It’s been a Herculean effort, I’ve struggled mightily while toiling far and wide to find a first-year example of the Citation that sold over 800,000 times in the 1980 model year and has however thus far eluded me (the two I’ve featured here were both 1981 models). Today though I can rejoice, for the heavens presented me with not that, but perhaps even better, the comparatively much rarer Pontiac version, the Phoenix, in SJ “We Build Excitement” guise, no less. I don’t know if it gets any better. Or worse, as the case may be.
Could it be that this car was the beginning of the end for Pontiac? Sure, they hung on (and arguably even thrived for a while) until 2009 but perhaps the X-car debacle laid the groundwork for the eventual end. Let’s all marvel at this survivor that likely won’t have people asking where it is so they can take all the bits off it to save for posterity like it was a DeSoto Firedome or something.
Of course, did it really survive, or was it just in suspended animation behind someone’s shed for the last thirty or so years? The complete fading of the bumpers down to that weird yellow foamy plastic that GM (and Ford) seemed to use in this era would seem to indicate that along with the somewhat strange rust although the pitting of the leading edges does suggest that it saw a fair amount of use in its lifetime.
The SJ package started out as an option and eventual became its own trim level a couple of years down the road. Basically it consisted of what we would consider the “Euro-ing” of a car, or at least how we understand GM considers that, i.e with lots of show and minimal more go. So you got black nacelles in the grille, black-out trim (but chrome drip rails!), “rally” wheels, body-colored sport mirrors, additional acoustical insulation (?), rally “RTS” suspension, and perhaps the most notable extra expenditure, P205/70-13 tires as standard instead of the regular 185/80-13s. (Of course they were also available without the SJ package).
Every Phoenix got several of these bird badges scattered across the car to help people visualize the mythical bird’s ascension from the ashes. In retrospect this turned out kind of weird as the prior generation Phoenix wasn’t horrible, but this one absolutely was and produced its own ashes to be placed in the dustbin of history, never to rise as a nameplate again. Perhaps they should have been mounted upside down or something. This particular one is on the B-pillar.
We’ve obviously discussed the Deadly Sin that is the Chevrolet Citation (Original Sin?) numerous times, so I shan’t belabor the point too much, but when Pontiac saw what Chevy was about to debut they obviously wanted part of the glory. So to the badge engineering department the plans were sent and some changes were made, externally most notably in the grille, lighting all around, and of course the quarter-panel of the hatchback as seen here – the lower edge continues straight instead of kicking up a bit as in the Chevy. As a result it looks a skosh droopy.
I actually prefer the plain but honestly so front of the Citation, the Pontiac version to me doesn’t look interesting, I suppose the way the middle juts forward a little bit is sort of how Pontiac did things to thrust that (missing) arrowhead forward. I wonder if future societies will idly dig in the dirt of this location and then be made to wonder what tribe of natives used red translucent plastic arrowheads…But I digress.
At least this owner decided to spec the 2.8l V-6 producing 115hp at 4800rpm and 150lb-ft of torque at 2000rpm. Actually after perusing the brochure it seems that while there was a Federal Certification as well as a California Certification in regard to the engine choices, there was also an Altitude Certification column in which only the V6 was available. The brochure took pains to note that while the in other areas available 2.5l Iron Duke was built by Pontiac, the V6 was a Chevrolet engine. Further, the transmission would be a column-mounted 3-speed and the axle ratio 2.84 whereas a manual 4-speed option was available in other markets with the six.
I’m pretty sure that dealer tag was from Nagel Motors in Casper, Wyoming, (elev. 5118′) lending credence to the high-altitude theory.
But back to the engine only because I wasted more pixels on a second shot, it was of course GM’s first dalliance with transversely mounted front wheel drive and while the V6 is clearly more desirable than the Iron Duke, that’s all a matter of relativity.
Unfortunately the trunk was locked, for once the keys were not in the ignition, so an exterior view is all we get here. This one does have the optional rear cargo cover and hints at the luscious color within. You’ll just have to imagine the 40 cubic feet of load area with of course the mother of all liftover heights to scale first with that Sony Trinitron you picked up before the 1981 Super Bowl. Because, of course, back then the couth did not drive pickup trucks to the electronics store.
