While Chrysler spent the ’60s insisting that it would never offer any “junior editions” with Chrysler badges, Buick seemed happy to expand its line with the compact (and later intermediate) Special and Skylark. The fancier Buick Skylark, added late in the 1961 model year, offered a full measure of Buick performance and luxury in a tidy compact package — at a Buick price.
Buick built a lot of appealing products in the ’60s, including the fabulous Riviera, but I have a particular affection for the 1961–1962 Skylark, the plushest version of the Y-body Buick Special. It had a couple of unfortunate flaws, including cooling system issues with the V-8 engine that were never entirely resolved, and it never sold as well as GM hoped, but it was quite an appealing package.
The Y-body “senior compacts” (which also included the Oldsmobile F-85/Cutlass and Pontiac Tempest/LeMans) were offshoots of the Chevrolet Corvair, using a stretched version of the Corvair body shell adapted for water-cooled front engines. All three senior compacts offered a neat compact, lightweight 215 cid (3.5-liter) all-aluminum V-8, which gave peppy performance and pretty good fuel economy. Each of the Y-bodies was quite a bit different mechanically, but the eight-cylinder Buick Special was the Goldilocks version, offering the most virtues with the fewest unwelcome eccentricities.
There was a better-trimmed Special Deluxe from the start, but around the end of March 1961, Buick announced a still-fancier version, called Skylark. This went on sale May 13, about six months after the launch of the Special, at a base price of $2,625, $106 more than a Special Deluxe sedan. The Skylark was offered only as a pillared two-door sport coupe; a convertible was added for the 1962 model year.
The Skylark was distinguished from the Special in a number of ways, beginning with a different grille.
Skylarks also had different wraparound taillights and a brushed aluminum applique in the cover between the taillights.
Aside from the distinct sport coupe roofline, another, rather curious Skylark distinction was higher rear wheel cutouts in the rear fenders, which required a scalloping of the body-side crease.
The ’61 was not the first Buick to carry the Skylark name. Back in 1953 and 1954, Buick had offered a limited-production semi-custom Skylark, analogous to the first Cadillac Eldorado, with lots of standard equipment and some styling features; the 1953 version was a towering $5,000. The Y-body Skylark was not so elaborate or as expensive, although it was still quite pricey for a compact. After the 1961 Skylark was announced, Motor Trend offered this unusually trenchant commentary:
The factory doesn’t consider the Skylark a Special, unless the word is spelled with a small “s.” Though based on the compact, it’s being touted as something quite different. The official attitude came to light when a MOTOR TREND staffer asked a Buick representative the price.
“About $3500, fully equipped,” was the reply.
Our man must’ve turned slightly pale because the gentleman from Michigan quickly added, “That’s a thousand dollars less than a Thunderbird!” Our man was silent.
Which raised a point. Those who’ve seen the Skylark tend to regard it as a sort of Buick Monza. Obviously, the factory has a more ambitious view!
The Skylark was actually not the most expensive member of the 1961 Special line — that honor went to the Special Deluxe station wagon — but it was a whopping $488 more than a Valiant V-200 hardtop, $424 more than a Corvair Monza, and $29 more than a full-size Chevrolet Bel Air two-door hardtop. In absolute terms, the Skylark sport coupe was not a horrendously expensive car for 1961 (it was $368 less than the cheapest 1961 LeSabre), but it was definitely not cheap either.
The Skylark was the same size as the Special: 188.4 inches long on a 112.1-inch wheelbase and 71.3 inches wide, with a curb weight of around 2,800 lb. While it was over 2 feet shorter and 1,400 lb lighter than a full-size LeSabre, for the Skylark to make sense, you had to stop thinking of it as a compact economy car and start thinking of it as a smaller Buick. Indeed, the central appeal of the Skylark was that its higher price enabled Buick to step out of the economy car mindset of the rather stark base Special and instead focus on making this modestly sized car feel more like a scaled-down Electra.
One interesting point I didn’t grasp until I had a closer look at the ads and brochures was that bucket seats, that essential feature of the Corvair Monza, were NOT standard on the Skylark. They were available (for $69.94 extra), and they seem to have been specified fairly often, but the Skylark came standard with a front bench seat. I suppose Buick didn’t want to necessarily deprive buyers of the advantages of the impressively low driveshaft tunnel (achieved, as on the full-size cars, with a “Hide-Away driveshaft” with a middle CV joint). (Note that because there weren’t many interior pictures of the Phoenix Beige car pictured in the lead image, some of these shots are of a different Desert Fawn Skylark car with the same interior trim. The Skylark interior was available in only three colors this year, blue, fawn, and gray.)
