If you asked me what General Motors heaven was, I’d probably point you to 1961-65. It was the last period that GM seemed to have everything right, while at the same time sowing the seeds of its ultimate destruction. And my favorite cars from The General during this period were the Corvair and its half siblings, the Pontiac Tempest, Oldsmobile F-85 and Buick Special. While the Chevy, Pontiac and Olds have been covered at Curbside Classic, we look today at the most pedestrian, and the most haughty of these odd ducks.
When the coupe versions of the original General Motors compacts were introduced after the sedans, they all presented nice blank canvases to attach the tinsel that would make them leaders in the sport compact race, which directly led to the Pony Car explosion. The Special, by mimicking the contoured bullet front end of the full sized 1961 Buicks, foreshadows the long hood/short deck look that would be popularized by the Mustang in a few short years.
Adding more formal blind C pillars (like a mini Thunderbird), as well as just the right amount of chrome trim in all the right places transformed the mundane Special into the reborn Skylark, ready for flight. The transformation (on looks alone) was more successful at making it distinctive than Oldsmobile’s efforts of making a Cutlass out of the F-85 or Pontiac making a Le Mans out of a Tempest. The Skylark (with plenty of help with advertising) looks every bit the part of a downsized personal luxury coupe. The elegant choice for the young lawyer or ad executive that might feel a little silly with a Corvair Monza.
After the surprise success of unloading over 12,000 of the pillared coupes in 1961 despite a mid-season introduction, Buick went whole hog and offered a genuine hardtop coupe and convertible for 1962. And in my favorite color combination of all time: Buick Canary Yellow with some type of red vinyl or leather. Nearly 43,000 of these luxuriant little Buicks found their way to driveways in 1962, now with 190hp burbling from their (misunderstood) aluminum V8s.
In 1963, the body sides became more slab sided, and the ends were brought into line to reflect the changes to the larger LeSabre/Wildcat/Electra 225. The Skylark in particular has more than a passing resemblance from the back to an Electra 225 of the same year, much in the same way the Cutlass that year could pass for a miniature Starfire.
And many car mags at the time mentioned that one didn’t give up much for taking your Buick in a smaller size. The interior detailing, ride quality and sound deadening was good enough to give quite a close approximation of that traditional Buick feel (for better or worse, depending on what you think of what traditional Buick feel means).
It’s hard to believe, but there was once upon a time when General Motors actually knew how to do a small car right. But the market didn’t flock to them in droves. Sure you could characterize the aluminum V8 as troublesome. I put the blame more often at the hands of customers not used to new technology, just as a Corvair could get someone into trouble because they weren’t familiar with the handling characteristics.
Although I can understand from a price point why they might have been hard sell. With a decent set of options, they bounded into that “Well, I could get a pretty decent Impala or Catalina for this money” zone. It might have been a little harder to sell that concept of “bite sized luxury” to a wider audience when one could get a roomier, well optioned Fairlane 500 Sport Coupe with a pretty decent 289 V8 for hundreds less.
Offering answers to questions the market didn’t ask was a foible General Motors would foist upon itself repeatedly. And time and time again when it seems they get the formula just right, they’d go off and kill it and start all over again, more often than not with something that satisfied the accountants.
The solution for Buick (and Olds and Pontiac) was the bone conventional 1964 A bodies. Although the Skylark was able to keep a great deal of its suave elegance for the first two years, by 1966 it had also morphed to include a fender skirted four door hardtop.
And that brings up another odd parallel to the Thunderbird’s trajectory in the 1960s: although the Skylark pulled an “Impala”, and moved down from strictly coupes and convertibles to workaday sedans, the be-skirted Skylark four-door hardtop was one of the most Brougham of all Mid Sized cars of the 1960s. In size, there wasn’t much that separated the Skylark Hardtop Sedan from the Thunderbird four-door Landau. Both cars ditched all pretenses of sportiness and deferred that responsibility to other cars in their respective families (Thunderbird to Mustang, Skylark to the GS and its eventual Stage Packages, and to a lesser extent, the Riviera).