Let us all admire the bird on the trunk lock. It, plumage and all, swivels to the side to allow access to the key hole as opposed to the Chevy with its utterly undecorated orifice.
As with the other quarterpanel, this side also exhibits some weird rust patterns, perhaps the steel used in the Oklahoma City factory wasn’t prepped correctly or something and of course rustproofing technology wasn’t quite as advanced as buyers would have preferred. The blackout trim on the rear window is most evident here, having absconded to varying degrees from most of the other surfaces that it once adorned.
Obviously this is from a time when choosing leaded gas was still something people could easily do, it would seem difficult to miss that label, and note the gas cap which admonishes the user to check the engine oil. That fuel filler cavity is the roughest piece of bodywork I’ve seen in a while, it looks like someone used a ladle with the body seamer paste.
The interior, or at least the dashboard, offered the greatest point of differentiation to the Chevy, starting with the three-spoke wheel. Of course this car has the bucket seats which also got you the “console” which to modern eyes begets the question of what console am I speaking of. It’s there, that little divider thing between the seats, you might need to squint.
This Phoenix is somewhat lavishly equipped with a very fancy wiper delay for the intermittent function. Of course it somehow is not in the same place as the wiper switch but never mind that. Note the two vents on this side. Oh, and the exposed Torx-head bolts, four in number for that one little panel.
Holy toledo, I see six more vents! Has there been another car with eight vents in the front? And look at all those gauges, excuse, me, “gages” in GM-speak. And each one is held in with multiple Torx-heads, and the same with the vents below. I can’t count that high, how many is that in total now? Or are they all fake? The HVAC and stereo are thankfully oriented as horizontally as the great plains between here and Detroit, as opposed to those of the Chevy that were rotated 90 degrees due to no good reason whatsoever.
A slightly different angle allows a better look at the “gages” in the top row, surprisingly being multi-color and fairly attractive even to the modern eye. From left, a temp gauge (pegged at hot), oil pressure gauge looking like it’s at idle, then the voltmeter playing dead since there is no battery, and finally the clock, showing six o’clock high…
All the way at the bottom of everything is the cassette deck if it wasn’t obvious (under the radio), and the rear defroster switch is next to the radio under the lighter.
Ahead of the driver is the instrument cluster with eight more Torx-heads, an 85mph speedometer and a very large fuel gauge. No tachometer in sight. The odometer reads 40-something thousand miles, but it it most likely missing the 1 in front. I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s turned over twice though.
Here’s the whole dashboard in its unrestrained glory, pretty much looking like a big bird barfed its guts out inside the car.
I mean, really? This is the right hand area of the dash. Did Pontiac not employ any design personnel? Or anyone else with any sense of aesthetics? How does anyone think this looks purchasable? Then again, what do I know, it seems that while Chevy moved 800k+ of their car, Pontiac still managed to shove 178,291 of these down the production line in this model year. Of course by 1982 that would be down to less than 50,000 units.
While the rear bench isn’t in the full down position (it tilts up to allow the seatback to fold forward) the space back here still looks acceptable. The red velour looks plush, and the rollup window winders take me back in time to my family’s ’77 Pontiac Ventura, they are the same items.
Seeing as how this is a 1980 model but produced well towards the end of the very extended model year (production started in February 1979) I may convert my Herculean task to a more Sisyphean one, and now try to find one actually built in 1979. After producing well into the seven figures of these by the time this one rolled down the line, perhaps GM learned a thing or two and that’s part of the reason this one managed to hold on for so long.
Looking back, it’s simply staggering that GM was able to produce and sell well over a million of these turkeys when the Chevy and Pontiac totals are lumped in with the Buick Skylark and Oldsmobile Omega in the X-car nest. And shocking that so many eggs all got put in the same basket only to get thoroughly scrambled when they broke in various ways over the first and second years…This particular Phoenix will actually rise one more time, but it’ll be on the forks of the forklift taking it away to the crusher, surely leaving a slightly different image than Pontiac intended. America might remember the bird it got from Pontiac, but perhaps not as Phoenix the car.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1980-1984 Pontiac Phoenix – A Short (And Feeble) Second Life by PN
Curbside Recycling: 1981 Chevrolet Citation – How Many Could Still Be Left Out There?
