Today’s Cohort find by Roshake has been featured before at CC. So, “still looking good” is being used in a very deliberate form in the title, as this 1990 Buick Skylark doesn’t look a day older than when previously captured in 2021. Someone in Budapest does love this N-body Buick.
The wonder of the common and ordinary finding value in far off places – “Derided at home; loved abroad” is how this find’s earlier post was titled, and I doubt much has changed since then for these N-body compacts. Buick emblems aside, few find these as truly desirable in the US. Rare nowadays, yes, but desirability has yet to come in their home nation, as far as I know.
Roshake only posted one photo in his most recent upload, so here are a couple more from 2021. That interior looks almost out of the showroom; really, when’s the last time you saw one looking like this? Other than back in 2021, of course.
Not a 1990 model, but a Skylark in a ’82-’83 Belgian brochure above. In other CC posts, we’ve shown there’s a good deal of love in Europe for US vehicles of the ’60s and ’70s –your LTDs, Cadillacs, and the like. Not sure how big the love is for American made compacts of the 1980s and 1990s, but whatever their presence was back in the day, a few have found true admiration.
About 74K of these 4-door models rolled off the Lansing assembly line in 1990. As can be seen, one, still in great condition, can be found far away from home.
Related CC reading:
1990 Buick Skylark Custom – Disdained at Home; Loved Abroad
1990 Buick Skylark Luxury Edition – Nana’s Got a Hot Date On A Saturday Night
A neighbor of mine has one of these in “Buick Somerset” drag. It has a nice patina and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. Their previous ride was a yellow 1973 Chevy Nova, which apparently couldn’t survive into the 2020s.
Nice looking car!
Amazing find – on the rare occasion when I see one of these Skylarks in the US, it’s always barely mobile, if at all.
The interior shot here shows what appears to be a Swiss vignette sticker on the windshield, so I’m guessing this car was sold in Switzerland originally (where, as far as I know, there was more demand for American cars in the 1990s than in other European countries).
Agree! Amazing, unbelievable! The folks @ “Buick” should be capitalizing on this unicorn.
Interesting….the only time I’ve been to Budapest was in ’96, we rented a car in Zurich but it was a Ford Scorpio wagon (tried to get an Opel Omega but it was for the best, was with my family who are heavy packers and we needed the wagon).
We first went to Sienna, Italy, and up to Udine, stopped in Bad Gleichenberg then onto Budapest. I got my first speeding ticket (ever) on the way up to Kosice; then we were stopped 20km inside the Slovak border by motorcycle patrol and asked to go back to the border to be re-checked (my Mother’s first language is Slovak, we were there to visit her relatives). We’d stocked up on liquor as gifts for relatives in Miskloc (and my sister cleaned out probably a year’s supply of diet Coke which she was hooked on at the time) though they were buried under my Dad’s day bag which they took out and inspected (as well as our papers, for the 2nd time) and found…instant oatmeal packets. They let us go on our way.
Yeah, nothing to do with Skylark, though I remember seeing a new ’85 when they first came out parked at the condo I was living at then. My parents had bought a new ’84 Pontiac Sunbird, which turned out to be the worst car my Dad ever owned, going from new to junkyard in about 5 years, despite scheduled maintenance at the dealership…and 2 engines….so we weren’t too interested in GM for awhile after that.
It was nice seeing it again for the first time, and still in such good condition. But being on a grocery run with grandma at the time, and having thoroughly photographed it before, i decided to just shoot a quick pic to document the occasion. Grandma did ask to have a pic taken with the car too tough 😁
That picture made my day – thanks! And your grandma has good taste in cars.
I love this. To echo Eric’s comment, to see your grandma next to the subject car makes this second-time find all the better!
This Skylark is a really nice-looking compact as seen through 2025 eyes.
She looks like she could be the first owner!
The wonderful metallic blue makes a big difference.
Combined with the comfortable blue velour seats, it creates a harmonious broughamly swan song.
Maybe that’s why this individual is so beloved.
That being said, the color makes its’ existence in this condition even more surprising, as it was one of the worst for the paint-adhesion problem all of Detroit was having in this era. It has to have been repainted, possibly under warranty just a couple years in.
That Buick ad looks like it’s the older generation Skylark, X body I think. Definitely not the N body dashboard.
Yes, that’s an error. It’s from an ’82 or ’83 Belgian catalog.
My grandma had a similar looking Buick Regal, same color too ! She loved it and it was her last car before she passed, it was always spicknspan 🙂👍