It’s more understandable why Ford took the Thunderbird this route. It was never really a “sporty” car; more a boulevardier with sporting pretensions. And a Thunderbird probably never drove sporty until the Turbo Coupes of the 1980s. But it’s more than a little bit sad to think how GM walked away from the market that is now dominated by German and Japanese near-luxury compacts after (kind of) creating the field and not realizing it in the early 1960s.
Then again, this particular market didn’t really exist yet. The BMW 2002 was still 5 years away from making headway on these shores. The Corvair opened the door, and each of the half sister half heartedly walked through the door, trying on Turbos (Jetfire), downsized big motors (the 326 in the Tempest Le Mans), as well as the details of each brand that (presumably) made them worth the extra cash over the competition.
Then they just threw in the towel, and took the easy way out. Bigger bodies supported by frames and larger profit margins became the name of the game. You can probably sense my palpable sadness that the B-O-P luxury compacts (along with the Corvair) didn’t become permanent compliments to GM’s ever growing standard sized cars. I love this whole family of oddballs, and wish I could have an example of each. I wish everyone could drive one that fits their particular driving tastes (from soft cushy interstate cruiser to fire breathing turbo), to see how they were almost the perfect American Car.
I’ll take mine in my favorite shade of Canary Yellow with the Red Vinyl, please. You say you have a Skylark in that exact combo?
Gorgeous photos. Great piece.
Nice car Lawrence shame it got bloated into a barge seems to be all GM knew how to do back then at least Rover put the engine to good use but as you say cheap was all GM wanted to do after pioneering light unitary cars for it foreign divisions they couldnt stop making creaking BOF cars for the US market long enough for people to get used to them.
“…1961-65…the last period that GM seemed to have everything right”
That’s the important part. GM was transitioning from the Harley Earl era, where GM Design had the upper hand, to where the bean counters had the upper hand. That’s no slap at Bill Mitchell, and you can certainly see a major slide going into the 1980’s after his 1977 retirement (weren’t the downsized A’s and B’s the last vehicles developed under Mitchell’s supervision?)…which of course came on heels of 1971’s major slide.
TTAC had quoted some 1965 review that favored the top Cadillac over Rolls-Royce. That was certainly the last year you could make that comparison with a straight face. And while the ’58-’64 X-frame cars had their drawbacks, the perimeter-frame B-C cars that bowed in ’65 had terminal rust issues behind the front wheels from salt splash hitting the frame rails. IIRC this is also where you started to see more fit-and-finish issues…greater use of hard plastics, etc. The quality was sliding, but GM still had half the US auto market. Why do better when you might further increase your market share – and be found in violation of anti-trust laws?
I remember some of the fanboy mags in the early 70’s discussing possible anti-trust action against GM. One scenario – I think it was in Motor Trend – outlined how an independent “Chevrolet Car Company” might look and operate, spun off from GM to avoid a Government-mandated breakup.
Another article, this one from Petersen’s “Complete Chevrolet Book, 4th Edition” (1975), states of that particular marque:
“…perhaps it’s time to coast for a division once dismissed as ‘having no hope for a profit.’ The anti-trust lawyers at the Justice Department tend to cast a cold eye on divisions that become bigger than their parent, not to mention competitors.”
Another quote from the article states: “GM…has swung from ignoring public opinion to being overly sensitive of it”.
With the public mistrust of corporations in general that arose in the late-60’s and 70’s, perhaps GM could have helped its image – and the image of Corporate America in general – plus ensured their long-term health, by cutting back a little on chasing volume in favor of fewer but higher-quality cars at a slightly higher price point. I could see such a strategy really helping Cadillac and to a lesser extent Buick.
But instead the entire corporation coasted. Why do any more than the absolute minimum required when the stakes seem too high to do otherwise?
I kinda see the ’64 A-bodies in a new light as I write this, for although each started out pretty distinct from each other…they were certainly more similar than the 1961-63s that had preceded them…and it started GM down the line to where most of their lines became virtually indistinguishable from each other in the 70’s. Sure you can point to 1959’s forced body sharing…but each ’59 kept its own distinct character. ’64 was the real beginning of the road to badge-engineered blandness. The ’71 Nova-clones were proof.
