Used 1997 Buick Regal Sedan Consumer Reviews
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Good ole 3800's
I bought this car in October 2012 with 160K miles on it for 1300 dollars. It's beat up, neglected, and been abused by it's previous teenage owners. The engine is 16 years old and has never let me down. I replaced the water pump and two faulty coolant elbows. All four struts were pretty shot, and I replaced the rear ones. I did pads and rotors all around. Total spent for parts is under 500 bucks including oil changes. I'm getting close to 170K and haven't touched it since I did the original work when I bought it. I'll do plugs/filters in the spring and let that carry me to 200K. The 3800 series II is easy to work on - I have little mechanical experience. Update: The timing chain stopped being a chain in June 2015. The engine had 201k miles on it. The only work additional work I had done to the car before it's death was regular maintenance like pads/rotors/oil change. I put a lot of miles on this car - 50+ a day commuting, and plenty of driving on the weekend. Until the day the camshaft and crankshaft stopped talking - it never failed me.
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Dangerous
In the last 3 months our steering went out on my family twice putting us in a very dangerous position. Did GMC stand behing there product-"no" my vin identification is not within the range of the federal recall. Please do not buy a GMC product if you value your safety. I have my car waiting for its second repair, but i refuse to put my family behind the wheel(or lack of) again. I have a useless Car.
Best I've had
I bought this car used with 40K miles on it from a local dealer. I've only had 2 problems with it that required a shop's intervention and it hasn't left us stranded. With over 93000 miles on it, I've only noticed 1 intermittent squeek or rattle, the doors still click closed, the engine still starts with just a touch of the key and I couldn't be happier with it. The supercharger adds that extra kick and the engine isn't hard to modify for those who want some extra HP.
I love it so much I'm getting another on
We ordered this car new in '97, put 140,000 miles on it with NO problems. We sold it to our neighbor for his college bound daughter and we just bought a used 2004 with 14,000 miles on it. They discontinued the car so I couldn't find a new one. I could not find a car that performed like this one in its price range. I was even willing to spend more and drove the Acura TL. I didn't like the ride nor the performance as well as the Buick. I feel so strongly about this car I had to let people know what a great find it is. Buick did a poor job of marketing it or they would have sold more. Even Consumer Report rates it high. That's unheard of for an American car.
Started Off Bad, Ended Up Great!
I bought my Regal GS used with 58,000 miles. I chose the GS over the LS because of it's sharper handling. Less than a month after my purchase, the supercharger went bad and the car wouldn't start! But it was repaired in less than a week. Shortly after, the front passenger footwell began filling with water after a hard rain. It took the dealership two weeks to remedy that problem. But from then on I had no problems. The car's accelleration is great and ride comfort is excellent. Fuel ecomony with the supercharger isn't great, but could be worse. The stereo system has great sound. Leather seats held up very well. Despite my problems, I would still reccomend the Regal,