Curbside Gift Idea: 1981 Chevrolet Citation – For That Special Someone
Curbside Classic: 1980 Chevrolet Citation – GM’s Deadliest Sin by PN
A good friend of mine had a 1980, 4 cylinder, manual coupe Phoenix when we were in high school. His dad was a mechanic at a local Pontiac dealership so keeping it going was not a problem. It was 5 years old when my friend got it, the A pillars and doors were rusted through. He put some Citation doors on it, repainted the whole car and added some used Fiero wheels with raised white letter tires. It was not bad looking really.
I remember the interior being pretty comfy with the GM velour seats, and the “gages” were pretty impressive for the time. He drove it all the way through college.
Most of those “exposed” Allen head bolts were fake, simply molded into the plastic bezel. Come on, this is GM we’re talking about, the paradigm of efficiency, how many assembly labor seconds were saved with this? Enough to make the accountants giddy while they celebrated the deletion of a rear brake proportioning valve.
I’ve never really hated the look they were after, it struck me they were striving for an aircraft instrument panel robustness. Too bad they skimped on actual robustness.
Restyled trim on the 1983-84 Phoenixes eliminated most (all?) of the fake Torx screws but kept the real ones, which were usually at the corners of the trimpiece.
I had an 81 citation in 1985 and was happy at such a young age(22) to have such a new car.
Exactly 30 days later I traded it across the board for a 1978 Dodge 1/2 ton.
Nuff said!
Jim, love your junkyard series! I have a thought for you: How about a quick postscript about a formerly featured junkyard car at the end of your articles?
I don’t know how many of these cars are still around when you return to shoot a new one. But when I see some of these, I think to myself, “who the heck is going to still want parts from this?” It would be interesting to see how much of the car is left after time elapses. If you included a postscript update, you could also link to your earlier article in case anyone missed it or wants to take a second look. Just a suggestion!
Thanks, I’ve thought of something similar, the logistics make it difficult – Ideally I post the first time when the car is still pretty complete but then it gets iffy as to when I see it again as close to the end as possible. It may seem like it but I don’t go every day or even every week, many of these aren’t that close to me (But make a good destination if I want/need to pile some miles on a test car).
The Boxster one recently was sort of the opposite, I found it when it was fully picked over, the day before it went away for good (just picture a shiny new one in your mind as the before) and then there was the Nova that I did an original and then a followup post on as the timing worked out fortuitously. Often the cars that get picked over are not the ones I think would be so I don’t take pix the first time or conversely some of the ones I think would get picked over don’t, so no story…
But yes, it is something I try to keep an eye out for and thanks for the encouragement.
Boxster: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/curbside-recycling-2000-porsche-boxster-picked-a-part/
Nova original: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/curbside-recycling-1978-chevrolet-nova-the-honest-and-down-to-earth-american/
Nova followup: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/curbside-recycling-update-1978-chevrolet-nova-last-call/
Fake Allen head screws aside, I always thought Pontiac did a good job with IP appearance.
They sure did. The dash and complete gauges were the highlight of my 1978 Grand Am, complete with the fake Allen screws. I think they were going for a rugged, no-nonsense look. I also had the optional 3 spoke Sport Steering Wheel shown here. The standard wheel was quite bland.
My ‘81 TransAm had the same look. I thought it was pretty good at the time, though your close-ups do highlight that the Phoenix implementation of fake Allen screws, lots of vents and random switch placement is a bit overdone.
It looks like it’s designed for simple RHD adaptation.
The instrument panel itself is great, but the tall and boxy design of the dash as a whole has the unfortunate effect of making the interior look narrow; it needs some sort of horizontal accent.
Adding this for additional reference – 1932 Pontiac Series 402 Coupe dash!
GM interior stylists went overboard with the fake allen head bolts on the X-cars; my ’80 Skyark had them all over the intstrument panel. When I had an aftermarket radio installed, the tech accidentally stripped one the them, before figuring out they were fake.
