom in 1970. a lot of guys back then raced stock cause there were not nearly as many performance parts back then as there is now. i saw bone stock hemis and stage 1s race each other. sometimes the hemi won, sometimes the stage 1 won. a lot depended on the cars state of tune. i would make the statement that a bone stock stage1 back in 1970 would hold its own against a hemi, a 440 6-pack and even an LS-6. to say the hemi gave the buick a win is ridiculous. the day they raced that particular stage 1 simply beat the hemi! and by the way, my gsx is not scared of any LS-6!

 

Guess you had to "be there" like some of us old guys. It's easy for me to understand that a 19 year old couldn't identify with or understand the real world during that era. :laugh:

 

There are BBB's that will beat a Hemi car, and there are Hemis that will beat a BBB... it's really no more complicated than that. I'm not sure why you find it so hard to believe?

By the way, Chrysler and Buick, to my knowledge, had no part in the Buick vs Hemi shootouts.

Are you sure you shouldn't be posting on moparts.com instead?uzzled:

 

Joe, I have magazine article from 1970 that says the LS6 is the most over rated car they had ever tested! The engine only made 375hp Not 450hp they changed the cam,headers,intake and carb and then it made 450hp. When I use to street race my70 GS 455 stage1 the last thing the hemis and the 440s saw was my tail lights and thoses were the guys that would be crying:ball: Oh my fuel pump is gone, Oh just the other day a hemi Omni came in to my shop repairs, now that's a car :laugh: :laugh: Chris

 

the way i see this whole hemi vs stage 1 is this, us buick guys want people to know that in stock form the stage 1 will run with the big boys. sure a stock hemi can beat a stock stage 1, but we want the world to know that the next race the buick could win. take ten stock 70 gs stage 1,s put them up against ten stock hemi cuda,s or gtx,s and some of the stage 1,s will win and some of the hemi,s will win, same with the LS6. this whole thing started because some people didn,t want to give the buicks the respect they deserve.

 

You all know I'm a huge Buick fan. I breathe Buicks and I spread the Buick word of Power wherever I go when I can, in a blue drop top with a bored out 455.
I might get in hot water over this, but I really don't mind...it's the truth as I know it. please correct me if I'm wrong but here goes:

I was born in 1971. I never raced or drove or bought these cars. But I can read.

That GTX was definitely not the fastest Mopar to be sold out of a showroom. 'Cudas and Chargers may have been racer chic, but they were not Mopar's King of the Quarter mile.

In 1963, you could buy a Dodge Polara with a 13.5:1 compression 426 (RB Wedge- didn't y'all know that there were two 426s? One's the 413 bored out), with dual quads and factory tri-Y headers. This car was for general sale, but the sales literature warned that it wasn't meant to be a street car. But you could drive it on the street. This was the Ramcharger equipped Dodge and that engine could be had in anything but a Dart. Let's say you
wanted a Polara...and you got the Ramcharger 426 with all the goodies and 13.5:1 compression. You got stuff like two big Carters, a 4.56:1 rear end and factory headers...
This Polara reputedly ran 12 second quarter mile with the addition of race tires off the showroom floor, at 117 mph. I don't know if I take Muscle Car Reveiw Magazine's word for that, but they were damn fast cars. Mopar had a serious racing arm, and the engine was a race engine. You could get a "de-tuned" RB 426 with "only" 11:1 compression. That ugly duckling Polara would show it's tail lights to a Hemi GTX in no time flat.

The GTX was essentially the refined, more gentlemanly Road Runner. Comparing it to a Riviera is erroneous. It would be closer to the facts to say that the GTX was to the Road Runner a bit like the GSX was to the base model GS.
If I recall correctly, in an artcle called "Three Strippers" Car Craft compared and contrasted either a '70 Road Runner or GTX (I can't recall which, but don't forget that a GTX is a Road Runner at heart) against a '70 Ford Torino GT (one of the baddest looking muscle cars ever built, a '70 Torino GT was the reason I got an old car) and a Chevelle SS. This was when the cars were new. The GTX was not and is not in the Riviera's class, I'm sorry to disagree but I must point that out.

Let's look at Buick and Chrysler in that time frame real quickly. Buick had no real official race effort. Richard Petty drove Superbirds. Buick had no world-famous racers associated with it. Chrylser had the AAR 'Cuda, for starters. AAR stood for "All American Racers", and was Dan (the man) Gurney's professional racing enterprise. In 1967, in F1 competition, Gurney won the Grand Prix of Belgium at Spa-Francorchamps in an AAR Eagle-Weslake (the F1 effort was "Anglo American Racers" but used the same AAR logo). He was the last American driver, racing for his own team, in a car he built, to win a Grand Prix.
If you don't think that's a big deal, he was at worst the second best racing driver on the planet at the time. The best was a small Scot named Jimmy Clark who won at Indy with a Lotus and shocked everyone, and won two F1 Championships, but that's a different story. Anyway, Clark was the undisputed master at the time, and he considered Gurney the only man in the world who was his equal. So! Mopar is associated with King Richard and possibly the match for the best racer in the world. Buick is associated with....who? Who is the world known racing figure Buick is associated with? Louis Chevrolet?

