Since I’ve been writing for Curbside Classic I can count on one hand the number of Chevy Citations I’ve seen. This is the first one I’ve seen parked. But every time I do see a Citation, the jingle from the commercials that introduced them immediately fills my head. After all, it’s the first Chevy of the 80s!
Doesn’t this one look like the one driving around in that commercial?
The Citation was certainly GM’s deadliest sin (as we covered here), with its mechanicals not fully sorted at launch. After the first couple years, buyers shunned this car – and took with them any hope GM had of getting ahead of the Japanese.
But one thing GM got right, so right: the looks. For readers whose heads just exploded, stay with me for a minute: In an age when the heartland of America was still hinky as hell about the little cars coming our way from foreign lands, GM was spot on when it brought its (downsized) bigger cars’ design language to their new compact. It made all of the X bodies seem familiar, comfortable, approachable. Safe, even.
This one is not as pristine as its previous views show; the passenger side has some dents and dings.
And though it’s hard to see in this photo, which I took several months after the ones above, someone whanged into its rear door and left a nasty dent. Poor thing.
Based on my automotive reference standard ( “Car & Driver” ) magazine’s enthusiastic, glowing, praise laden, laudatory cover story of the Citation X11; I rushed over to my local Chevy dealer and tried to special order one before they even arrived in town.
Never mind the test drive! C& D loved it; that was good enough for me.
GMAC’s 16% interest rate quickly soured me; I dejectedly drove away in my paid for, fuel injected Opel Manta.
Lucky-for-me!
C&D did a follow-up in 1981 (I think) on the ‘new & improved’ X-11 with cleaned-up graphics, a hood scoop, and an HO V6. In the article, they mentioned how the 4-speed kept popping out of 4th gear upon deceleration but the GM rep claimed it was just a pre-production problem that would be fixed on any cars that reached the dealerships.
So, I, too, rushed down to my local Chevy dealer for a test drive. Lo and behold, the identical X-11 I drove did the exact same popping out of gear when slowing down as C&D’s test car. Could it have been the same car? At that point, I didn’t care, and sure as hell wasn’t buying one.
If You Say So.
Actually, it was the effects of Nixon’s wage/price freezes and other economic missteps that caused galloping inflation and high interest rates in the early 1980’s. (I won’t even get into Bretton Woods and leaving the gold standard.) The Federal Reserve raised interest rates at the time to tighten the money supply and thus bring inflation under control.
In other words: Don’t blame Carter for this one.
More detail: Carter hired Paul Volker as head of the fed. He told Carter that the only way to break the inflation that had been building since the mid 60s because of the Vietnam war was to jack interest rates sky high and kill it once and for all, as all previous half-assed measures (remember “WIN”?) had failed miserably.
Carter told him to go for it. This was late ’79 – early ’80. Reagan beat Carter but he was smart enough to keep Volker on and let him finish up with the inflation-killing interest rates. Reagan wisely new that he could withstand a recession early in his first term, as the economy was likely to be doing much better, and without inflation.
Which is how it turned out, and Reagan of course took credit for it. But he does get the credit for keeping Volker on and finishing the job. But then it would have been foolish to do otherwise.
PS: “WIN” stood for Whip Inflation Now, a campaign by Gerald Ford which mainly consisted of handing out millions of buttons with WIN on them. It was a losing idea, not surprisingly.
Paul, you are absolutely correct with regard to the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson wanted to wage a war and end poverty at the same time (the guns AND butter approach). It was the lighting of the fuse that didn’t detonate until the late 1970’s. As I referenced earlier, the removal of the dollar from the gold standard caused the dollar to plunge in value to other currencies (mainly European, Japan was playing the same game China is doing now: currency manipulation). Thus, most imports, including oil, were increasing in price.
It was a perfect storm, and most politicians and economists (with the exception of Paul Volker and Milton Friedman) could understand why inflation was happening and how to fix it.
Yeah, I remember the WIN buttons. It was a lame attempt to make the public think they were responsible for inflation, and that they could fix it.
Suffice to say high interest rates and high inflation go hand in hand. The effort to beat inflation at that time was not limited to the US, but ocurred across the world’s free market economies at the time, so we cannot blame American events or policies exclusively for the problem or the remedy.
A lot of people wore their WIN buttons upside down to say NIM – “No Immediate Miracles”.
My mom wore her WIN button proudly.
Nothing like an X-car to get CC readers going!
The Vietnam War, and to a lesser extent, the Great Society, led to deficits (that are small by the standards of the past 10 years).
This led to inflation. Which led to foreign nations, led by France, redeeming their paper dollars for gold.
This lead Nixon to totally severed (the already weak) the dollar’s link to gold in Aug 1971. Gold was $32 / oz.
To Paul’s point, Reagan was either clever (or lucky) enough to let Volcker beat inflation with high interest rates and take a recession EARLY in his first administration, and get re-elected.
Trump on the other hand had really low interest rates for his first 2 years…. He won’t be as lucky as Reagan.
The high interest rates and nasty recession actually began in late 1979. By 1980 I remember a prime rate at close to 20%. Carter’s economics team and his pick for the Federal Reserve (Volcker) undid many of the mistakes of the Nixon administration. Unfortunately for Carter the result was tight money, high interest rates, and a sharp recession made worse by the 1979 Iran oil embargo. The timing could not have been worse for Carter because by the election in November of 1980 things were grim indeed. By the time Reagan took office most of the cost of taming inflation had been paid and as a hard-money man himself (the last president with an economics degree, as it turns out) he would not have taken the cynical path to undo that good work for the short term opiate of loose money.
Just thought I’d mention in passing Jimmy Carter turned 94 on Oct. 1. Now he and the 1st President Bush are both 94.
As I recall Car and Driver also loved the Pacer and the Matador Coupe. 🙂
And made the AMC-Renault Alliance (“the Appliance”) Car of the Year a few years after. Not their finest hour.
No, “COTY” is Motor Trend’s baby.
C&D did put the Renault in their 1983 “10 Best”.
