There is something almost devious about the GS Nationals in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Every May, thousands of die-hard Buick faithful visit the Bluegrass State's ancestral homeland to--the Chevrolet Corvette?--and overrun the town of just under 50,000 folks with GSs and GNs, T-Types and God's own musclecar, the GNX. Anything Buick built for speed makes an appearance--either at the car show that attracts everything from the gleaming paint and chromed beauty of the trailer queens or the random down and dirty Turbo Street Outlaw car looking to grab some eyeball--to the strip where the high-pitched whine of forced induction and the acrid stench of spent tires, race gas, and adrenaline charge the atmosphere like some sort of cross between the Super Bowl and the Indy 500. The oft-overlooked "executive" division of General Motors has one week out of the year to stand up and be counted, celebrated, raced, and shined. Older GSs share the track with the new guard, the turbo Regals, whose high-pitched turbo whine is quite intoxicating. There is so much black monochromatic paint in Bowling Green the weekend of the Nationals that it may seem to the uninitiated that Darth Vader's fan club had made a run on the town. Maybe. The men and women who subscribe to the GSCA's (Buick's GS Club of America) mantra of "Going Fast With Class" know how to do two things exceedingly well: win, and look good while doing it.
Organizing the chaos is the Buick GSCA and its member chapters, which, in its 26th year hosting this affair for Buick performance, saw hundreds of participants and thousands of spectators fill Beech Bend Raceway Park for the event. I was invited to the event by the president of the Buick GS Club of America, Richard Lasseter, and jumped at the opportunity to witness firsthand the horsepower and torque of the Turbo Buick. The "Nationals" (or Nats) as they are known among club members, are the place to experience Buick camaraderie and earn a turbo education. "We (the Buick GSCA) started out small, and our first Nationals was held here in Bowling Green," explained Richard Lasseter, "however, we spent our first year street racing in front of the Greenwood Mall." Times have changed though, and as it wore on, the street racing made way for sanctioned races, attracting more and more folks every year, eventually reaching a peak in the mid to late 1990s when up to one thousand racers made at least one pass down the quarter-mile tarmac. According to The Daily News in Bowling Green, the Nationals bring in over $1.5 million each year, and continue to be the largest long term event in town. From the heady days of dodging cops for bragging rights to today's rules and tech inspection, the event has become the most important Buick gathering of the year, every year, even as attrition eats into its numbers. "The cars were much newer years ago," explained Lasseter. "From 30 cars in 1981 to up to 1,000 cars racing by 1995 or so, our members were driving the turbos from homes all over the country to Beech Bend for the Nationals each year. As the cars got older and more difficult to maintain for some members, we have suffered a bit of attrition." The one week party, racing event, tech sessions, and swap meet began this year on Tuesday May 16 to cool weather and cloudy skies threatening rain. One after another, Turbo Buicks from almost every state in the union--and even some from Canada--pulled into the raceway, the demographic center of the universe for Buick performance car ownership. The sophisticates that bought (or buy) Buicks for their performance aspect continue to see the other cars from The General as "cars for the masses", and take great pleasure in showcasing their handiwork in the form of upgraded turbos, exhaust systems, suspensions, and even alcohol injection systems.