The venerable Buick 3.8 V6 has had a long and fairly illustrious career, powering many Buicks, and other GM vehicles over the past 30 years. The original design for the V6 started in the early 60s when Buick created a V6 based on the all aluminum 215 V8. The very first "Fireball" V6 displaced a whopping 198 cubic inches and shared tooling with the 215 aluminum V8 in 1962. In late 1963, the bore was increased to be the same as the 300 V8, which made displacement 225 cubic inches, where it stayed until 1967. Since the V6 had the same bore as the 1966 340 V8 it could be produced on the same assembly line. This made it cheap and easy to produce for the "compact" cars in GM'* car lines. The demand for the V6 was never very great and the design resulted in an uneven firing order that produced a rough idling engine, so the design was sold to Jeep in 1967.

In the 70s, with the advent of the gas crisis and the demand for a versatile, lightweight, and inexpensive engine, Buick bought the design back from Jeep in 1974. The little V6 was reworked so that it could be made on the same assembly line as the Buick 350, which entailed making the bore 3.800". Using this bore size, it could share pistons and other parts with the V6. This engine retained the original designs "odd-fire" design.

In 1977, Buick redesigned the firing order to make it a smoother running engine by revising the crank throws. This was a mid-year change, so some odd-fire and some even-fire V6s were made during 1977. The new even-fire engine still retained the same bore spacing as the odd-fire version, so the bores were no longer centered over the rods and the engine had to be under balanced and soft motor mounts were used. The balancing took care of the vertical component of the vibrations and the motor mounts took care of the horizontal component.

Several variations of the 231" V6 were made over the years, including the 3.0 liter in some of the early 80s front wheel drive cars, the 4.1 liter used in some of the larger rear wheel drive cars, and of course, the turbo 3.8 variations used in the various Sport Coupes, turbo Regals, some early '80-81 Monte Carlos, and some of the Riviera'*.