Popular Science did a big feature on the upcoming new GM front-drive cars in their April, 1979 issue extolling the cars’ revolutionary advancements. Of course at the time nobody knew what a disaster they would turn out to be.
The Pacer had a lot to love. Far ahead of its time in packaging and layout.
Rare, indeed, Haven’t seen one, save for one X-11, or its cousins, on the road in decades. even here in Tinworm safe Az.
Better dejected in the short term than bitterly disappointed in the long term.
My dad, a long time Chevy man, took the Citation bait (no 16% interest, he paid cash). Sometimes it would barely run. It was the last Chevrolet he ever bought. Still stayed with GM until the letdown of the GM Diesel he got a while later.
That was his last GM vehicle ever..
Our family was shopping for a car around that time and was considering the GM X cars. My uncle however dissuaded my dad from getting one, and suggested going up one size to the A-body cars (I think because he had a ’78 Regal).
Well since we were a family, I insisted we get a sedan since I’d proabably spend a lot of time in the back seat (and I found the back of my uncle’s Regal a bit claustophobic). Ended up getting a Century sedan (MY 1980, 1st year with the formal roofline and non-Aeroback one), with the fixed windows in back.
So that was a good thing – because the Century turned out to be a pretty reliable car, one that we kept for over 14 years.
I almost took the bait as well…fortunately I was right out of school at the time and didn’t think I could afford a new car (I’ve only bought one car new since)…but that didn’t stop me from looking.
I had the 1979 Popular Science magazine back when it came out, and I was one of those convinced…it took me sliding on some black ice in early 1981 in my RWD Datsun to convince me I needed to start shopping for a FWD car. I looked at GM (particularly a Pontiac Phoenix) and Chrysler (looked at a Dodge Aries when they first came out). The year before my Dad had bought kind of a mid-life crisis car, a 2 door Dodge Omni, to replace a Subaru he gave to my Sister. I almost bought a used Plymouth Horizon similar to my Dad’s, but in the meantime found a used 1978 VW Scirocco that I fell in love with…it was my first VW, and converted me to a long-time owner (have only owned VWs since then).
Of course I sometimes play the “what-if” game, which I realize could go either way. I’ve met a few X-car owners who contrary to the odds ended up liking and keeping their cars quite a few years, but also realize that most owners weren’t in that category. I kept the Scirocco until 1987, when I started looking again, looked at the Honda Accord Hatchback, and Mitsubishi Galant (realize they’re in different markets). Would likely have ended up with the Accord, but they bundled packages in a way I didn’t like…wanted fuel injected engine but had to get the LXi with power windows/locks which I didn’t want at the time. I don’t think I really looked at any other cars when I bought my current (2000 Golf) car.
My parents later bought a 1984 Pontiac Sunfire, after my sister bought one (her only new car thus far)…though my sister’s car gave her OK service, my parent’s Sunfire was terrible….lost a timing belt when it had less than 1000 miles on it, an engine at less than 40k miles, and despite having a replacement engine threw a rod on the 2nd engine in less than 80k total miles…it had lots of other things that went on it, power steering rack, headlight switch, etc…They did take it to the dealer for regular service, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. My parent’s did eventually come back to GM many years later, bought two Chevy Impalas in a row (after my Dad had bought 3 Sables in a row previously…yes, he didn’t keep his cars very long back then). But the Sunfire was by far the worst car he ever owned…including his 1968 Renault R10 which despite its low mileage had electrical and clutch issues.
Yup, I dodged the automotive bullet on that one!
Boy, if the videotape going screwy in the closing seconds of that commercial isn’t a portent of the ownership experience of a Citation, then I don’t know what is…
That commercial though — “Look, you can tow a boat with the back wheels off!”
WTF??? “Thanks GM, I always wanted a car that could do that!”
I get that they had to demonstrate front-wheel-drive to goobers in Nebraska who vaguely suspected it was communist, but REALLY?
I remember very well seeing that for the first time in 1979 and having my mind blown. Out here in flyover country this very idea was super radical.
The Citation makes me think of the line: “How the mighty have fallen”!
I suppose the OEMs didn’t have much choice. considering what they offered in the past. Sure, the Chevelles and other GM mid-sizers were pretty good, and the B bodies were no slouches, but something new was needed to deal with the fuel crisis and overall fuel economy. The world was entering a new phase.
I just wish they came up with something better. Better in looks and quality.
Even a six month delay by GM with these cars to work on the brakes and on some of the engine/transmission issues would have greatly helped the company. To this point GM really had not sunk itself – had the X-Cars been rolled out with its obvious deficiencies worked out BEFORE production, GM might not have cost the taxpayers over $30 billion and growing in unrecovered bailout dollars!
That would have been the correct thing to do, but part of it was cost. GM, in its wisdom, removed the brake proportioning valve from the rear brakes. This is what caused the rear lock-up problem. There was a hasty recall the replace the rear brake linings, but not install the valve as they should. This, even if they had waited six months, the major problem would have still been there.
I remember the hype that went along with the X cars. It went on seemingly forever, and I am sure GM exec’s weren’t too happy to disappoint their customers.
GM business model, up to this point, was to make enough profit on the first year to pay for the entire programme. This led to shortcuts and cheap materials. What GM really needed was to finally get rid of the annual model change and put more resources into product and less into advertising.
A six month delay wouldn’t have changed that in my opinion.
GM’s huckster business model was to produce corner-cut crap and hype it with massive marketing campaigns. If only they had put the money into proper engineering and quality standards for the product instead of pumping it into advertising, they could have owned the 1980s car market.
But there was always some executive looking to make a bonus by cheapening the car. Absolute contempt for the customer.
Didn’t GM also cheap out on the rear brakes & use larger & heavier rear brakes from old Nova because it was cheaper to use the common brakes rather than special for the model?
Either the driver keeps hitting objects or that is not a very safe place to park.
It’s got to be the latter. This isn’t exactly a busy street but it does get some traffic, and the car itself seems always to be at a slight angle and five feet from the curb.