Race results equalled sales. With winners like Gurney and Petty, and advertising that was slick, Mopars sold. Buicks didn't in comparison. Buick stayed out of racing at that level, and Mopar fans got choices of camshafts over .5" lift, factory drag headers, manhole sized valves, semi-hemi heads, and diesel-like compression ratios. From the factory! Where was Buick's 4.56:1 rear end in the catalog?? Chrysler offered it.
Buick came up with the Stage 2 package, and that wasn't even the all-out racing effort that a de-tuned Ramcharger wedge block 426 had backing it up. I'm a Buick fan and owner, but let's be objective.

I am not trying to put anyone down, please beleive me. But this whole Mopar vs. Buick thing is insane. In the world of ultimate 1/4 mile times from the factory during the '60s and '70s, Buick's GS could rival most Mopars on the street or track. But there was an upper echelon of Mopars that were very rare. Much like the Ford Thunderbolt, these cars could and must have snuck onto the street, and legally. A Stage 2 GS could give these ultra-supercars a run for their money, but then again the Stage 2 was ultra rare as well. The fact is that Mopar let race cars get onto the street. Buick didn't. The Stage 2 would not have dominated this 'ultimate' street car class.

It is my firm belief that the Hemi vs Stage 1 rivalry is a legitimate one. each engine had strong points the other didn't accomplish as well. The Hemi was legendary for it's top end, the Stage 1 for it's low end. the engines, however, are only half the story even if you disregard cams, compression, and valves the Stage 1 couldn't hope to match. Mopar simply offered more performance options. Rear ends, exhausts, altered wheelbase cars....Mopar was seriously into racing. How can a powerful street car compete with a real race car?

Most Buicks were handsome cars. Most Mopars were AWFUL looking ugly things. That '63 Polara was ugly like nobody's business. I like a lot of Mopars. the fact of the matter is that their design team was too agressive with styling and that they were ahead of their time. Put together that means ugly cars, to me and a lot of folks. Some Mopars are good looking,most aren't. But good looking doesn't trip timing gear faster than ugly.

Comparing Buick's best factory street legal car and Mopar's best factory street legal car of those times is so out of whack it's not funny. Mopar was in the business of making fast race cars, for Pete's sake! Buick was just trying to sell cars and had no official factory racing program. Mopar was so good at racing that NASCAR officials of the time have since admitted the rules against Chrysler cars had no real rhyme or reason, they were just too fast. In comparison, Buick didn't need to make 500 examples of 'street versions' of race cars- like Chrysler did- to compete in NASCAR. Apples and Oranges. Maybe even Apples and Kiwi fruit.

I'm a Buick guy, but I'm also not into kidding myself. We as a group are just now getting Stage 1 aluminum heads. Does that mean anything to anyone but me? We have great, fast, classy, handsome cars. they can be made to run fast and hard, and we have one of the best muscle car engines ever designed. But to say that Buick's best street legal would beat Mopar's best street legal would be a dicey statement at best. I firmly beleive that to be so. 13.38 at 105 mph loses to 12.0 at 117 mph. 13.38 is pretty damn quick any way you slice it. The Stage 1 driver had better hope that the ramcharger driver double faults, if they both have factory cars.

As for "power"....yes 425 rated is better than 370 rated, but we all know about powerbands, peak hp, torque and torque curves, right? And we all know how car makers lied about power figures, don't we? The LS-6's "450" hp has already been mentioned as an example. So to take the car maker's lies about power as criteria, the LS-6 beats the Hemi? I would say, "no". Again I remind all that I am not on anyone's case or against anybody, but these things are on my mind.

End of rant.
:gt:

 

BUICK FASTER THAN A HEMI

chris, i think your getting off track here. the 1963 mopar your comparing to the stage 1 was not recommended as a street car by the company that built it. it was radio and heater delete with an aluminum front end. it weighed around 3200lbs. of course you cant compare a true street car with a factory racer. when comparing a hemi vs. stage 1 the years that come to mind are 1970-1972 cars.

 

aint scared of no hemi

back in the late 70s i ran my bone stock 100'000 mile plus, 70 stage 1 four speed WITH a/c against everything on the street, heavy chevies, mopars, vettes, porsche, you name it. those guys never even got near me, i not only beat them, i beat em so badly that i would have to STOP and wait for em. i never even had the best tires, just std size michelin radials or some cheap bias ply's. mopar didnt "throw" any races, they just lost fair and square. now wheres that thread about the hemi car that gave up and went home after one pass against RL ? mopar & the hemi got publicity cause of richard petty and aggressive marketing, but they were not the fastest stock production cars. as i recall, the 63 wedge / max wedge cars were not production cars.

i may be aka " the dodge doctor " but i know who's boss.

if you want to beat a hemi, you better drive a stage 1

henry white

70 stage 1 never beat ........ anywhere, ever, at any time

 

1 bad gs has a point about getting off track. Seems the original subject was....

Even though we can all 'believe' as we like, here's something that may make a good read for us.