I don’t think GM’s fall from corporate titan to corporate bankruptcy is properly understood without understanding the signs along the way. Laurence, your observations here illuminate a few of those signs. Thanks!
Hate to bring the “sister” site (TTAC) into the dicussion here… but what you’re talking about is really what often is advocated by many over there (and here). GM needs to be diciplined and not attempt to be all things to all people in every single division. Everytime GM anounces a new car for one of the divisions I chringe and think about how GM cannibalizes it’s own sales.
New Buick Verano, I worry that every one sold is a Chevrolet Cruze LTZ that doesn’t get sold. The info that’s coming out on the new Epsilon II based Impala says it’s going to be more Malibu and less Impala. Redesigned Malibu? Loosing rear seat room to gain trunk space. How is that supposed to help things? The Malibu is finally starting to sell in decent #s. GMC Acadia Denali, doesn’t that cannibalize Cadillac SRX and Buick Enclave sales?
At GM it seems like some things never change.
GMs biggest problem in the 1960s was that the way they built cars, small cars meant small profits. If they could talk you into an Impala over a Corvair, they % of profit was much larger. There was no real impulse to improve their small cars because they viewed every sale of a Skylark as a Wildcat they didn’t sell.
The Verano will have different engines and doesn’t share any sheetmetal with the Cruze, and the interior looks much nicer than a Cruze LTZ. Yes, it shares the same platform of the Cruze, but that’s NOT badge engineering, badge engineering would be the Celebrity/6000/Cutlass Ciera/Century.
I wasn’t arguing that it was badge engineering, I’m arguing that it’s one car being dangerously close to the other. The B&B brought up the closeness of a loaded Cruze to a Regal. Now with the Verano and Cruze the markets are starting to overlap. Nearly loaded Cruze vs. base Verano with a few options? Gonna be a tough call. And how will GM respond to internal competition? Cash on the hood? To quote Elvis Costelo “That’s how you got killed before.” My belief is that if cnaged it’s dealers into “full line dealers” (ie, every brand sold by GM) the company could possibly maintain dicipline and cut the overlap.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/07/review-2011-chevrolet-cruze/
We’ll see when the pricing is released. The engine will be more powerful, though, and there is talk of having a model with the Regal turbocharged engine. I guess it depends on how much prices will overlap. If there is a Verano that starts at $16k with cloth and steelies (for anything other than fleet duty or as a loss-leader that you have to special order) then yeah, there might be a problem.
In Europe Chevrolet Cruze and Opel Astra coexist quite nicely and I don’t think they cannibalize each other’s sales. Cruze is very low priced and Astra is probably the best looking compact on sale and priced higher. In this case I would say they did a very good job differentiating them.
Not sure whether grafting on the boot on the Astra shape will work though. Probably Buick compact hatch does not sound logical but Astra is such a great looking car. Such racy shapes often get old quickly but I think it is actually growing on me ever since it came out two years ago.
Spinning off Chevy might have saved them from their slide, because what really screwed up GM is when Chevrolet started making their “own” Cadillacs , and also when BOP started chasing volume by making their “own” Chevys.
Ex. in 1984, which would you rather own? A fully loaded Caprice Classic, or an entry-level Cimarron? Exactly.
I sometimes wonder how many Cadillac customers went out and bought loaded Caprice Classics during the mid to late 80s when things were very dark for Cadillac. The Caprice was more traditional Cadillac than a very downsized DeVille would have been.
Good point, look at this video and you really see it:
Ye gods that car is primitive compared to a Holden of the same year. Hard to believe the same company made em
To be fair that was the last year for that generation of Caprice. The ’91-’96 generation looked modern (well, for the ’90s).
That came about coz of each division trying to be a full line maker instead of remaining in step
Yep. Speaking of videos and the Caprice, look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWtm4er_P2Y&feature=grec_index
Yes, they’re dissing Oldsmobile in a CHEVY AD!
If we’re strictly speaking about the 1960’s cars, the idea was to follow Ford and the Independents into compact car territory and get their piece of the action. Granted the big cars carried the load and the bulk of the corporation’s profits, but we’re judging these cars by today’s idiom, not the standards by which they were designed.