In November of 1979, I rented a 1980 Citation from ALAMO (Still in business?) on a vacation in Fla. Was a 2 door, light yellow basic model. Was also the first FWD I ever drove. Hello torque steer! My impression at the time was, gee, this seems kind of “tinny” and cheap. Thin doors, mouse fur upholstery. and lots and lots of plastic. At the time I drove a ’78 Mustang II, and even it seemed to be more of a substantial car, Never considered buying a Citation after that initial introduction.
“ALAMO (Still in business?) ”
They merged with National, so now there are “Alamo/National” shuttle buses at Airports. [Other mergers: Dollar/Thrifty and Avis/Budget.]
Enterprise is now part of the same company with National and Alamo. I do prefer these over Hertz and Avis. I like the “pick any car” and less pressure on the staff to upsell, which makes the lines shorter and me less aggravated.
We usually reserve through Costco for free extra driver and pay with American Express for the primary full coverage insurance option @ $18 per rental, not per day.
Great catch Jim. Credit to the discipline of the owner keeping this one on the road. I had a chance to drive a Citation, and later an Omega, several years after they were introduced. The one notable element that I still give GM plenty of credit for, was their feeling of interior spaciousness, given their small exteriors. They did well capitalizing on front wheel drive in this regard.
It’s really easy (and cheap) to keep them on the road. GM put the same mechanical bits in millions of vehicles. Brakes, ignition, carburetor, electrical switches, etc. are all GM parts bin stuff and still readily available. Rubber parts, such as accessory belts and proper sized tires are more difficult to find in-stock. Come to think of it, 13″ and 14″ tires pretty much have to be special ordered these days…
I have a 1982 X-11, and I now have a stockpile of stuff.
Rust killed most of the Citations (and their contemporaries) and now the bodywork is unobtanium now that the cars are approaching 40 years old…
Good catch. None on the streets here recently, although I know there’s a few still out there somewhere.
Yes, the Citation was a model of space efficiency. If only they’d not rushed it and finished its development before building it.
They didn’t rush it, the car was 2 years behind schedule when it came out. It was supposed to be ready for the 1978 Model Year
That space efficiency was the X-body’s greatest bequeathal to the A-bodies that followed it. I stills swear the Celebrity I had as my first car possessed better legroom than any of the compact or midsize cars I’ve owned since, and certainly much better than the G-body Cutlass that followed it.
Combine that with a 15 cubic foot trunk (that was a box in shape) and that’s why I shake my head in dismay at the current crop of sedans with oddly shaped trunks and tiny openings along with sub par rear legroom in many of the smaller offerings.
I only ever rode in one of these, a manually shifted model that a woman I worked for owned. Woulda been 1987. My memory is that it was unusually roomy.
A law school roommate brought one (an 81-ish Pontiac Phoenix sedan) out from his home in Connecticut – the hatchback was better for moving stuff than the 77-ish LTD II sedan that he usually drove. I remember the Phoenix as being really nicely trimmed for a car of its size. At the time I had not really followed these so the quality problems were unknown to me. I remember being surprised that they were not selling better. It was roomy, nicely finished and economical. It was just the kind of car that should have set the world on fire in the early 80s. But . . . yeah.
I can only think of one Citation I’ve seen on the road this year. And it was in Quito, Ecuador. Red, two door coupe (not hatch). And no, I couldn’t get a picture 🙁
Don’t care what anyone says……….i love these cars. Especialy in X-11 hatchback guise in red. Awsome lil Chevy!
Totally agree. They were great cars for the time, and much more roomy and better equipped than the “economy” cars of the day. I owned a Citation for a while and once rented an Omega for a week. The biggest shortcoming was the slow and rough 4 cyl engine. The V6 , especially in that first years was smooth and pretty perky. Overall the X-cars were a great effort at the time and I didn’t have any other complaints.
I have a 1982 X-11 in my garage.
If you accept the fact that it is a 1982 car and not a 2018 loaded with every gadget imaginable, its a contemporary drive.
In fact, it’s not lightning quick, but a really satisfying drive. It handles, steers wheel. It is really spacious inside and the visibility. Well, the last car that I owned with equal or superior visibility was when Honda made low-beltline Accords.
The most amazing thing is that it is as roomy as my 2007 V70 Wagon but occupies at least half a foot less space in the garage.
A cute girl moved in down the street. Her family came from Minnesota, and they brought their Citation with them.
One day in 1984, she drove past my open garage door, where I was replacing a headgasket on a 1963 Falcon wagon. She stopped and asked if I could take a look at her car. It was making a “thunking” sound under the back seat when she braked.
How thrilled I was to chat with Kimberly. I had seen her at our high school, and found her quite, uhm, interesting….! I rolled my floor jack to the curb, raised the LR corner of the car….and found that the mounting points for the rear axle trailing links had essentially disappeared….the axle was flopping around back there…how the spring didn’t pop out is beyond my understanding. Only a few winters in Minnesota had done this damage. As a CA kid, I had never seen rust like that!
I recommended she not drive it any further than back to her house…and I never saw the car again.
Anything is possible department: a coworker of mine bought a new Citation in 80. Liked it fine, until a drunk t-boned it around 85.
Alternate reality department. AMC inherited the ex-Buick V6 when it bought Jeep in 70. The Renault 30, which launched in 75, was almost exactly the same size as the Citation. With 20/20 hindsight, AMC could have kept the V6, hitched it to a B-W 35, because B-W was making front drive derivatives of the 35, stuffed it in a license built R30 and been 5 years ahead of GM.
For those who impugn my veracity: a Borg 35, adapted for front drive, in this case a Citroen SM.
The BW 35 was pretty archaic. Saab also used a front drive version of this transmission in the 99 and original 900 until 1993 (1994 for convertibles). I don’t know of anyone else using it that late in the game.