An ’80 Phoenix is one of the cars I learned to drive on. Our GM family’s driveway had an ’80 Phoenix and a ’79 (hunchback) Cutlass Salon when I came home with my learner’s permit. Comparing the two side by side showed that GM did get a lot of things right with the X bodies.
The packaging was great. Despite being a much smaller car, the Pontiac had nearly as much room inside as the Cutlass. One of the benefits of those early FWD cars was a flat floor, which opened up a lot of interior space. Our car had those bucket seats in the front, and despite the thin padding, they were surprisingly comfortable — better on a long drive than the split bench in the Olds. And despite the two cars having a similar silhouette, the Pontiac was an actual hatchback, with a nice large opening, instead of the oddly shaped trunk in the A body Cutlass.
Our Phoenix had the unloved I-4 Iron Duke. It wasn’t smooth, but it could get out of its own way. In a lighter car, it certainly wasn’t any worse than the wheezy 260 cid V8 in the Oldsmobile.
So for a malaisemobile, it wasn’t a bad car. Well, at least it wasn’t until the electrical gremlins started. That car ate fuses like a squirrel ate acorns. It think the last straw was when I got pulled over by the police to let me know the brake lights weren’t working (on a car that was about a year old). Dad decided it wasn’t safe to drive. The Phoenix got traded in for a Toyota Cressida. The Toyota was a much more expensive car, so it’s really not a fair comparison, but that Cressida was a MUCH nicer car, especially in the engine compartment where it had a free revving (and, I believe, fuel injected) inline six cylinder.
As a 13 year old when these came out, I remember all the hype over the X cars. The advertising was constant, and the rollout was covered in the news extensively. Of course the auto rags reviewed and re-reviewed them, but rising gas prices and the overall downsizing trend meant that mainstream media was all over what was happening in Detroit like white on rice.
Looking back I can remember seeing quite a lot of highly optioned examples of these and the Buick Skylark. People really were trading in V8 Bonnevilles for these things. The relatively high cost details like the fancy trunk lock illustrate that GM really was marketing these as alternatives to the barges they were selling a few years earlier. Buick even marketed the Skylark as “The Little Limousine”. There was a lot of resources put into packaging and marketing these cars and everyone took notice as a result. When they turned out to be craptastic turds it was only inevitable that people would take equal notice of that.
Maybe Pontiac should have called the the Icarus.
A few decades ago, what Detroit was up to, and the new lines of cars as they came out, were a big deal and closely followed. Thus was not just among the car nuts such as myself, but by the public in general.
As I recall, somewhere during the ’70s, the new car introductions evolved from true excitement about the cars themselves, over into rollouts followed by heavy rationalizing by the corporate PR departments and some of the press. All the fluff about the new jobs created, the better gas mileage, the less expensive crash repair estimates.
Matters such as reliability and “fun to drive” seemed to be forbidden to talk about. And the talk of how a buyer would love his new car was so much hope, with such little actual evidence. This car was part of the fleet that destroyed the Big Three. Deadly sin, indeed. It is hard to overestimate the sense of disappointment involved in witnessing these things being built, sold, and being driven down the road. They looked like squared off pigs, sniffing for truffles as they made their way along. But, but, first transverse V6 front wheel drive ever! That’ll put doubters in their place. Not.
The X-car was a brilliant car, just half-baked and disappointing. The brakes. The crude 2.5 four. The build quality.
Contrast that to the first Camry, fully baked, superb interior wrapped in a bland exterior. The first 4-speed automatic on a mass-priced car, which was literally a force multiplier for the SMOOTH 4-cylinder. Take that, General Turbohydramatic.
It was GM’s first dalliance with a transverse FWD car—but it was also the first transverse V6 FWD car ever. From anyone. And the pushrod V6 worked well for 1980.
As a Pontiac fanboy, even I was disappointed by the Phoenix. The exterior was overdone. The Citation, in any body style, was a good-looking car. And the Phoenix interior, with all those fake plastic screw heads…
The V-6 really made the x cars unique and something the Japanese had nothing to compare…Not only did GM come out with a brand new line of cars, the V6 was brand new. 60 degree architecture to address the uneven firing of the 90 degree 3.8 that was ubiquitous at GM, it was relatively powerful. I remember the raspy exhaust note the engine had…When accelerating from a stop there was no question what was under the hood.