They did find a successful formula by emulating the big cars. As much as we enthusiasts like to think all people think like we do, the vast majority of folks who aren’t, want a car as conventional as possible and as cheap as possible. No funny aluminum blocks for them. Cast iron, and more of it!
By the time we get to the 1980’s, the regulatory environment had changed radically. NHTSA, EPA, CAFE and probably another acronym or two I’ve forgotten about happened between 1964-1974.
If you’ve seen me post about CAFE before, I am a broken record about CAFE, to my eye the worst piece of legistlation foisted upon the mfrs, evar(Ironic spelling inteded). CAFE forced things like the necessity of smaller ‘full sized’ cars from the mid-1970’s on. Fuel supply panics engendered the idea that we would have $4 gallon gasoline by 1985.
Chrysler for all practical purposes abandoned RWD cars, GM accelerated its downsizing and FWD programs while poor Ford floundered until they got their feet under them in the mid 80’s with the Taurus.
Then, fuel stays cheap and the companies have to switch gears again to meet consumer demand. I don’t think there was enough capital for all of the divisions of GM to create product to meet this sudden but fortuitous change of events. Not to mention the whole Roger Smith/Smale/Zarella trip that was about to happen. I can see how the overlap happened but how to fix it?
Before BK, Chrysler had started to downsize it’s product line up and convert it’s dealers into all Mopar makes in the same location. I really think that a similar move would have worked for GM, but the gov’ts task force forced other changes on to GM to pare it down in size.
So between the bad legislation of the 60’s & 70’s, the confusion of the 80’s and the BK of the 00’s we have things like the Cruze and the Verano, which leave long-time observers like myself wondering what the heck is going on.
I will say, that GM has been a lot more savvy about marketing a particular model, witness the success of the Cruze, consistenly placing high in monthly sales charts. I’m highly interested to see what will happen with the new Sonic (Aveo replacement) and the Verano. I think they may have an easier time marketing these cars without having versions for Pontiac and Oldsmobile, too.
Strange that Chrysler would lead the way for a new wave of marketing. But not entirely unheard of.
The last car Bill Mitchell designed was the 1980 Seville.
As usual I prefer the Buick version, I’ll take mine in yellow too please, but make it with the black interior, like my 69 LeSabre.
That deep red and pale yellow color combination was handed down from as early as the 1930’s, usually found on Packard, Buick, or Cadillac convertibles. I’ve seen maroon examples with pale yellow interiors too, but usually the deep red was the interior color with the yellow body. Iirc it was pretty much restricted to higher-priced cars.
“It might have been a little harder to sell that concept of ‘bite sized luxury’ to a wider audience when one could get a roomier, well optioned Fairlane 500 Sport Coupe with a pretty decent 289 V8 for hundreds less.”
I don’t believe that the 289 was around yet in ’63. The top V8 for the Fairlane would’ve been the 260. The 289 came out towards the middle or end of the ’64 model year.
The K Code 289 was available in Fairlanes for 1963, not in Falcons though
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Windsor_engine#289
I stand corrected. I must’ve been thinking of the Mustang, which debuted with the 260 as the optional V8 before the 289 was available.
As somebody who grew up in and learned how to drive on a 62 Buick Special, (salmon pink wagon dad bought in 66, the year I was born) I can say that V8 was very reliable, had car until 83 when the cam lost a couple lobes at 200K…pulled engine, scrapped car, sold engine a couple years ago
BTW, I would sell my sister for a 62 Skylark convertible with a 4-speed!
I actually prefer the looks of the 1962s (both Buick and Olds Versions) But I wouldn’t turn my nose up at a ’63.
I agree,the 63s look…..bloated, and i always called them a convenient shipping crate for the Aluminum V8!
Yeah, compared to the ’62s there’s too much overhang both ways (it’s really apparent in the lead shot with the wheel turned, it looks almost unstable without the wheel filling out the well). The Cutlasses added the increased visual length better since there was more side detailing?
I would say yes. I would take a 63 Cutlass over a 63 Special/Skylark any day….The Olds just seems to wear the bloat better
Yellow is a color I’m rather fond of – I’m predjudiced – look at my avatar! Goldwood Yellow. Ironically, my wife owned the same type of car and the same color before I met her!