Having worked as a Mopar service advisor, I can attest that the mix of AMC and Renault components was not a match well avdvised. See the Dodge Monaco as your example. What a hodge-podge of systems from different manufacturers in that abomination. Renault brakes and ABS. Peugeot engine, that grenaded at 100k km, with Chrysler engine control hardware. The archaic electrical system was pure AMC. The BW transmission was just the icing on the horror cake!
What a hodge-podge of systems from different manufacturers
Life as an independent with a 2% market share. A mid 70s AMC would feature a TorqueFlite trans, Bendix brakes, Saginaw Steering Gear power steering and, iirc, a Ford distributor.
I was talking with a couple former AMC honchos a few weeks ago. The scene behind the doors, the conflicts between the AMC and Renault people were pretty ugly at times.
Didn’t the Premier/Monaco use the ZF 4HP18 4-speed automatic? I think in the U.S. the only other car that came with it was the Saab 9000, maybe the related and even lower-volume Alfa 164. I thought that the base Premier engine was the AMC 4-cylinder 2.5.
Didn’t the Premier/Monaco use the ZF 4HP18 4-speed automatic?
The Wiki entry says the Premier used both the ZF and an Audi trans, the AMC 2.5 and the PRV V6. Outside of noticing one when I see it, I never paid a lot of attention to the Premier.
Chevy probably had a steeper learning curve to climb, having to create the Citation from a clean sheet. Of course, GM had the money and probably a severe case of Not Invented Here, which pushed them to reinvent the wheel, rather than asking someone for help with the project. As Chevy went through different generations from Citation to Celebrity, Corsica and Lumina, they got it figured out, but a lot of paying customers were used as beta testers along the way.
Chrysler was not so proud and exploited the decade of experience Simca had with front drive models in creating the North American market Horizon.
Ford wasn’t quite so proud either, and cozied up to Mazda to make something of a joint effort of the 81 Escort and GLC.
AMC had to beg technology and parts wherever they could find them. They tried to hook up with Peugeot, but it turned out that Peugeot was only interested in getting access to the AMC dealer network, and zero interest in helping AMC build modern cars. Renault was more willing to share product, so they got the nod.
Remember the early 80s in the US were a time of “voluntary import constraints” and threats of domestic content laws. The Alliance contained about 72% US produced parts. It’s no surprise that the Premier was also a mashup of European and North American parts. The political environment of the time virtually dictated that a car produced here by a foreign manufacturer would be a mashup.
Did the GLC share anything with the ‘81 Escort? I don’t think there was much Mazda in any Escort (save for diesels) until 1991.
Yes the GLC and Escort shared manual trans components.
”Ford wasn’t quite so proud either, and cozied up to Mazda to make something of a joint effort of the 81 Escort and GLC.”
Ford of Europe also had some familiarity with front-wheel-drive cars by that time. The Fiesta appeared four years ahead of the “project Erika” Escort, and going back a decade, there was the Taunus P4/P6 (which was originally developed in and planned for the US market). Aside from some drivetrain components, the Escort that the US received for the ‘81 model year appeared to have as much in common with the Fiesta as it did with any Mazda product.
Did the GLC share anything with the ‘81 Escort? I don’t think there was much Mazda in any Escort (save for diesels) until 1991.
As Scoutdude said, they shared manual transmissions, though you could get a 5 speed on an 81 GLC, but only a 4 speed on an 81 Escort. There were platform differences as the Escort had the gas filler on the right, indicating some parentage from the European Escort, while the GLC had the filler on the left. The GLC also had a more elaborate rear suspension. The cross pollination was widely reported at the time. I think it was R&T that did a direct comparison of the two and highlighted the common parts and the differences.
Any big three automaker going outside the company for anything was rare at that time as they were all in the grip of “Not Invented Here” syndrome. I had to laff one day when I saw the ignition key of a coworker’s late 80s Chrysler. Ford had pioneered the two sided key in 1965. My 80 Renault and 85 Mazda both had two sided keys. That late 80s Chrysler still persisted with single sided keys, more than 20 years after Ford’s innovation. Owner convenience be dammed, Chrysler was not going to copy Ford.
The way Chevy tried to do the Citation entirely in house, was the big three norm. If Ford had wanted to steal a march on GM and Chrysler, they would have replaced the Pinto in the mid 70s with a development of the Brazilian market Ford Corcel, but the idea of Ford North America using the Corcel’s Renault 12 based platform probably would have made heads explode in Dearborn.
Yes the GLC and Escort shared manual trans components.
That’s hardly the definition of a “joint effort”.
This generation Escort was a pure Ford design, conceived to be a world car and developed jointly on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, the NA version was a little turd compared to the quite competitive European one, because Dearborn didn’t have a clue as to how to build a really good little car.
Meanwhile, Mazda’s very different (except for the manual transmission parts) was a superb little car, profoundly better in every way. Which explains why Ford NA threw in the towel and used the next gen 323 as the basis for the next Escort, which made it a much better car.
Steve, appearances can be deceiving. The 323 and the Escort DID NOT share platforms, or anything else significant except that transmission. If some auto journos saw that the two happened to look similar, that does NOT constitute platform sharing or anything else. Coincidence. Speculation.
I know you’re perpetually convinced otherwise, and were totally sure the next Focus would use the Mazda 3 platform (NOT) but I’m sorry, you’re wrong.
If some auto journos saw that the two happened to look similar, that does NOT constitute platform sharing or anything else. Coincidence. Speculation.
I’m relaying what I read at the time. I drove an 81 Escort and an 81 GLC back to back when new. I really liked the Escort wagon’s looks, but the GLC’s suspension control and shifter linkage were lightyears better.
Here’s something to chew on: Ford is working on a big “sport sedan”. Think 4 door Mustang. I was driving up Oakwood in Dearborn and spied a big 4 door with a muscular shape, completely covered in camo. Could have been a next gen Charger, or some such, but Oakwood goes through the heart of the Ford engineering campus and the car was positioned to turn east on Michigan, which would take it to the Ford HQ building.
I know you’re perpetually convinced otherwise, and were totally sure the next Focus would use the Mazda 3 platform (NOT) but I’m sorry, you’re wrong.