Yes, the distinctive exhaust note! By 1980 small car standards, the V6 X-car was quick and roomy.
By contrast, the 1983 J-car (Cavalier, Pontiac J2000) was bog slow and underpowered
The ’82 had the miserable 1.8L. The 2.0L in the ’83 was OK around town–for the Bog Slow Era.
What a shame they didn’t have a newly-designed fully competitive four on offer as well. They needed such an engine in Australia too.
The first 4-speed automatic transmission on a mass-priced car was the Hydramatic in the 1940 Oldsmobile, starting in late 1939. The first 4-speed automatic found in an import in the U.S. was probably the 1965 MG 1100 sedan and the Austin America that replaced it.
The Hydramatic can’t really be compared to more modern automatics, as it had no torque converter. Its fluid coupling required a very low first gear, which torque converter automatics had no need for.
Modern four sped automatics were essentially three-speed automatics with an overdrive fourth gear. The Hydramatic lacked that.
Also, the Hydramatic shifted quite abruptly. It soon became an obsolete design.
Mercedes introduced its 4 speed automatic in 1961.
And like the early Hydramatics, the early Mercedes automatics lacked a torque-converter. Had a fluid-coupling with a very low first gear, no overdrive, and shifted quite abruptly.
But hey – they were one of the few automatics that could be push-started – if you got it rolling fast enough!
My Dodge Daytona also had those fake Allen screws in the horn pad on the steering wheel. It was an 84 model, so it fit right in.
As for how GM managed to produce a million X-cars in one model year – perhaps one had to be there, but these cars were big news in the spring of 1979. And I don’t just mean “big news” in the sense of making the cover of Car and Driver and Motor Trend. There was a great deal of general media interest in the X-cars.
The Iranian Revolution in February 1979 had kicked off the second gas shortage. These cars arrived at just the right time.
And they initially were just what the doctor – or, at least, GM – had ordered. Small on the outside, roomy on the inside, with the ability to optioned in a manner that made buyers of larger GM cars feel right at home. The V-6 versions were reasonably peppy for that era. The Buick Skylark and Oldsmobile Omega, in particular, came across as credible downsized versions of the larger Buicks and Oldsmobiles.
The fawning initial reviews in major enthusiast books added to their momentum, although we now know that they had been supplied specially prepared “ringers” from GM. But, through 1979, and into 1980, these really did seem like credible answers to the Honda Accord. The first X-car I saw on the road was owned by our high-school principal, who traded his 1975 Chevrolet Kingswood Estate for a Citation five-door hatchback as soon as the X-cars debuted.
By 1981, however, the bloom was off the X-car rose, and we all know the rest of this story.
Google weirdness: first thing that turned up for “Nagel Motors” was a 1994 *Federal* lawsuit against them and Casper’s Ford and Chrysler dealers for colluding on insurance-covered repair prices:
https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/us-v-nagel-motors-complaint
Meanwhile, I can still remember when these X-cars were everywhere, but none of my friends held on to them for the long term, or wanted to buy one used…
More Google weirdness: Pontiac J2000 dealer postcard from Nagel Motors, of all places: https://www.amazon.com/Pontiac-Hatchback-Wyoming-Original-Postcard/dp/B08NZFFNT3
Car and Driver did a large feature on the Phoenix when these first came out. The story had a fictitious couple and their imagined lives with their Phoenix over a number of years. I wonder how many Phoenixes actually lasted as long as the storyline’s car?
It seemed like a third of the May 1979 issue of Car & Driver was X-car related.
I remember the Phoenix story…I think they replaced the steering links or rack at 90,000 miles and it drove “like new”. I was 15 and ate it up…
Also, as part of the X-car story, C/D did a piece on the Corvair…another ‘revolutionary’ car from fall 1959, twenty years ago, comparing it to the X-car.
