I loved the GN and was very tempted to buy one but I was in my 20s and I wanted a V8 convertible so I went with Mustangs. I remember driving to a friend's house in my '85 GT (5.0L, 5 speed stick, 2.73 gears) and he introduced me to his neighbor who had a beautiful new '86 Grand National. He offered to give me a ride so I got in and he found a good stretch of quiet road where he stopped the car and then punched it. It was a hot and humid midwest summer afternoon so it wasn't optimum conditions but the tires didn't even break loose. It felt soft off the line and built up steam very quickly to the point that I was sufficiently pinned back in the black and grey velour seat. In all likelihood, it was quicker to 60 than my GT but it just didn't feel that way.
The beauty of the Mustang for me was the combination of the rumble of the true dual exhaust, the roar of the factory Holley 4bbl, the greater involvement of the manual transmission, the instantaneous flood of torque, and the top-down-wind-in-my-face. It was then I realized that the fastest car is not always the most fun. It's the whole package, the visceral experience that takes in all of the senses.
As I got older, I began to develop a stronger appeal for bigger performance cars - midsize and fullsize coupes and sedans like the Cougar XR-7, the Thunderbird SC, the Impala SS, the Monte Carlo SS, the Marauder, the Challenger R/T, and the Charger R/T. In about a year, I'll be looking for a new performance car and I've preliminarily narrowed my choices to the Challenger R/T, the Charger R/T, the Taurus SHO, and the new SuperSport. I hope Buick comes back with a RWD turbo car perhaps based on the alpha and called Grand National. I would certainly include that on my list. Of those cars, the ones that interest me the most now are the Taurus and the Charger. Due to my nature (described above), I should want the SHO over the R/T since it's quicker and gets slightly better fuel economy but I'll likely end up with a V8 powered car just to hear those haunting pipes. I can't wait...