We shall see. The next gen Mazda 3 breaks cover next month, though, since we will not get any sort of Focus in the US next year, the media may not pay any attention to similarities.
My offer stands. If I am wrong, the 2020 Mazda3 and Focus are not related, I’ll buy you a ticket to the Packard Plant Tour. You could be in this pic next year.
The R30, which was sold for a while in Canada (see picture), was the top of the Renault range and was designed to be quite a bit farther upmarket than the Citation. The car probably could not have been profitably sold at a competitive price. The Renault had its own problems with rust, build quality, and poor reliability so it wouldn’t have saved AMC even if the price was right.
The R30, which was sold for a while in Canada (see picture), was the top of the Renault range and was designed to be quite a bit farther upmarket than the Citation.
Yes, though, to my eyes, the interior of the R30 did not look that nice for an “executive” class car. Vince Geraci would have fixed that. Renault also ran into price resistance and substituted a 2L 4 as the R20 to lower the price. Substituting the ex-Buick V6 for the PRV would have addressed both cost and reliability issues. It also crossed my mind that AMC could have done a notchback sedan first, call it the 1975 Ambassador, and hit the “luxury compact” market that the Granada and high trim Volare were aimed at, with a car that would look very much like an 82 Buick Century.
Agreed. But without GM’S marketing clout, most buyers wouldn’t understand or accept the new and unusual design and dismiss it as another weird and ugly AMC design. It would be a repeat of the Pacer.
GM, despite it’s faults got the average buyer to dramatically change their conservative buying habits.
Agreed. But without GM’S marketing clout, most buyers wouldn’t understand or accept the new and unusual design and dismiss it as another weird and ugly AMC design. It would be a repeat of the Pacer.
Yup. An Americanized R30 is only obvious with 20/20 hindsight. The Pacer tapped in to the concerns at the time with road congestion as it offered as much interior room for front seat occupants as a full size car, with a small footprint to ease road congestion. To preempt the Pacer and Matador coupe, to secure the development money, the R30 would have had to be pitched in 71 or 72, when cars that size were cheap penalty boxes. I remember being intrigued by front drive models of the time like the Audi 100 and Subaru FF-1, but I was a cult of one as my contemporaries insisted the rear wheels had to drive as God intended.
I remember vividly when these came out. I was all of fifteen years old, and Car and Driver was my bible of truth. On paper, these cars were exactly the format buyers wanted, the right size and utility. The Iron Duke was an obvious let-down, but the V-6 was peppy for its day and powered about a zillion GM vehicles in its history. I never got the hate for the 60 degree V-6.
My family was true blue GM, and we eagerly awaited the first ones to arrive at the dealership. By this time, I was sixteen, and had a driver’s licence. Dad and I got a Citation Club Coupe V-6 for a test drive, with bench seat and four speed manual.
The torque steer was something to behold. The shifter was a long throw floppy device which had no inkling of a gear being selected. The brakes were pathetic, it rattled like a banshee and was more money than dad’s 1979 Impala, which was an infinitely better car.
Thus started my GM cognitive dissonance. It took me another five years or so to really see the light about GM and Car and Driver.
Canuck I was also 15 when these things came out in spring of ’79 as an early ’80 model and I remember the praise C & D mag heaped on them, nothing bad to say at all. They looked good, had lots of interior room and the promise of something to really beat back the imports. But the first 800k people who bought them in their first extra-long model year soon found out what a POS of they really were.
C&D did a mea culpa a few years later, and admitted they’d been hoodwinked by a heavily-massaged press vehicle far superior to what went into production.
You could start with the crankshafts of the early V6 breaking. Those also would not seal the rear main seal because of the wobbling crankshaft.
I too remember these being introduced. Chrysler was in an increasingly bad way. The L body Omnirizon were in showrooms and fanboi-me knew that the K body was in the oven. But I just knew that this car would suck all of the oxygen out of the market and that the poor Chrysler version would be a day late and a dollar short – just like everything else Chrysler had tried.
But a funny thing happened – these turned out to suck. And the K car got a fighting chance, giving the company a repreive.
That’s an angle I never thought about- if these were actually good Ford and Chrysler might not have had a chance.
Also if these had been any good, the Japanese would have been running scared too!
You have to give the folks who bought a new Chrysler product of any kind in 1980-81 or so a lot credit for their faith. When my brother was looking for his first new car in 1978, he looked at the Omnirizon as one of his targets. It was not a considered a bad idea as the extent of the issues at Chrysler had not been disseminated yet.
By late 1979, it was bad idea, as there was talk of ChryCo going the same route as Studebaker. I knew folks who probably would have liked a new Omni, but were put off by rumors of Chrysler’s imminent demise.
The X cars flopped, the new Escort was too little car, too late and the K-car, while similarly sized to the X cars, appealed to the folks who wanted a car that was the FWD reincarnation of a Valiant. Apparently there were a lot of them.
Had the other two cars arrived either fully developed (X cars) or a year or two earlier (Escort), the K car may not have made it.
I always thought the Citation was the best-looking of the X-cars. It looked cool even in 4-door form.
Sadly we all know what a POS it was; the “first Chevy of the 80s” turned out to be a Gift to Japan – it could’ve been a Gift to Ford but they had their own POS rides back then and the Blue Oval’s redemption was still a few years away. And I’m sure ChryCo caught a few conquest buyers but Toyota, Honda and Nissan were the big beneficiaries of angry former X-car owners. Easy to point at Corvair and Vega’s issues but Citation was strike three. Chevrolet fell from a 25% market share (and GM from having 53%!!) to where they are today.
The BowTie has some great rides today but there’s still many perceptual issues about the Chevrolet brand, mostly of their own making, and mostly starting with the 1980 Citation.
If only it ran as good as it looked.
”Easy to point at Corvair and Vega’s issues but Citation was strike three.”
And one could easily argue that strike four was the Cavalier. Crude drivetrains, underpowered, overweight, and initially overpriced. As Brock Yates stated in the chapter title for these cars in The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry, “The ‘J’ is NOT for ‘Japanese.’”
