Power's 1989 quality survey prompted Buick to bill itself as "the new symbol for quality in America." LeSabre also earned "best family car" honors from Family Circle magazine and a string of yearly Best Buy endorsements from Consumer Guide®. Coupes disappeared, but Custom and Limited sedans kept moving out the door on the strength of appealing high-teens starting prices and considered yearly feature upgrades like standard power door locks ('93), passenger airbag and heat-reflecting "solar control" glass ('94) and high-value "Select Series" models ('95). The GN bowed at mid '82 as a low-volume commemorative car (named for the Chevy-powered Regals then starting to clean up on the NASCAR circuit), but in reality, it was just a fancy T Type. The new-for-'82 Regal T Type replaced the previous sport coupe as Flint's "factory hot rod," offering fat tires, beefier chassis, attention-getting exterior, and plush interior. The aging front-drive Century was one of Flint's most profitable assets in the early 1990s. Buick increased quality and added features that customers wanted while keeping the lid on price. Come 1992, it added a supercharged V-6, the only such engine in U.S. With a new gas crunch triggering another sharp recession, total U.S.

The T Type coupe vanished, Chevy's familiar 2.8 V-6 ousted Buick's 3.0 as the step-up engine, and the 3.8 gained 25 horses (for 150 total) via low-friction roller valve lifters, sequential-port injection, and distributorless triple-coil ignition. Two collectible '80s Buicks are found among the rear-drive Regal coupes, which were reskinned for '81 with crisper, more-aerodynamic lines that persisted through the end of series production in December 1987. These are the hot turbo-powered T Type and Grand National. Quicker still was the 1987 GNX, a $30,000 end-of-the-line limited edition (547 built, by contractor ASC) with higher turbo boost, "smarter" electronics, cleaner porting, bigger tires, meaner looks, a claimed 300 bhp (276 actual) and a mighty 355-420 pound-feet of torque. So while the web server itself runs on solar power, other parts of the delivery chain still depend on traditional energy. Yet Century's price spread hadn't changed that much, with stickers still in the affordable $16,000-$18,000 range.

But months of damning publicity clobbered Dearborn's image -- and its stock price. For all the recalls and attendant bad publicity that plagued GM's X-cars in these years, the Skylark sold well. The compact Buick Skylark was an X-body for 1981-85, an N-body thereafter. A four-speed automatic was optional on all but California's Buick V-6. Production eased to some 226,000 for 1983-84, by which time four-speed automatic transmissions had been adopted as a much better bet for improved mileage. Both carried 3800 V-6s with tuned-port injection and 170 bhp, plus four-speed automatic transaxles with electronic shift control newly integrated with the engine computer. Helping the cause was a thorough 1992 redesign featuring a more rounded and contemporary look, a smoother 3800 V-6, standard driver-side airbag, and useful no-cost extras like power windows and GM's "PASS-Key" antitheft ignition. The 1995 base model got a reengineered "Series II" 3800 with vibration-quelling "balance shafts." The blown V-6 followed suit for '96 and b decks muscled up to 240 bhp -- not bad for a lowly pushrod engine then over 20 years old. Recalibrated engine electronics gave the '87s 10 bhp more -- and truly phenomenal acceleration.

Like them, this Century was just a "deluxe" X-car with more expansive sheet-metal and plusher interiors on the same 104.9-inch wheelbase. The improved workmanship was just a timely bonus, the result of a gradual but wholesale reengineering effort for both Century and Oldsmobile's related Cutlass Ciera. The result was a refocused 2005 lineup with more orthodox styling inside and out, plus more competitive "value" pricing. Yet for all this, volume dipped, sinking to near 128,000. The V-6 was heavily revised, gaining 20 horsepower via multi-point injection, plus a "balancer" shaft mounted in the vee between cylinder banks to help quell secondary vibrations. For 1987, the T Type became a package option, and both the four and 2.8 V-6 received "Generation II" improvements conferring slightly more power. The type of deck (whether it is OSB or plywood deck), will be agreed upon in your roofing quote or estimate. And finally, for those designing complex projects, there are "technical" sections featuring detailed engineering calculations and representative deck building and gazebo building case examples. For example, while the environment temperature might correctly register at 24°C, the controller could display a reading as low as 14°C. This seems questionable though there might be an explanation that I'm overlooking.