Craig Lieberman previously had one of the coolest jobs on the planet. The California native served as the technical advisor for the Fast and Furious franchise and helped build and procure several of the cars featured in the movies. Some of his own cars have even featured in Fast and Furious films, including his Nissan Skyline, Nissan Maxima and Toyota Supra.
These days, Lieberman runs a self-titled YouTube channel in which he talks about the various cars that were featured in the long-running film series while he still worked for Universal. The subject of his latest video is the Buick Grand National that featured in Fast 4, which appears at the beginning of the film when Dom Toretto is attempting to rob an oil tanker truck in the Dominican Republic.
Lieberman was first introduced to the Buick Grand National by the father of a former girlfriend. As a know-it-all 20-something kid who had ridden in a standard Buick Regal before, he laughed when his then-girlfriend’s father started bragging to him about his turbocharged Buick. Doubtful of the claims he was making, Lieberman agreed to go for a ride in the car and was promptly blown away by the car’s acceleration. He had another run-in with a Grand National on the drag strip later in his 20s when one nearly beat him in his 500+ horsepower supercharged fox body Mustang.
In the opening scene of Fast 4, the Buick Grand National is seen driving backward at a high rate of speed as Toretto attempts to rob the aforementioned oil tanker. Because many cars have low-speed limiters in reverse, he and his team built a backward stunt car that featured the engine in the back, but with the body facing the correct way. This allowed them to stick a small driver in the back of the car with relocated driving controls while Vin Diesel, who plays Toretto, was able to act out the driving scenes in the front seat.
Hear what else Lieberman had to say about the Fast 4 Buick Grand National in the video embedded below.
Subscribe to GM Authority for more Buick Riviera news, Buick news, and around-the-clock GM news coverage.
Comments
Live to dream.. Buick’s upcoming production variant of their Enspire CUV gets a Grand National edition with wide-body fenders and large meaty tires.
Grand National courtesy of Tom Wallace chief engineer and first time a car other than Corvette was the fastest for GM. Later Tom became the 4th Chief Engineer of Corvette
Roc,
I owned (2) Grand Nationals. The first year and the last year as well as a Trailblazer SS along with Corvettes that Tom had his hands in development of .
I’ve worked on hydrogen / electric propulsion systems for automotive and aerospace since 1996…and my favorite car is still my 87 Buick GN with T-tops. Still have an 86 V-8 Regal my grandmother purchased nearly new also. But unfortunately Buick lost me after they killed the G-Body on Dec 11th of 1987…
True tarmac terrors were these Grand Nationals and turbo Regals. It was quite a revelation after taking a test drive in a garden variety 110 HP 231 V6 or the barely any quicker 140 HP Olds 307 in a base or Limited Regal and then taking a turbo equipped model for a spin. The difference in power was staggering and mind numbing and the 245 HP rating was a joke as these have been proven to make closer to 300. Roger Rabbit Smith killed a legend when he discontinued the G-body cars in 1988 and Ford even had more sense and continued RWD T-Bird/Cougar production until 1997. Now we have history repeating itself with Barra the clown killing off great historical nameplates like Impala, Malibu and soon the Camaro.