BUT…the J-car was much better sorted than the X-car, even if underpowered. Build quality was much better, and once they improved the drivetrains (with a larger Chevy engine and imported GM-Brazil Opel engines) they turned out to be halfway decent cars.
The problem then was they were left in production too long, long after the rest of the world had two redesigns, and were no longer competitive in their target market.
GM’s main problem, well documented over the years, is that their basic engineering was on target, but their development was not, so the first customers served as their R&D. The X-car’s derivatives, as in the J and A cars, turned out to be decently reliable platforms, if a bit outdated by the time they were fully de-bugged.
The missed opportunity, again well documented, was that the X-car and its derivatives were right on the money in terms of size, performance and market position when introduced, which is why there was so much hype. GM was actually hitting marketing home runs with their downsizing program starting with the big cars in 1977 and the midsize cars in ’78. Those carried the company through their other problems throughout the 1980’s.
The deadly sin, then, was the decision to centralize production under the GM Assembly Division in 1971. Once the divisions lost control over quality, GM began its slow decline.
I was a young teenager when these were introduced. Maybe I’m off in my recollection, but I thought much of the X car hype came from network news. With the growing struggles of the domestic industry, the X cars were seen somewhat as the potential saviour of the American auto sector, representing the US fighting back against the imports. With one of their best efforts yet. The term ‘X Car’ had great name recognition with the general public. Most kids in my school knew what they represented, if not much about the cars themselves. The hype in the network press made the disappointment later, that much more dramatic. This increased pressure, for what the X cars represented to the domestic industry, further added to GM’s reputation woes down the road.
I was quite impressed by both the press reviews and the new V6/4 speed coupe my housemate bought. Roomy. Good fuel economy. Quick for the day. What wasn’t to like?
It wasn’t the most refined drive, cable shifter being very obvious, but not many things were then. I was driving a ’74 Opel Sportwagon, and the Citation seemed a world ahead by comparison… until it didn’t. Talk about a flash in the pan!
I was shopping a Chevy showroom “back in the day” looking at Chevette 4 doors, the salesman walked me up to the brand new Citation with the claim it was a 15% bigger car for only 10% more money! I never bought either. A friend of mine bought an X-11 though. He beat it without mercy and it actually seemed to hold up fairly well.
GM was on a roll when the X body came out….77 gave us the B&C bodies….a home run, then the 78 saw the A body, 79, the E body…Riviera, -Toranado, Eldorado and then the x body, 2 saw the new front drive a body, the J body and 84 saw the new Corvette followed by the H body in 86…..No auto maker ever introduced so many cars in a 10 year period
My mother bought a second-year (’81) Citation, 4-door hatch with the V6, and it did not have many problems, the worst being the infamous “morning sickness” where the power steering didn’t function properly from a cold start. It seemed like a luxury car compared to my ’79 VW Rabbit.
I’ve driven past the pictured, long-defunct Citation many times, but finally stopped to take a few photos of it last month in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. The yellow car behind it is a “ran when parked” Ford Festiva.
I got a brief ride in a coworker’s Citation (I forget what model year) ca. 1987. She said she’d expected more car for $8000.
The “first Chevy of the ‘80s”…would be the last for many owners.
SO many Honda and Toyota converts in the early 1980’s were because of this…car…
And a few years later, it almost seemed as though Toyota engineers took apart a Citation, and then upgraded every component as they were reassembling it.
Paul did a nice piece on this imagined Citation-Camry connection:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1986-toyota-camry-toyota-builds-a-better-citation-forever/
Toyota still had RWD Corolla and Corona [Camry] in 1980, but were proven designs, The FWD versions were out in ’83/’84.
Rushing all new cars to market is rarely successful.
I’ve never driven or riden in a Citation (or other X body), so can’t comment there.
But I will say it’s a great looking car – sort of a cross between the Rover SD1 stretched upwards and the Chrysler Alpine/Simca 1307. Much better looking than the similarly sized Renault 20, and the 2 tone helps I suspect.
It’s surprisingly close in size to the Austin Princess.
Another example of the right car built wrong. British Leyland had even worse quality problems than GM, again well documented with the wildcat strikes going on in the factories (a wildcat strike is a local or an individual facility walking out without authorization from the union), so decent designs like the SD1, Princess and TR7 were undermined by abysmal workmanship.
They actually all sold well initially because they were again, modern designs well positioned in their markets. Ownership experience eventually caught up with them, as it did with GM.
The only Citation Ive ever seen had a for sale sign on it and grass up to the door handles test drivers werent exactly rushing to try it, but since it never sold here its maladies cant have been well known, maybe I’ll see a mobile example one day if one got imported likely more did.
This is it: GM’s number one Deadly Sin. While the Vega might have been technically worse, it wasn’t a mainstream vehicle. There were quite a few families that bought a Vega as a second car, so at least they had a back-up when the Vega was (often) in the shop.
Not so with the Citation. Unlike the Vega (or even Corvair), the X-body could supposedly be a young family’s only means of vehicular transportation. Imagine the 1-2 punch of an otherwise solidly GM family buying a Vega, then later giving the Citation a try. I can’t imagine anyone in that situation ever buying another domestic car, let alone a GM product, ever again. And GM sold an awful lot of Vegas and Citations.
And, sadly, GM management didn’t seem to care. Or at least not enough to really make an effort to fix the problem(s). Instead, as someone else pointed out, they just became a bottom-feeder, selling their volume FWD cars mainly to those with bad credit and fleets.
I would be surprised if many Vega owners replaced that car with a Citation. The Citation debuted in the spring of 1979. I would guess that most of the seriously problematic Vegas – the pre-1976 models – had long been traded on something else by that point.
Most of the seriously burned Vega owners either went Japanese, or tried a Chevette, if they were GM loyalists. The Chevette had its own issues – primarily related to a lack of refinement – but it wasn’t flawed mechanically.
Plus, the X-cars were NOT inexpensive when they debuted. They were not sold as cheap cars, and initial high demand meant that dealers were not offering substantial discounts to customers.
