The Buick GNX built a reputation as the fastest American production car of 1987, and nearly four decades later that reputation keeps translating into real money. A black 1987 Buick Regal Grand National dressed up as a GNX and fitted with a modern LS3 V8 just landed on eBay, and its $189,900 asking price is a useful reminder of how far this platform has climbed since Buick was better known for cars like the 1971 Skylark than for building a turbocharged giant killer.
Listed by Texas dealer Earth MotorCars, this particular car shows just 1,111 miles and carries a clean title, pairing its blacked-out GNX-style body kit and mesh wheels with a resto-modded engine bay. eBay's own spec sheet still lists a 3.8-liter V6 under "Engine," but the listing title and the underhood photos tell a different story: a fuel-injected LS-series V8 now fills the space where Buick's turbocharged 3.8-liter once lived, complete with a polished intake and a modern accessory drive.
That kind of inconsistency is common with GNX tributes, and it is exactly why the real GNX market has become so unforgiving. Buick built only 547 genuine GNX cars for the 1987 model year, and finding one that has not been touched, swapped, or "improved" gets harder every year. Documented, numbers-matching GNX cars now regularly bring six-figure money at auction, and that scarcity has pushed plenty of shoppers toward LS-swapped tributes like this one as a way to get GNX looks and modern reliability without hunting down an increasingly unobtainable original.
Whether a buyer will actually pay close to $190,000 for a modified tribute car riding on a mainstream V8 swap instead of an original Buick turbo six is the real test here. Sixteen people were already watching the listing as of this writing, which suggests there is an audience willing to pay GNX-adjacent money for GNX looks, even when the drivetrain underneath does not match the badge on the grille.
Cars like this restomod GNX are a good barometer for where the muscle car market is headed: buyers still want the look and the legend, but plenty are comfortable putting a modern drivetrain underneath it, a trend that keeps showing up in builds like this twin-turbo Dodge Charger. Credit to eBay seller Earth MotorCars for the listing and the photos featured here; whether this GNX tribute sells anywhere near its asking price will say a lot about how much of the GNX premium is really about what is under the hood versus what is stamped on the fender.