It must’ve been a good thing, as we are celebrating our 34th anniversary today!
I agree that GM, beginning with the 1967 models began to lose its soul – the cars getting more bloated (Ford and Chrysler, too), and the bean counters rose to power (I’m looking at you, fixed rear windows).
The GM mid-sizers were truly the right size cars all the way up through the 1972 models, and then my perfect world ended…
Congrats Zackman! I didn’t catch that the first time reading through.
My wife and I celebrated 25 years this year, too.
I’d argue that the GM’s early-60s compacts represented the company’s most aggressive effort in its entire history to become an engineering leader. GM pulled out all of the stops, e.g., rear engines, aluminum V8s, transaxles, V6s. The corporation’s boldness was really quite impressive.
Alas, it didn’t turn out all that well, both in terms of sales as well as customer goodwill. So GM unplugged its front-engined compacts after a remarkably short, three-year run. GM then switched back to what it historically did best: Bigger, glitzier and more powerful. Sales soared.
That said, I wouldn’t blame the demise of the POB compacts merely on teething problems. Exotic engineering in a compact size represented the antithesis of GM’s corporate culture. It didn’t have an adequate base of support to survive.
They blindly decided to leave the “exotic engineering” to the forthcoming Japanese…
A contrary on the aluminum V8, if you don’t mind. My parents bought a ’61 F-85 station wagon with the little 215 aluminum V8. The car ran hot its entire life. Many was the time that Mom would pull over, shut it down and pop the hood open for 10 minutes to let it cool down. No a/c, either. They had to run anti-freeze year around to raise the boiling temp. Likely a casting flaw that impeded cooling, but because Olds did not give you a temp guage, you had no idea there was a problem till the little red light came on.
I understand that this engine had a long life in England and it was probably just a matter of getting the bugs worked out. But GM certainly did not stand behind it very well, and neither of my parents ever (knowlingly) bought another aluminum engined car their entire lives. They traded this one on a 64 Cutlass with an iron block 330 Rocket.
My family’s experience with these erased any desire that I ever might have had for one of these, but I enjoyed reading about them nonetheless.
As for GM’s product planning, this always seemed to me around the time when GM stopped making cars to cover the market and started making up markets to put all of the cars. If there was a market for a small, luxuriously appointed car in 1961-63, there was certainly not enough of a market that it needed versions from Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick.
“As for GM’s product planning, this always seemed to me around the time when GM stopped making cars to cover the market and started making up markets to put all of the cars. If there was a market for a small, luxuriously appointed car in 1961-63, there was certainly not enough of a market that it needed versions from Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick.”
In 1961 – 63 GM was already competing with itself.
And that is the crux of the problem that has not been solved, even by government assisted bankruptcy. In fact I only see the problem getting worse with the majority of dealers now being Chevrolet/Cadillac or Buick/GMC.
Then the argument could be made that GM always competed with itself, the B-O-P warfare was nothing really new by 1961. The Full Sized Buick Special was the main reason Buick launched to #3 in sales in 1954, providing Buick prestige for Pontiac/Dodge Money. I’m not as privy on how the distinctions really worked pre-war but there was always a thin tipping point that I think Buick broke in the early 1950s.
I think Oldsmobile held out longest from the in house competition, not really fielding a seriously decontented price leader (and promoting it seriously as a full line) until the Jetstar 88 of 1964. The base or Dynamic Eighty Eights before seemed a bit more worth the money compared to a Special/LeSabre. But in the case of the B-O-Ps I think it was down to brand loyalty and transmission choice that only really made a difference between the F-85/Cutlass and the Special/Skylark. Their drivetrains did drive different enough to reinforce loyalties (the smaller Roto Hydramatic actually being the slower shifting of the two) which the BOF A bodies of 1964 sort of dispensed with with their more universal transmission choices.
Had Oldsmobile gone whole hog and made the F-85 FWD and V6 only (as Ate Up With Motor mentioned in his Toronado piece), the Buick would have been left the most conventional.
