Buick and Olds both had a 215 Aluminon V8 Engine but they were different!!

Rover of England bought the tooling and produced their own 3500 cc Buick version and others.

It was used in Land Rovers until about 2003 so it had a good run !!

Repco of Australia used an Olds version in FI racing.

Olds had 6 head bolts vs the Buicks 5.

Buick enlarged their 215  Engine to 300 CID and the V6 was based in that.

GM sold the Buick V6 tooling to Jeep and Jeep used it for many years. 

Around 1975 GM bought it back and it evolved into the 3800 Engine family!

Thanks
Randy

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Randy nailed it 100%.

Yup, the Olds had 6 head bolts and also ended up turbocharging it (with a 10.5:1 compression & water-alcohol injection!), while Buick maintained the trademark nail valve head that looked unique.

With the fuel crisis still fresh in people's minds, Buick in '74 bought back the tooling from Jeep, which hadn't been used since the AMC take-over that resulted in AMC power starting in the '72 line. Buick hurried it into production starting '75 models. They did the V6 bores so they could use the existing 350 parts and machining, but they still didn't have time or budget to address the shared crank pin design that resulted in shake. Mid-year '77 on the H-cars (Skyhawk etc) they introduced a more complex crank with offset crank pins to even out the pulses (that meant redesigning the camshafts to match). For '78 the even-fire versions were the only versions henceforth, and the turbo, take 1, was unleashed for '78. The Grand Nationals were take 2 & were vastly better. Take 3 was  the GNX and it was too good to drop after '88 & so it's engine went into special edition Trans Ams, with compromises for hood clearance.

There were naturally aspirated V6s with 196, 231, 252 cubes. The 252s were kinda rare, coming only in early-to-mid 80's RWD LeSabres & Electras, plus Sedan DeVilles as an alternate to the V8-6-4 experiment, and had an aluminum intake & Quadrajet 4-barrel. They were bored out quite a bit, much like the 400 small block Chevies were.

Speaking of the switch to even-firing V6s, a friend once owned a '78 Buick Skylark (the Nova kind) with the new V6. It still ran rough so they investigated & found the odd-fire cam in the even-fire engine assembly. He got a new engine swapped in under warranty. He kept it until he bought one of the first 1982 S10 pickups around, and powered by a 2.8 V6 Citation engine.

CdnGMfan wrote:

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Speaking of the switch to even-firing V6s, a friend once owned a '78 Buick Skylark (the Nova kind) with the new V6. It still ran rough so they investigated & found the odd-fire cam in the even-fire engine assembly. He got a new engine swapped in under warranty. He kept it until he bought one of the first 1982 S10 pickups around, and powered by a 2.8 V6 Citation engine.

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 Cam, my old brain may be wrong here and having worked at the dealership for so long I should remember this. Anyway, I thought the Citation 2.8 and the S10 2.8 were totally different engines. Isn't the 2.8 S10 engine the 90 degree V6 and the Citation 2.8 engine is a 60 degree V6? I know there was 2 different 2.8's and I was thinking the 60 degree went into the transverse (FWD) applications and the 90 degree was in the RWD applications like the S10 and Camaro?