The 90-Day, 47-Year Wonder: 1962 Buick V6

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The 1962 Buick V6 flew off the drawing board in less than 90 days and then remained in production for nearly half a century.

 

When the compact Buick Special was introduced in September of 1961, it was a fair-to-middling seller for the oldest General Motors division. (See our feature on the GM Senior Compacts here.) Still, Buick product managers could see a missed opportunity. The sole engine offered in the Special was the new aluminum V8, a fine powerplant, but what many compact buyers really wanted was an economical, low-priced six-cylinder model. Trouble was, Buick had no sixes in its portfolio at the time, and besides, a conventional inline six was too long for the Special’s stubby Y-body engine compartment.

Fortunately, Buick engine wizard Joe Turlay—the chief architect of the famed 1953 Nailhead V8 and the aluminum 215 V8 as well—had a solution.  He determined that by slicing off the two front cylinders of the small V8, the division could produce a compact V6 (9.75 inches shorter than an inline six) that fit perfectly in the Y-body platform while sharing many of the V8’s parts and tooling. What’s more, the block and heads could be cast iron, resulting in a significant cost reduction, and best of all, the engine could be sent into production in record time—quickly enough for an introduction in 1962, the very next model year. The entire program took less than 11 months while the design phase covered barely 90 days. By Motor City product development standards, that was nearly light speed

 

While GMC had introduced a V6 truck engine a few years earlier, Buick’s V6 was a first in volume production for a passenger car in the USA. But apart from its distinctive configuration, it was a thoroughly typical Detroit engine with two overhead valves per cylinder and a pushrod valvetrain. One minor departure was in the connecting rods: The first cast rods in a modern GM engine, they were formed in Armasteel, GM’s proprietary malleable iron alloy. With a bore and stroke of 3.625 inches by 3.200 inches, the V6 displaced 198 cubic inches, only 8 percent less than the aluminum V8, and despite the cast iron block and heads, the total weight was just 366 lbs. Rated output was 135 hp at 4600 rpm and in the grand Buick tradition, the engine was named the Fireball V6.

However, there was a problem with adapting the V8 design to a V6, and it was illustrated in the graphic above from Turlay’s SAE paper (no. 620073) on the engine. The 90-degree bank angle coupled with the three paired crank journals produced a syncopated cylinder sequence, firing at 90-150-90-150-90-150 degrees. The engine, which picked up the label “odd-fire V6” along the way, wasn’t terribly smooth even by 1960s standards, although Turlay and crew masked the problem with a specially weighted flywheel and extra-soft engine mounts, and it served the Buick division’s junior car lines through 1967. GM then sold the engine and tooling to Kaiser Jeep, where it was produced as the Dauntless V6, then purchased it all back in 1974 when GM suddenly found itself in need of smaller engines to meet emissions and fuel economy standards.

And then a funny thing happened. Once it was back in GM hands, the engine received some fresh development, including a split-pin crankshaft to correct the oddball firing sequence. The revised V6 proved to be a good fit with a number of GM platforms in the ’80s, both front-and-rear-wheel drive, and was updated with electronic fuel injection, direct ignition, and balance shafts. Supercharged and turbocharged versions came along, including the mighty Buick Grand Nationals, all based on the original 1962 design. In fact, the same basic engine architecture, eventually renamed the 3800 Series (below) remained in production for 47 years until it was finally discontinued in MY 2009.. Not bad for a 90-day wonder.

13 thoughts on “The 90-Day, 47-Year Wonder: 1962 Buick V6”

  1. I had that odd fire motor in my 75 Skylark, and what a nasty thing it was. It shook at a traffic light like a dog passing a peach pit. No amount of tuning would smooth it out. It finished up one day by throwing a connection rod on the highway sounding like rocks in a blender and leaving stuck.

  2. Legend has it that when GM bought back the V6 tooling from AMC in 1974, the manufacturing equipment was simply reattached to the same mounting points where it originally resided in the Buick engine plant. Plus, the tooling had been unused for a few years, so GM was lucky that AMC hadn’t scrapped it.

    Also, GM originally approached AMC to build the V6 for Buick. AMC’s price per unit was too high, which prompted GM to offer to buy back the tooling.

    • I’ve owned several 3.8 Buick engines. 79 Regal, 87 Delta 88,89 Lesabre, 92 Olds 88, 94 Lesabre, 98 Olds 88, and 2008 Lucerne. These were all indestructible workhorses. With proper maintenance and regular oil changes I got well over 300K miles from most of them. They were easy to work on and economical to maintain. They performed well and got decent fuel economy. I doubt that any manufacturer will ever produce a better internal combustion V6. The current one I have is the ultimate 3800. The intake plenum is cast aluminum, not plastic. The valve train a roller design. Oil filters super accessible. Water pump easily changed out. Latest valve covers go 100k or more before leaking, I guess this is why they stopped providing this engine. Too reliable. Now Toyota is king because they’re willing to produce high quality like GM once did.

      • My 76 Buick Century had that wonderful 3.8 V6 but the 3.8 in mom and dads 77 Olds Cutlass S a year later was anemic.

        • I am pretty sure that in that era, the Buick 3.8 and Oldsmobile 3.8 V6s were NOT the same engine. GM didn’t mandate the corporate shared engine architecture until the 1981 model year, shortly after CAFE became law.

  3. A high school pal’s dad bought a 1962 Special coupe with the V6 and 3 speed column shift. It was the match of most small block Chevrolets and Fords at the time given the light vehicle.

  4. We had 2. One manual one auto. Both were in GM Holden 2003 utes and they were plenty powerful. Great engines.

  5. The same odd firing occured in the PRV27 engine, shared by Volvo, Peugeot and Renault in the 70ies. It too, had been designed as a 3.5 liter V-8 when the oil crisis struck and was amputated to an odd firing V-6 of 2.7 liter. Later on the crankshaft was offset in the PRV28.

  6. I have a 1979 Pontiac firebird owned it for 40 years with the v6 after doing some of my own moderifcation to the engine and putting it back to 60s v6 it runs beautifully,,,people still stand and watch it go bye and listen to the brilliant sound it makes! 😀

  7. The article indicates that the engine was ultimately updated with “direct ignition”, which is commonly understood to be coil-on-plug. The engine received a waste spark system in 1985, which was revised a few times until it reached its final form in 1992. I do not know of a series 1,2, or 3 engine that had coil-on-plug ignition.

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