I remember quite a few full-size and intermediate GM cars being traded on these. The first Citation I ever saw on the road was owned by my high-school principal. He had traded a 1975 Caprice Estate for it. At Oldsmobile and Buick, their versions of the X-cars were specifically styled to look like shrunken versions of their intermediate and full-size offerings.
Which, as you note, makes their long-term failure even worse, as GM was alienating what had been their core customers with these cars.
Yeah, I seriously doubt that anyone went straight from a Vega to a Citation. But even with the bad taste of the Vega still in their mouth, I would be willing to bet that more than a few people who had had a Vega somewhere in their past decided they might give a Citation a try. Those are the folks who would be swearing off GM products for at least a generation (and probably more).
Strangely enough my best friend’s mother went from a 67 Corvair to a 74 Vega Kammback, to an 82 Citation. Talk about three strikes! Actually the Corvair was in pretty good shape when the Vega replaced it. That Vega became my friend’s first car. It was leaking oil like crazy and was so badly rusted, she had to stick bumper stickers from the local radio station all around the front windshield to keep rainwater out. she would finally abandon it on the belt parkway when it refused to keep running. She replaced it with a 72 Comet she couldn’t kill. Her mom’s Citation must have been one of the better ones as it was kept until 1996 when a New Monte Carlo replaced it, and I don’t remember anything going seriously wrong with it. That said, I never cared for the Citation. I was a service agent for Avis when they first came out and we had some very early ones in the fleet. I always thought the proportions were all out of whack, too much middle too little on the ends. The club Coupe in particular always struck me as having been designed thusly; take a good looking 78 Malibu Coupe, cut it up, throw the remaining pieces in the air and when they land piece them together with half of it missing. The hatchbacks just looked ungainly. Upon driving the first batch at Avis, the lousy brakes and torque steer were readily apparent. so in the early 90’s when I was looking for a cheap, frugal but reliable car for my 60 mile a day work commute, I never considered a Citation. I bought a Chevette. Got 189,000 very trouble free miles out of it and sold it to a co worker for almost what I initially paid for it.
@geeber: Your memories mostly coincide with mine. The original X cars were a hot commodity in 1979. It was not uncommon to see folks trade in their mid sized cars on one of these as they had nearly the same amount of interior room. People had just witnessed GM coming off the ledge of ever bigger and bigger cars with the redesigned B and A bodies in the last couple of years. Those cars were well received, no one expected the brain fart that was the X cars.
Yes, as I recall, there was a bit of a premium getting one of these. There was no discounting off of sticker, at least initially. As someone else further up the strings had mentioned the interest rates at the time. I remember them well, I was just old enough to get a car loan. At 18 per cent. So anyone ponying up for one of these cars had a lot invested in it.
And again, that would have been salt in the wounds for anyone who’d gotten a bad one…
For a while in 1979-1980, I was tempted to lay out my hard-earned money for a loaded V6/4-speed Pontiac Phoenix SJ coupe. Fortunately, I waited long enough to find out that it would have been a poor move.
As a former mechanic, my brother asked for help picking his 1st new car. He feel in love with a 79 Phoenix V6/4-speed. It drove well and had amazing power for the time. I gave the OK.
He never asked for my help again.
’80 Phoenix bought new in ’79. Age does that to a person.
I did buy a ’80 X-11 Citation, not a high water make of my car ownership. Not a TOTAL POS, but close enough….finally traded for a new ’85 Dodge Lancer turbo…uhh….umm…even a WORSE cable shifter than my X-11; Lancer later blew a head gasket. Got rid of it for my second Honda 🙂 DFO
The cable shifter on the X-bodies was not terrible. My folks had an Omni for awhile. THAT was a terrible shifter!
Chevy Ci-TAA-tion! Total cheese, befitting a total cheese mobile. Great post
Was this somewhere in Indy Jim? When my family first immigrated to the US we rented a floor of a house and one of the other families living there had both a Citation and a Chevette. I remember as a 3-4 year old thinking it was interesting how they were both Chevies and shaped similarly, yet slightly different size and totally different models. Of course I didn’t know at the time that one was FWD and the other RWD.
Zionsville. First street.
A long term Louisiana State Police friend of mine, closing in on retirement age in the early 1980’s, dryly commented that he investigated more Citation/ X-car accidents caused by the rear brakes malfunctioning that he did Corvairs spinning off the road accidents in the 1960’s.
Dad bought one pretty much sight unseen in 1979 so our four door hatchback, V6, automatic ought to have been among the early builds. We kept that car for what was in my family at the time an unusually long time: over five years.
For us it was a darn good car. The only teething issue it had was a bad electric fan switch which caused the car to overheat once. Had I been more familiar with the cars wiring I’d have known that had I turned on the air conditioner it would have forced the electric fan on🤷♂️.
The only non-wear repair was a water pump.
I had the car swap ends one time when the rear brakes locked-up but I was on ice so that didn’t help.
Family rear-ended in it and shoved into the car in front. Everyone fine and not so much damage to the car.
So I’ve a soft spot in my heart for the X cars….with the V6. It was a great car for us. Clearly our mileage varied from most.
They all “overheated.” The electric fan start temperature is really high. I freaked out the first couple times with my 1982 X-11 and used the “turn on the AC” trick to light the electric fan off.
The iron block and head V6’s were just set at the factory to have the wild temperature swings. I have no idea why. It’s clearly something you can’t have with aluminum heads/aluminum engines….
I had the car swap ends one time when the rear brakes locked-up but I was on ice so that didn’t help.
My POS 78 Zephyr, bought new, would lock the rears and get sideways, on clean, dry, pavement, if I hit the brakes with enthusiasm. Fortunately, there was never anyone in the left lane at the time as the rear always swing to the left.
Check out the brake test on this 82 Granada, the rear sliding to the right on the stop from 55, around the 4 minute mark, even with a planned stop with the driver modulating the brakes, and how much the car’s body bounces after it stops. That is how big three products drove then.
