Rantoul, Illinois – One of the neatest aspects of the annual Hot Rod Power Tour is that the field of participating vehicles is amazingly diverse. Walk through the massive grounds of any Power Tour stop and you’ll find hot rods, exotic sports cars, heavy duty trucks, classic cruisers, and seemingly everything in between.
Case in point: a Buick Reatta.
Seriously, when was the last time you saw one of these sporty Buick coupes? Sure, we’ve come across a few trailer queens parked at some indoor car shows, but we never would’ve expected one to tackle an event like this.
“When I got it, the brake lines and fuel lines were completely rusted out. It was spraying gasoline,” Raymond admits. “So I had to replace big sections of them. And I had to replace the fuel tank, the pump, all the struts, all the brake calipers and rotors.”
He explains that the car had sat for a pretty long time—but since his repairs a few years ago, it’s racked up 15,000 miles.
In fact, after speaking with him in southern Illinois, Raymond tells us that the Reatta is heading all the way down the 2026 Power Tour route to Tulsa, Oklahoma before the 12+ hour return trip to his home in Lansing Michigan.
“This is the third Power Tour it’s been on,” Raymond smiles.
As it turns out this Reatta is actually Raymond’s “Plan B” for the 2026 Hot Rod Power Tour, after the torque converter gave out in his 1969 Barracuda a week before the trip—not that he minds much.
“Oh, it’s a great driver,” he says. “It’s got a very low center of gravity. Look at that motor, it’s not very high off of the wheels.”
Never heard of a Buick Reatta? Don’t turn in your gearhead credentials just yet—it was a low volume personal luxury car made between 1988 and 1991.
“It was the most expensive car Buick had ever made at the time,” Raymond chuckles.
Indeed, the front-wheel drive coupe was packed with innovations—perhaps most famously was its futuristic digital dash complete with a touchscreen CRT computer display. You can see that amazing technology in action here.
The touchscreen computer was eventually phased out later in the production run, but Raymond’s car is one of the lucky early models that got the fancy bit of 1980s tech.
…Even luckier, Raymond says the system still works great!
Under the hood is a version of the stalwart Buick 3.8L V6, mounted transversely and connected to a front-wheel drive transaxle. Curiously, Buick opted not to use one of its potent turbocharged 3.8L variants—likely due to durability issues with the transaxle and FWD layout.
So despite its sporty looks, the naturally aspirated 3800 in the Buick Reatta was only good for around 165 horsepower.
As alluded to above, the Reatta was a short-lived model. The car’s price tag made it a low volume seller, and the costs Buick was absorbing in its complex production inevitably doomed the coupe.
With the dawn of the 1990s, the Buick Reatta joined the Pontiac Fiero and Cadillac Allanté as cautionary tales of “what could have been” over at GM.
With just north of 20,000 Reattas made in its short existence, surviving and driving models are pretty rare nowadays—especially ones that rack up thousands of miles a year on long road trips.
So a special Hat Tip to our pal Raymond for making sure this one gets to continue weaving around twisty roads and educating onlookers wherever it goes.
***
Click here for all of our Hot Rod Power Tour coverage.
