1968 Buick GS 400 Is an All-Too-Rare Ragtop With a One-Year-Only Feature, Can You Spot It?

The first Buick Motor Division product to wear the tracksuit under the Gran Sport brand was the 1965 Skylark, and the trend continued well into the seventies. Initially, the GS lettering (and the accompanying equipment) was an option package, but in 1967, it evolved into a standalone model. Still based on the Skylark, just named separately, the GS received a well-deserved but poorly sold convertible version for 1968 and 1969.

4,230 drop-top GSs were assembled during the two-year production run of the sporty two-door Buick, making them quite rare nowadays. The inaugural year was slightly more successful (as far as bean counters were concerned), with 2,454 units rolling out the factory gates. Not prohibitively rare, like other muscle-bound Detroit products of the era, but they certainly don't make for the bulk of entries at car shows.

Luckily, some people still like classics more than modern-day 'carblets' (that's a car-tablet half-breed), and they do whatever they can to preserve them. Here's one such gentleman from Illinois, making a guest star appearance in the video below, shot in the summer of last year (August 2023, for folks who thoroughly enjoyed the New Year's Eve party).

According to the Buick Club of America, the brown 1968 GS 400 convertible shining in the fields near Chicago is one of the very few – if not the only one - left in the state of Illinois. The registry contains no other entry for a ragtop muscle A-body Buick from that year, and this example fully stands up to its solitary rank height.

The owner doesn't mention what's original and what's refurbished in his example. Still, he stresses that keeping the car in this condition takes a lot of TLC. He had the car since 2003, and the mileage of 97,477 (156,840 kilometers) suggests some refreshment jobs were done during the 55 years it has rolled its wheels on Planet Piston.

The car sports its 400 cubic-inch V8, the 340-horse, 440-lb-ft V8 (345 PS, 597 Nm) connected to the horse-shoe-shifted Super-Turbine automatic. Buick used a different marketing name for the fabled Turbo Hydra-Matic 400 three-speed gearbox. The other transmission options were two manuals, a three-speed (standard but only ordered by 39 buyers), and a four-speed.The last two came with the 'regular equipment' 3.42 rear axle ratio, with a 3.64 'Performance' alternative. At the same time, the auto offered the 2.93 standard gearing (the 3.42 was the fun choice on the self-shifting tranny).

The convertible top was renewed twenty years ago and has worked flawlessly since. The rest of this stunning Buick keeps up – hear the engine rumbling below. This particular example features a rare option that was only available for 1968 and only on Gran Sports – the Burnished Saddle livery option.

1968 wasn't the greatest year for Buick convertibles – none of the drop-top models offered in the manufacturer's lineup made it into five-digit assembly volumes. The Skylark was the best seller, at 8,188 units, followed closely by the full-size Electra 'Deuce and a Quarter' 225, with 7,976 vehicles, the LeSabre, with 5,275, and the Wildcat, with 3,572. The GS 400 variant was not only the lowest-production Buick 'vert of the year but also the last in production numbers of all the body styles offered by the GM division on all its platforms.