With the onset of the 1960’s came resurgence at Buick. The Special name returned in 1961 with a revolutionary all  aluminum small V8 engine displacing 215 cubic inches.  This was followed in 1962 with Buick’s first production V6 in the Special. This car was Motor Trend magazine’s “Car of the Year”. Buick emphatically re-entered the realm of high performance production cars with the 401 cubic inch, 325 horsepower Wildcat coupe, introduced in mid-year 1962. Competing with cars like the Impala Super Sport, and Pontiac Grand Prix, it gave Buick bottom-end punch to blend with its still plush image. In 1963, Buick introduced the Riviera, a true modern classic, and at the start of the 1965 model run on the Riviera, it offered the Riviera Gran Sport with a 360 horsepower, 425 c.i. engine, dual-quad carburetors and a firmer suspension. This was followed by inclusion of similar packages on the Skylark (in mid-year 1965) and the new Wildcat in 1966. In 1967, the Skylark Gran Sport became the Skylark GS series, and in 1968, Buick dropped the Skylark name from these performance machines, becoming designated solely by the GS label preceding the cubic inch displacement of either 340 or 400 cubic inches. The latter two years of this stage of Buick’s performance revival were 1970 and 1971. The apex vehicle of the entire muscle car era at Buick was 1970 GSX although the 1971 GS 455 cars were just as powerful.

     This part of Buick’s history is well told in a number of places. But an important point that does not usually come out is that Buick sales continued to rise throughout the 1960’s, hitting a record 821,165 cars in 1973. This long period of sales success was essentially coincident with Buick’s post war performance revival. But behind the scenes in the mid 1970’s Buick was making some moves that were destined to return the marque to a renewed position as the American manufacturer of premium high performance motorcars.

     The perceived beginning of this new performance era for Buick might be thought to be with the introduction of the turbocharged V6 engine in the 1978 Regal Sport Coupe. However, this “new” V6 engine was derived from the V6 that was introduced in 1962 in the Buick Special that had won Motor Trend’s Car of the Year, mentioned earlier. The original design for the V6 started in the early 1960’s when Buick created a V6 based on the all aluminum 215 V8. That very first "Fireball" V6 displaced only198 cubic inches, but remember it shared tooling with that very small 215 cubic inch aluminum V8 in 1962, the same engine that Buick sold to the Rover Group in England a bit later. In late 1963, the V6 bore was increased to be the same as the 300 V8 (3.75 inches), which made its displacement 225 cubic inches, where it stayed until 1967.

     Since the V6 had the same bore as the 300 cubic inch V8 it could be produced on the same assembly line. This made it cheap and easy to produce for the "compact" cars in GM's car lines between 1962 and 1966. But the demand for the V6 in the muscle car era was never very great. In addition, the design resulted in an uneven firing order that produced a rough idling engine, so Buick’s V6 design was sold to Jeep in 1967.

     We can blame the advent of the gas crisis and the demand for lightweight, inexpensive engines with low fuel consumption for Buick’s turn away from performance cars in the early 1970’s. A logical move for Buick was to buy back to its V6 design from Jeep, which it did in 1974. The little V6 was reworked so that it could be made on the same assembly line as the Buick 350, which entailed making the bore 3.8 inches. Using this bore size, the V6 could share pistons and other parts with the V8, but it retained the original "odd-fire" design. In 1977, Buick redesigned the firing order to an even-fire design by revising the crank throws to make it a smoother running engine. The new even-fire engine still retained the same bore spacing as the odd-fire version, so the bores were no longer centered over the crankshaft. The engine had to be under balanced and soft motor mounts were used. Balancing took care of the vertical component of the vibrations and the motor mounts took care of the horizontal component.