It would be easy to say to take a cheap shot, in hindsight, and say C/D should have done a piece on the Vega, but the Vega engine was so pathetic…and the rest of the car was not really groundbreaking, whereas the X-car was the first tranverse six-cyl FWD, the Corvair was the first six-cyl air cooled rear, both were space efficient….
Today, there remain thousands of Corvairs on the roads, and it’s easy to buy one.
When is the last time anyone say an X-car?
And I liked the X-car!
I read (and ate up) that Phoenix article/ad-supplement too. I recall its main function wasn’t selling the Phoenix but rather aftermarket parts, service, and accessories. Anyway, that aircraft-like dash looked great…
“Holy toledo, I see six more vents! Has there been another car with eight vents in the front?”
Yes sir, Pontiac A bodies built around the same time used a similar dash design, and most likely shared the same vent assemblies.
These hatch back 4 doors were always an eyesore. The back half just looks like they ran out of money and time. Just fold the roof down until it hits the tail end of the 1/4 panel, there, done, next? So is this the biggest seller that flopped the fastest? A million X-bodies and then?
I seem to recall lots of generic Citations on the roads back then, and quite a few Buick and Olds X cars, as the sedan or notchback 2 doors seemed popular. But far fewer Pontiacs. By the mid-90’s, when our kids were in elementary school, I still remember a few of the Buick/Olds versions soldiering on as second or third cars that seemed common in the pickup and drop off lines. By the way, though I assume it’s been well protected from the elements, that Unleaded Fuel sticker sure held up better than the interior, let alone exterior, plastics.
Yes, and the upturned Chev version makes me stabby—I’m not sure why I have such a visceral negative reaction to it, but I surely do. Both versions look schlock to me. I have no such reaction to the Camry or Stanza hatchback. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What? Noooo! There are reasons! They have reasons! Good ones! They were just, um, testing you to see if you know the reasons!
Grumble. I tried to fix this in the SAE standards controlled by the systems group I participate in (for decreasingly evident reasons). I was shouted down about it.
Extra, extra, read all about it.
=Radial Tuned Suspension. Like halogen headlamps, radial tires were long scorned by American industry as dumb foolishness by godless Euro-weenies who wouldn’t know a boulevard ride if it bit them in the butt. Once their hand was forced, they “discovered” radials and trumpeted them as though it was something they’d thought of all by themselves.
I recall in the ’80s seeing a hair-raising indictment in a news magazine (Newsweek? Time?) of the X-cars as deathtraps. As I recall, 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. Searches have been fruitless; I can’t find the article, so I mention it whenever the X-car topic comes up. Perhaps it’ll ring a bell for someone eventually.
In addition to poor build quality and lots of teething issues, the X-cars had a problem with premature locking of the rear brakes. Several accidents resulted, and the federal government filed suit against GM over the issue.
I confess that I wanted one when they were new (I was still a teenager). Bought a ’74 Fleetwood in the summer of ’81 instead. My spinster aunt had a Citation that I think she kept going most of the 80’s, because I can’t remember what followed it.
I always thought Pontiac got the body-style choices right with these – trunked coupe (really a 2-door sedan) or 5-door hatchback. Do you want to optimize shell stiffness at the cost of functionality, or vice versa?
Far more logical than so many cars in the ’80s that offered 3-door hatchback or 4-door sedan (coughs *Accord*), do you want compromised cargo carrying or compromised passenger access?
Chevy pushed their entry level ethos pretty hard in the early ’80s on anything short of a Corvette, Caprice or Monte. The bit of dress-up on the Phoenix vs. Citation would have been worth the move to Pontiac for me.
The styling and packaging still holds up on these, too bad these cars earned Deadliest Sin status, GM could have owned the ’80s just as in prior decades if these hadn’t been the turds the were. I recall an owner of a Skylark version tearfully telling of the brutal bills she was paying to keep everything going. I doubt she ever bought GM again.
Those screws in the dash are Torx, not hex head and they are real. This was when GM first started using them. Later they used the fake ones.
You are definitely correct on the Torx, I’ve updated the text, I think I knew that when I looked at them…and they do appear to be real, I think I see some corrosion on some of them when enlarging. I don’t see any that are obviously askew though (like how exposed phillips heads never line up on a domestic car). It is very possible that they are real, the next time I see the car I’m going to try one with a T-30 or whatever it is…What a crazy amount of work to have them be real though!
