2006 Buick Lucerne Cx on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: 1992 Buick Century Woodie station wagon

The Detroit station wagon with fake-wood exterior paneling had a good long postwar run, but minivans and — increasingly — sport utility vehicles were giving such wagons quite a beating in the showrooms by 1992. Buick was down to just two woodies by 1992; here's a discarded example of the front-wheel-drive Century, spotted in a Northern California self-service yard. Buick sold big rear-wheel-drive Roadmaster wagons with Simu-Wood™ siding through the 1996 model year, but the smaller Century was fairly plush. American car shoppers didn't insist on real-looking "wood" on their wagons, although Chrysler went much more three-dimensional with their plastic wood that did GM during this era. This one has the 3.3-liter Buick V6 engine, rated at 160 horsepower. This is not to be confused with the unrelated GM 60° V6, which was available in earlier and later Centuries. If only these seats could talk, they'd tell many tales of sibling battles and spilled fast food. Related Video:

Question of the Day: Best recipient for supercharged GM V6?

The good old Buick V6 engine was built from 1961 through 2008 (including a decade of production by Kaiser-Jeep) and went into way too many General Motors vehicles to list here. In 1991, the supercharged version of the 3800 was introduced, with a Roots-style Eaton blower on top, and now you can find these engines in just about every junkyard in North America. The 3800 shares a bellhousing pattern with the also-made-by-the-zillions GM 60° V6 engine, which means that it will install (with varying levels of sledgehammer clearancing and/or axle mix-and-matching) into plenty of GM vehicles that never received the 3800 from the factory. That means one thing: engine swaps! An excellent example of this is the 1992 Chevrolet Lumina APV "Dustbuster" minivan, which is a fully caged high-performance road-racing machine that features a supercharged 3800 and 5-speed manual transmission under its long, vacuum-cleaner-snout-like hood. The RaceVan, in Springfield Monorail livery, will compete this weekend at the Michigan 24 Hours of LeMons race with Autobloggers Mike Austin, David Gluckman, and Alex Kierstein at the wheel. My personal choice for supercharged 3800 power, though, has to be the Cadillac Cimarron, preferably the not-so-sought-after Cimarron d'Oro Edition. Some bashing and welding and cutting and pasting and this lightweight Cavalier sibling could have well over double its original horsepower. So, what's your blown 3800 engine-swap choice? Related Video: Auto News Buick GM v6 question of the day questions engine swap

GM announces six new recalls, covering 3.5 million vehicles

General Motors has just initiated another crushingly large recall, this time affecting some 3.36 million vehicles built between 2000 and 2014 and sold in the US, Canada and Mexico. Once again, the issue surrounds the cars' ignition switches, which can be kicked out of the run position if they're carrying extra weight or if they experience a "jarring" event. In this particular case, though, GM will modify the keys, rather than the ignition itself.
A four-by-six-millimeter hole will be drilled into the key, which will more safely accommodate the weight of the key ring. As is usually the case, the work will be done free of charge. The recalled vehicles include the 2000 to 2005 Cadillac Deville, 2004 to 2005 Buick Regal LS and GS, 2004 to 2011 Cadillac DTS, 2005 to 2009 Buick Lacrosse, 2006 to 2008 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, 2006 to 2011 Buick Lucerne and 2006 to 2014 Chevrolet Impala. Only the Impala is still in production, and even then, it's only sold to fleet companies.
According to an official statement from GM, there have been eight crashes and six injuries due to this latest issue. As if this isn't a dire enough blow for GM, the company has announced five smaller recalls, covering 165,000 vehicles.