The Corvair Monza proved their was a Market for better appointed, more luxurious and more expensive compacts. The problem was the Corvair Monza dominated that market, much in the same way the Impala SS dominated the Bucket Seat Full Sized Bruiser market when it came out. And it wasn’t a large enough market for that much of an array of models to be absorbed.
But the point can also be made that GM shouldn’t have been as volume focused, 42,000 Skylarks isn’t anything to sneeze at considering how many Lark Daytonas Studebaker could move, or that the Skylark outsold the Plymouth Valiant Signet in 1962 by about 12,000 units. I’m pretty sure in sporty compacts the Skylark was probably 3rd behind the Falcon Futura 2 door sedan or it’s own in family rival the Tempest Le Mans,
In regards to the V8, I can’t argue with that. There was an extremely high scrap rate when production began, so I would guess a fair number of buyers became guinea pigs on how that engine would behave in real driving. But I can’t completely write it off given there’s a fair number of survivors and it’s long lived legacy in Britian. One of those GM finally gets it right just to get rid of it scenarios.
You’re right — the BOP compacts didn’t sell that badly, particularly if you compare them to the pre-1963 Chryslers and the moribund Studebaker Lark. However, GM beancounters were undoubtedly more focused on Ford’s high volume, first with the Falcon and Comet, and then with the mid-sized Fairlane.
GM seemed stung by Ford’s success. Look how fast they cobbled together the Chevy II when the Corvair failed to compete sales-wise with the Falcon. Then, in 1964, GM settled on a “shock and awe” strategy. Introducing four mid-sized entries represented an enormously aggressive — and expensive — strategy. And unlike the 1961-63 BOP compacts, minimal sheetmetal was shared.
I imagine GM might have preferred to avoid having four divisions competing in the same field, but Ford and Chrysler did start this trend by offering their 1962 mid-sized cars in two brands each. GM would not be outgunned.
My uncle had a ’62 Skylark and, as an engineer, quickly learned why the cooling system was weak, here in the hot Southwest. Copper radiators with aluminum engines were a challenge to antifreeze of the day. Distilled water was the answer.
Oh, but I liked fender skirts on GM cars….something sexy about them.
Cant really argue with the success of the 215 V8; while not perfect it had a long life. Actually the Brits had more of a problem with it, as they decided to sand-cast the block and press in shoulder less sleeves, which have a habit of dropping down when overheated, where the rod destroys it. (GM die cast the block, and the sleeves had grooves machined on the OD to lock them in) No sane person can argue the fact that GM WAS ahead of their time with these engines, but as usual, they could care less.
The aluminum V8 was an important innovation because it made a high-powered compact less nose heavy. That was particularly useful if you didn’t want power steering, which tended to lack road feel.
It is too bad that GM didn’t further develop the engine, but in the early-60s they seemed to be trying to distance themselves from the shaky reputation of their late-50s cars.
Of course, in the early-60s GM held a whopping 55 percent of the market, so they had some room for error.
Went to lunch Friday, And what do I see in the parking lot? ’62 Buick Special convertible, with FACTORY 4 SPEED! Been looking at these cars all my life, and this THE first one I have seen with a manual trans.
That’s a 1967 Skylark shot from the rear. Same as mine I had from 1975-77. Two-door hardtop coupe with vinyl roof. Very stylish and plain at the same time. Lethargic 300 2-bbl, but that “Switch Pitch” torque converter always pleased and intrigued me. It would do 100, however.
Hello All,
I purchased this EXACT skylark on 6-13-13 , which happened to be the previous owners birthday. I am ecstatic that I now own a piece of history!! The car is still in the same condition with the NYN black plates. I plan to restore bit by bit and will post the restored version one day. I am bookmarking this article!!
Congrats! I saw it on Craigslist and it was just outside my Budget. I hope it brings you many more years of joy and happiness!
My family bought a 1963 V6 Special off the showroom. It was fantastic car that IMHO handled great and had decent acceleration. We traded the 63 in for a 1965 Skylark with the 300Ci V8 4bbl that was downright fast as well as good looking. But the 63 is still my favorite and could be a great daily driver even today. GM knocked it out of the park with the 63!