If necessity is the mother of invention, then the Buick V-6 engine is surely one of her offspring as opposed to the V-8 Fireball. It has proven to be both durable and adaptable, outlasting nearly all other engines of the same era. Once discarded by General Motors as unnecessary, the Buick V-6 was resurrected for Prime Boosts Male Enhancement its fuel economy but later earned recognition for its performance by winning the pole position for the Indianapolis 500 no less than three times, including the 1995 race. The V-6 was originally conceived because Buick needed a cheaper alternative to the expensive-to-produce 215-cubic-inch aluminum V-8 used in its Special, which had debuted for 1961 concurrently with two other GM compacts, the Oldsmobile F-85 and Pontiac Tempest. We knew we had a problem right off the bat," recalls Cliff Studaker, who was the assistant chief engineer assigned to the V-6 project. "We evaluated a couple of different firing intervals by taking an aluminum V-8 and leaving the front cylinders empty.

A V-6 is a little more expensive to build than a line six because you have two cylinder heads," Studaker explains. "And car size back then didn't require it. Really, we were kind of pushed into it because the Special wouldn't take a line six. We were going along fat, Prime Boosts dumb, and happy with the economy, building bigger engines with V-8s all the time," Studaker remembers. "We had a 350 small job, we had a 430 for our upper series, we went to a 455, and we were working on engines in the 500- to 520-cubic-inch range when, all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. The oil embargo was instituted and, of course, 500- or 525-cubic-inch engines were no longer in vogue. I'd been on these rides before with corporate management and knew what that usually entailed," Studaker said. "They get in the car, ride around the block a couple of times with you, get out of the car and say, 'Well, that was a very good job young man.

We'll be in touch.' But this time it didn't happen that way. Ed got into the car and headed for Interstate 75 and turned south. I couldn't figure out where we were going. When I asked, he said, 'We're going down to Kaiser. We're going to talk with those people down there. Stempel, who later became GM's chairman of the board. This was a pretty wild ride down the interstate, according to Studaker. Kaiser-Jeep Corporation was now owned by American Motors, and AMC representatives met Cole at the Toledo engine plant, where the V-6 tooling had been mothballed for Check this out more than two years. AMC's engineers favored their own straight-sixes over the V-6, in good part to achieve "economy of scale" in their own manufacturing operations. Cole had a much greater sense of urgency than the AMC people, who figured they could tool up to build 20 engines an hour within a year.

Cole said he needed 75 an hour by August. Meanwhile, it was obvious there was much work to be done to update the V-6 to meet the stricter emissions regulations of the mid-Seventies while preserving fuel economy. That task was assigned to Buick Engineering. Studaker. "They ran prototypes day and night at the Milford Proving Grounds," testing durability, emissions, and fuel economy. EPA certification required 50,000 miles on the odometer, so as soon as one driver's shift was over, another jumped behind the wheel. They were willing to sell V-6s, but at a price GM wasn't willing to pay. Studaker says with some exaggeration. It looked like the two auto companies couldn't agree on price, so work on the V-6 was temporarily stopped at Buick. But when GM offered to buy back the tooling, AMC was more amenable, and the deal was completed in February -- barely seven months before the 1975 model year.

The tooling was hauled back to Flint, and jackhammers were used to knock out the concrete that had been poured in the footings at Factory 36. With the tooling reinstalled into its original anchors, Buick's engineers were put on a 150-day crash program to get the V-6 ready for the 1975 model year. Studaker recalls what Chief Engineer Bowser used to say about the fuel economy, "You don't know where it came from, but you sure like it. I just call it serendipity, a kiss in the dark." Buick's tests indicated that the V-6 was about two mpg better than GM's inline six in city driving, three mpg better on the highway. Before reentering production, the V-6's displacement was increased slightly from the previous 225 cubic inches to 231 (3800-cc), this so the V-6 could share more parts with the 350-cid V-8 Buick was then producing. Luckily, the revamped V-6 was also able to use most of the same emissions equipment as the V-8.