If you want some real fun, watch some of the old Bud Lindemann road tests from the 60’s and 70’s. Numerous cars require LARGE amounts of steering correction in the emergency braking maneuvers to keep them going straight ahead. Some of them, even with the steering correction almost spin 180 degrees anyway.
Complain all you want about the electronic braking aids we have today, but those are the frosting on the cake on top of the four wheel discs that can really save your bacon!
Suggested a used notch back to my BIL in 1983. My sister asked that I install a after market cassette deck in place of the factory unit. What a pita! Chevy had to be different and design the instrument panel to only accommodate a vertically mounted radio. Car started to run rough and rode horribly after 6 months . Fell apart after 2 years and I haven’t been asked to recommend a car since!
There is a two tone white/red four door always parked at a nearby McDonalds’. It’s in great shape and well loved
I agree that GM got the styling right on these, but only on the hatchbacks. The hatchback Chevy was the best of the bunch. Clean lines, good proportions, no styling gewgaws to muck it up. Even today it looks reasonably contemporary, which isn’t something you can say about most Big Three designs from the early 80s.
The notchback X bodies, though, yikes. A stubby trunk on the rear made the Buick and Olds X cars look like they spent too much time in the dryer. The mini waterfall grill on the Olds made it look stubby on both ends. Ugh.
We had an ’81 Pontiac Phoenix 4-door hatchback. It shared the driveway with a ’79 humpback Olds Cutlass. They looked remarkably similar in profile, but as mentioned by commenters above, the X body was much more space efficient, in part because it actually was a hatchback, not just a fastback with a trunk, like the A bodies. That was when FWD cars still had flat floors, which helped to make Phoenix car feel even more spacious than it was.
Sadly our Phoenix was plagued by electrical problems. My Dad traded it in for a Toyota within a couple of years. The Cutlass, on the other hand, with its tried and true BOF, RWD, V8, live axle design, that car soldiered on for about another decade.
GM ‘got it right’ with the improved FWD A bodies, based on the X. But, they mostly appealed to older buyers, trading in their fading 70’s green and brown Novas, Granadas, Gran Torinos, Darts, Valliants, Skylarks, Centurys and Impalas.
And, they took forever to bring out the W bodies, that were supposed to be “huge”. Meanwhile, Olds and Buick hung on to the A bodies, for dear life.
I recall in the mid-’80s seeing a hair-raising news magazine indictment of the X-cars as deathtraps. The phrase “slip-fit sandwich of parts” featured heavily, I think because that phrase was used in a products-liability lawsuit in reference to the steering and/or suspension. Pretty sure it was Time or Newsweek or something like that. When I search “slip-fit sandwich of parts” all I get is some people using it in re the X-cars, so I guess I didn’t make up the phrase, but I can’t find the original article.
There were some loyal GM buyers who want back to RWD B, C and G bodies in the mid 80’s. But, long term, they didn’t keep sales up.
If it weren’t for trucks and SUV’s, GM would have went belly up by ’92
It would be better if Chevy builds a four door sedan instead of five door hatchback…
The image below is from “Autos of interest”.
Bob Lutz likes to whine about how “it was so tough to go from making BOF/RWD to unibody FWD”, etc to get sympathy. But, why didn’t Toyota have similar problems when they switched Corolla?
Just a guess, but Toyota was/is fairy conservative, and took its time moving its product line to FWD (they were already unibody).
Lutz was a putz. GM had been making unibody compact cars since 1960 (Corvair). If you dont want to count that, being rear engine and discontinued, 1962. The unibody Chevy II/Nova was produced right up to its replacement by the “Crustacean”.
While a longitudinal arrangement, GM did pioneer domestic FWD with the 1966 Toronado.
It has the same hideous styling as a Buick century olds Cutlass aeroback. And horrible mechanicals. Anyone buying one of these to save gas would have been money ahead keeping their bigger less efficient car.
Imagine someone with a 1977 (or older) Chevelle four-door in 1979. While still serviceable, a lot of people would be looking at the brand-new FWD Citation as being a great way to become more efficient (this time frame had some of the highest fuel prices).
Then imagine their dismay when the cold, hard reality hit them as to what a colossal POS the X-body they had just bought was relative to the old Chevelle they had just traded in..
I had a front row seat on these cars as I was a parts dept manager from the late 70’s until the late 80’s at a Chevy dealer. The 1980 and 1981 Citations were total garbage. By 1982 they started to get better with a redesigned steering rack and mounting. The brakes were still scary. By 82 I had these as demos and a panic stop sent the back end around on me. The 83’s were better and in 1984 it was renamed the Citation II. The 1985 has a new dash that eliminated the vertical radio. The 84 and 85 cars were very good but the damage was done. The A bodies were modified x cars and started off better but the 1982 models were only ok. Overall I would not mind finding an 84 or 85 X car to purchase.
Just yesterday I’ve seen an earlier model Chevy Citation parked in the driveway and the vehicle appeared to be in good shape, I did a double take when I’ve seen that car, I’m not sure what the year was but I know it’s a 1980-82 judging by the side mirrors, the car is located in Spokane, WA
Living in GM Country, we saw a lot of these FWD X cars. I’d been in a fair amount of them and can remember thinking that these were definitely different, as compared to the same old that the Big 3 had been putting out for many years.
Of course, the early cars had issues aplenty and developed a poor reputation, right about the time the first refresh happened in 81? or 82? By then, folks would trade off their X car for an A or J car instead. However, there was a whole class of people who had these cars and put up with their issues until the bitter end. Maybe they were cheapskates, maybe they had no other choice.
The old joke about a GM car runs badly longer than most cars run and commonly being on the road past their normal life span gave rise to my phrase: “The Cockroach of the Road”.
It was inspired by one of my college instructors’ three year old Citation (that he never maintained or even ran through a car wash) that ran badly and had rust creeping up on all of the body panels. In addition to the fact that it was brown, the fastback bodystyle reminded me of an insect, hence, the cockroach of the road.