Stats and stuff

:eek2:

 

this whole thread would be a moot point if Chevy would have stuck one of those 409cu in motors in a 63 corviar. Answer me this .....would you be brave enough to drive it?:grin:

 

stats?

Mickey, When the factory gave out these cars to the magazines for testing these cars were tweeked and not the same stuff you would get off the show room floor. The magazine artical I have from 1970 on the LS6, the car belonged to an employee and its was brand new, this was a real test. My point is there is alot of smoke and mirrors. Chris

 

Re: BUICK FASTER THAN A HEMI

Well, my point is that with the Hemi vs Stage 1, it's seen to be "best vs best". Everyone knows the Hemi mystique...not everyone knows Ford had a semi-hemi, too! (If I'm not mistaken, the Mopar Hemi was really a semi-hemi) To many folks, a Hemi is the end all and be all, and I'm pointing out that not only did Chrysler make cars faster than the '70-'72 cars, one of them wasn't even a Hemi. Now, the '64 Hemi powered Polara was faster still and I didn't even mention that car at all. What I'm getting at is that the Hemi legend overshadows all and fact is getting confused with fiction. So I didn't even want to talk about Hemis, and the enegine I chose was the RB 426 ramcharger, it was simply a matter of convenience, "best vs best", without a Hemi to muck up the works with it's long shadow smudging reality.

I'm also going to an extreme with my examples to show just what a huge difference there was between Chrysler and Buick cars of the time. And while I agree that those Chryslers I mentioned were not meant to be street cars, you could legally drive them on the street. You could also legally drive a GT40, a Pontiac Engineer did. With my choice of cars I naturally have to bring up superlatives to illustrate my point...so I mention Stage 2 and Ramcharger. At least we agree that Chrylsers are the Ivory Soap of muscle cars- 99.9% of them are ugly:grin:

With '70 to '72 cars, the grudge should be "best vs best" as well. The Stage 2 should be up against the all-conquering Hemi, it's the best Buick had to offer. I didn't even bring that up last night because I was sick of thinking:grin: If the Mopars folks think Stage 1 is top of the Buick heap, they have another think coming.:TU: If the 426 hemi is really the best, it should have no trouble beating the Stage 2. Now THAT race is something that I would see the Buick winning much more often than the Stage 1 vs Ramcharger.

 

Hey Chris,

Good job...I hear ya. As an old, worn out Buick factory rep I could share a few stories along that line...none of us will ever know "the rest of the story.:laugh:

 

This is my opinon,The 370 rating was for insuarance reasons But 455 really put out 420 HP and the stage 2 was at 470+....Soo...I think thats the main reason buick didnt get any respect cause of HP ratings BUT.. The torque rating of 510 was plasterd all over the place cause it was the highest of all the muscle cars of that era. Personally i think the buick cauld beat any car at the point in time, in the right conditions

SO THATS MY STORY AND IM STICKING TO IT

 

buick faster than a hemi

chris, i agree the stage 2 would hammer the hemi! but we must look at this objectively, you could not go to a buick dealer in the early 70s and buy a stage 2 off the showroom floor! buick made ONE gsx prototype stage 2 gsx that was either wrecked or burnt to the ground while testing. there have been many hemi vs. stage 1 shootouts and the stage 1 has more than held its own. when you bring the stage 2 into the mix there are too many what ifs and coulda shouldas.

 

All good points guys-

No one will get any flames from me on this one,,, everyone has their own opinions about the "Hemi vs Stage 1" debate... And here's mine:

The Hemi was developed for Mopar's "racing" program, and that's exactly where it dominated. When it was "de-tuned" for the street version, it carried over some of the "faults" that made it so dominant in the race version.....
Too much cylinder head, too much intake, etc. [also, too much weight!]
Mopar released their "street Hemi" to comply with the "general public availability" rule, and when they did, they maximized on the visual impact that the "elephant" could offer... Spacifically the dual 4's.... Infact, the Hemi made more power with the single 4V intake,,, so go figureo No:
That's not to take anything away from the Hemi... It was [and still is] one hell of a motor, and it "could be made to" run on the street by capitalizing on it's "overkill" nature by adding more compression, more cam, more rear gear, etc.

The Buick 455 however was never really developed for, or from a racing program... It was designed to move 6000 lb. luxo barge land yachts, [and move them well it did!]. For Buick, it was a a stroke of luck and timing... GM lifted the "400 CID limit" in '70, so buick droped their "max torque" 455 into an itermediate body, added a few performance goodies, [ram air, free flow exhaust, etc], along with a muscle car paint job, stripes, and badging.... And voila!!! Along came one of the best muscle cars of all time!

Just think, If Cadillac had offered a variant of the Monte Carlo, or other A-body, with their 1970 500cid engine that made 450hp and 550 ft/lbs!!! Add a factory high rise intake, ram air, etc,,, And that engine could have been factory rated at more like 600 ft/lbs!!

Had that happened, Cadillac would have been the absolute, all time, un-disputed king of the muscle car crowd.... But not because of any race program... Simply because, like Buick, they would have been in the right place, at the right time, with the right car/engine combo.

Just my opinionp