In December 1992, on a lonely racetrack at night in a Texas desert, a trio of slippery shapes came zooming out of the dark at 180 mph. Wildlife scattered, stunned in their wake. On and on the strange machines circled, earthbound UFOs powered by howling V-8s, from dawn to dusk to dawn again for more than a week. Why? To prove that a four-door family sedan could go the distance.

Zipping into view at Bring a Trailer (which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos) is a pristine example of that exact sedan, a 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora with just 8000 miles on it. It's powered by the company's 4.0-liter V-8, a smaller-displacement derivative of Cadillac's Northstar engine, featuring double overhead camshafts and aluminum construction. Heady stuff for a 1990s GM product.

In production form, the 4.0-liter made peak power of 250 horsepower with 260 pound-feet of torque to match. Paired with a four-speed automatic transmission, it's not quite a sports sedan, but it is surprisingly fleet of foot and absolutely ideal for highway cruising duties.

This 4.0-liter V-8 also powered the Oldsmobile Aerotech endurance racers, themselves derivatives of earlier speed-record-attempt cars. All of these cars are bonkers to look at today—that’s an Oldsmobile? It looks like a Bugatti Veyron—and the endurance racers racked up some 47 world records over their run. Then Oldsmobile apparently forgot to tell anyone about them.

Still, as the new owner of this green-over-sandstone luxury sedan, at least you'll know the Aurora's forgotten backstory.

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