photos by: Jordan Polites
Every Year, Highly Regarded Turbo Buick Guru, Richard Clark, Opens His Doors for TR Enthusiasts
If you’re a Turbo Buick guy and have never had the opportunity to visit Richard Clark’s Garage in North Carolina, you owe it to yourself to do so. Every year, Richard dedicates a few days out of the year and allows for full access to his shop to TurboBuick.com members an opportunity to meet, greet, wrench and exchange information on each other’s ’84-87 Turbo Buick.
The event is sponsored by many vendors in the tiny Turbo Buick community, and it’s filled with very knowledgeable and helpful people. As we all know, the cars were never really the most reliable cars out there, nor have they been particularly easy to work on to the lame mechanic. Between those two issues, it can be difficult to keep your Turbo Buick running in top form, if you don’t have the knowledge or the right people to help your car. Thankfully, the TR community, though tight-knit, is also among the most helpful amongst its peers.
Richard is one of those individuals, and is a true holdouts from an era when the Buick Grand National was a solid staple in the performance aftermarket, as he was made a convert after getting smoked by one in his Ferrari many, many moons ago. You can see Richard recount his first encounter in a clip from the 2011 documentary, Black Air: The Buick Grand National Documentary.
Every year for the last five or so, Richard has been hosting the event at his headquarters, where he’s restore, rebuilt, modified and tuned many a Turbo Buick. He also houses quite the collection of engine pullouts, body panels, transmissions, donor cars and two ultra-low mile GNXs. He’s a fanatic through and through but he’s also very knowledgable and helpful. Though you author wasn’t able to make out down this year with his GN, he was able to see da representative to snap some pics of their event — which also managed to find its way to Cecil County’s dragstrip.
Enjoy the images and we hope to see you there, next year!
Rick Seitz is the owner and founder of GMEFI Magazine, and has a true love and passion for all vehicles. When he isn’t tuning, testing, or competing with the brand’s current crop of project vehicles, he’s busy tinkering and planning the next modifications for his own cars.
