So what's the deal with the blackhawk? Who owns it now? I have a picture of one doing a burnout next to an older Skylark car,so obviously some dood got to take it to the track. What does it run in the quarter mile?
Nice Car!! But is the driver on the cell phone? it looks like he's holding something to this ear. o No:
Blackhawk here is pics of it's debut at the BCA Nationals in Richmond, VA in 2000. It still belongs to GM, and makes appearances a couple of times each year. This picture was taken at Richmond. The other car is Jim Robertson in his '72 Skylark. This was the BH shakedown, first time out. I don't remember what it ran, but it wasn't great. I ran it a BG in 2001, I forgot what it ran, somewhere in the 13's I think with 3 people and the top down.
Super nice custom - the guy who ran the design division got to do it as his swan song. I think I remember its a corvette chassis, 1970 SF 455 motor, 40 and 41 body, cadillac interior. What fun! - Bill
Mike Doble at Buick did this car with Steve Pastiener for Buick. It caused quite a stir at the GM Design studios because they didn't think of it. "Not Invented Here" is alive and well....... it lives on at the Tech Center. This car is clearly one of the coolest concept cars ever done at Buick. It's right up there with the Y-Job in my opinion. Dave
The Blackhawk is on a modified Corvette chassis, with a fuel injected 455 and a 4L80 trans. The engine was built by someone that did not know Buicks, consequently they tried to make a high winder out of it and it does not run up to it's potential.
motor I don't know about the not knowing about the motor part-I believe T/A Perf had a big hand in putting that motor together-I think it was an old Stage 2 motor, ...wasn't that the case?
Yes, Corey, I believe your right, and had Mike at TA Performance known for sure they were really gonna build this car he would have made sure the motor was done right.
To my knowledge, the blackhawk powered by a (1 of 2 known to exists) Stage III 4 bolt-main block anyone know for sure? :3gears:
Many parts were purchased from Mike, but one of Steve Pasteiners employees built the engine. They originally had the trans set to shift at 6800 like a Chev and they took the bearings out of it at the track in virginia. They worked all night in the trailer to rebuild it so they could give rides the next day. Needless to say it was run at low RPM until a good fix was done. It could still run some good numbers if they got a good Buick man on it. I don't expect to see it very often as the big shooters do NOT like the car!! It gets too much ink for something that they didn't design.
I doubt that. One 4 bolt belongs to the BPG here. It was bought from one Board member here by another and donated. I presume it is still at Tri shield and has not yet been transferred to Sloan.
As said in way previous posts, there is no such thing as a Stage 3 block, I think the engine in the Blackhawk may have the TA Stage 3 heads on it as they tried to make it all out Buick, but didn't have the right components with the right techs to do the job, as "The Old Guy" said, we were there, and know the details, as do several others. The car has been reworked and if you look at the pics from Richmond, compared to the pics before it went to NM,you can see a great deal of work was done on cleaning up the engine compartment etc. The car doesn't get a great deal of on the road or racing action, but basically out of the Reliable Trailer out to the shows and back in the trailer. It's a show car, and that's all it will ever be, and hopefully will be for a long time. Maybe Buick/GM will take it in as something that could be a production car or at least a clone of a production car someday.Like this???
Was the Stage 3 Buick engine on the cover of that old hot rod magazine that had all of the experimental Buick V8s? I read that one of them was a nailhead named brutal and it had like 500 horsepower. http://buickperformance.com/Experim.htm
Experimental V-8s I have the magazine and I would highly recommend buying it if you can.......it is absolutely awesome. It talks about buicks 425 cid Turbo Charged! motor with an amazing 708 ft.lbs of torque!!!! at 2600 rpms. thats not a misprint. But I wonder what kind of performance items would have been added to support an engine producing that kind of torque and 360 horsepower at 3600 rpms....So if anyone can hook me up with that engine id gladly take it off yer hands. And then plenty of info about how they first got into nascar and the indy races and stuff. BTW I got this magazine for 10 bucks on yahoo and its in mint condition so they are out there.
I wish buick and GM would get together and start making the velite a production car, even the blackhawk would be nice. One thing bad about it if the velite did become a full time production car it might not be the same as the concept that's the only bad part, otherwise it'd be cool. One thing they could change on the velite and not hurt my feelings would be to lower the wheel size :jd: They're alright, just a little too big for my style, but I love the way they created it with the trishield emblem in the middle of the wheel :TU: And on the velite, I sure hope they don't stuff a corporate engine in it, but GM has too many corporate weenys in there now so I think it's clear that most likely there would be a corporated engine in it, sadly