Combination of real and fake. The ones in the corner extremeties are real. Starting in model year 1983 the trim panels were simplified and the fake Torx heads removed but the real ones remained. The mid-size 1978-87 A/G body Pontiacs had similar treatment.
Yes you are correct, both fake and real. All the ones in my Fiero were real. My father had a Citation and they were all real but it didn’t come with that gage console.
I had an ’83 Cavalier with white interior. It was full of fake torx bolts molded into all the hard plastic door pieces. They looked extra fake in white. Between that and the molded stitching,it just looked so cheap.
I remember how exceptionally mushy the brakes were on these cars, how they felt so nose heavy to drive, the cheap, crappy ‘plastic-strap’ window regulators, and how more useful these could’ve been as a wagon, instead of as dumb hatchbacks.
But I guess this was the very beginning of the marketing campaign to eventually purge wagons from North America!
GM : snatching death from the jaws of victory for so many years .
I liked how my 1980 Citation 4 door looked, it too was a horrible piece of junk .
-Nate
I looked at one of these new 40 years ago after I hit some black ice on I89 on my Datsun 710 though I got it fixed up, I didn’t trust light RWD cars for icy conditions, so I wanted to replace it with FWD. X cars still hadn’t lost their lustre to me (maybe others knew of problems sooner) and I looked at a hatchback much like this one. I liked the size and the hatchback, if they had executed much better you could see these might have been a homerun, since they were very roomy for their size, compared to previous GM cars. Not sure why I only looked at Pontiac, nor do I recall why I didn’t end up getting one (dodged a bullet there!) but I would guess it had nothing to do with the car, more to do with me and financing, as I was right out of college then and really couldn’t swing a new car loan (especially at 1981 rates), I should have been only looking at used cars…but the problem was there really weren’t yet a lot of choices in used cars if you wanted FWD (how quickly the situation changed, though). I also looked at Plymouth Reliant, which was even newer, but didn’t have the hatchback, just a wagon, but same (financial) issue.
I ended up getting what I recall as my favorite car, which suited me well as a 22 year old, but would be decidedly less suitable today, a ’78 VW Scirocco. My boss at the time was head of the company credit union (a voluntary position, our regular job didn’t have anything to do with finance nor savings), and I think he managed to get me an extra $500 beyond what I was otherwise entitled to borrow to help me get the Scirocco (my tenure at the job was short so they had borrowing limits based on membership duration). I remember it was a 16% loan which was actually very good rate for a used car back then; think I borrowed $4500….don’t think I could have bought a new Phoenix nor Reliant for that (maybe a complete stripper?)….though the rate for new cars was of course a bit lower than for used. Paid off the loan in 1985 (by then working in another state 1800 miles away) and have since only had one other car loan (on my ’86 GTi) paid off in 1990. Of course keeping cars for much longer time between purchases has really helped, so far 21 years for my current VW.
Still, wish these had done much better…though my Father bought a new ’84 Sunbird, which turned out to be the worst car he ever owned (according to him, while he was still alive). It went through 2 engines in 80K miles despite being maintained per schedule at the dealer. To me there seems to be some evidence that US car makers took a long time to take the small car market seriously, even the gas crisis in the 70’s still seemed to have them winking to us, that we really should find a way to buy the larger cars they’d prefer to sell to us. If they’d taken small cars seriously back then, we might be dealing with a very different market profile than we are now (maybe it would look more like it did in 1981?). I didn’t know about that then, I just wanted a small (or medium sized) FWD car, to be a serious contender for my purchase consideration…..guess it was too much to ask at that time.
@Zwep ;
I was there in the early 1970’s when the fake gas shortage hit and interestingly enough Ford hit a home run with the Pinto in…?1971? .
I didn’t like them but time has shown that they did the job very well indeed ~ many went close to 200,000 miles on the original clutches and U-Joints .
They were fantastic fleet cars, able to stand up to hard daily abuse and soldier on albeit slowly…
-Nate