Buick boasted that the Skylark’s available vinyl-bolstered cloth upholstery was the same Calais cloth used in the big Electra (albeit not in the same stitching pattern).
The Skylark also emulated the Electra in the similar biscuit-and-button pattern on the door, accompanied by carpeted lower door panels.
This Desert Fawn car has a few options the Phoenix Beige car doesn’t, including a pod-mounted dashboard clock, power steering, and under-dash air conditioning. Both cars have Dual-Path Turbine Drive, a $189 option, plus a heater, which was $74.24, and an AM radio, an extra $65.64.
Buick advertising heavily featured the new vinyl Custom top, a $75.32 Skylark option. They were ahead of the curve with this one; by decade’s end, vinyl tops would be very common, but I don’t think initial take-up was very high. You could also order a contrasting painted roof color (typically Arctic White), and many buyers did that instead — it was cheaper (only about $15) and tended to hold up better.
The Skylark came standard with the four-barrel high-compression version of the aluminum V-8, which had 185 gross horsepower. (This was optional on the Special Deluxe for $38.74.) It returned impressive performance: Car Life‘s Special Deluxe with the 185 hp engine and Dual-Path Turbine Drive ran 0 to 60 mph in 10.0 seconds, which was quick enough to hurt the feelings of quite a few contemporary sports car owners. It also averaged a not-bad 17 to 21 mpg. Unfortunately, it required premium gasoline, unbecoming of an economy car.
However, as I said before, this was really not an economy car, just a smaller Buick. Even without air conditioning or power steering (which these cars really didn’t need), ordering a Skylark with bucket seats, automatic, heater, radio, backup lights, outside mirror, whitewalls, and a few other common accessories would put the sticker price well above $3,000, a relative worth of almost $42,000 in 2025 dollars.
It wasn’t like you didn’t get your money’s worth: The Skylark was a very competent vehicle, with an excellent ride (Consumer Reports rated it best among the domestic compacts), brisk performance from a very smooth engine, reasonable fuel economy, a quiet interior with decent room for four (five or six in a pinch), a good-size trunk, and acceptable brakes. Its handling was marred somewhat by very light, very slow steering and flaccid shock damping, but unlike the Pontiac Tempest, it had no alarming cornering vices. Build quality was also well above-average, and despite the V-8’s cooling system issues, these cars’ overall repair record was pretty good.
In many respects, the 1961–1962 Special and Skylark remind me of the 1990–1993 Honda Accord (the CB Accord, if you go by chassis codes), with the Skylark analogous to the better-trimmed, better-equipped Accord EX and SE models. Like the Y-body Buicks, the Accord was priced close to some significantly bigger cars, but if you didn’t put a premium on sheer size, the Honda was a quality product with an appealing mix of virtues.
The difference was that the ’90s Accord was a big mainstream success that Honda had no problem selling in fancier trim (often with a markup above sticker), whereas the Special and Skylark were answering a question not too many Americans were yet asking. The 1961 Buick Y-body line sold a not-great 86,866 cars; the Skylark’s late introduction limited its production to 12,683 cars.
For 1962, total Special/Skylark production rose to 153,763, with the Skylark accounting for 42,973 — better, and certainly welcome for Buick, but not the sort of numbers that inspired a lot of grins and back-slapping from senior GM management. Later iterations of the Special/Skylark line got bigger and sold better, but became less distinctive and less special.
It took a long time for compact luxury cars to really catch on in the U.S., and some Americans (as well as some domestic automakers) could never get their heads around the concept. However, some people want luxury and luxury features and are happy to do without unnecessary size and excess bulk, with cost a decidedly secondary consideration.
Related Reading
1961 Buick Special Wagon: Rare Three-Pedal Station Wagon With Aluminum V-8 And 3-Speed Stick (by me)
Vintage Car Life Comparison Test: 1961 Buick Special vs. Volvo 122S – An Unfair Comparison? (by me)
Curbside Classic: 1962 Buick Special – A Truly Special Buick (by J P Cavanaugh)
Vintage Car Life Comparison: 1962 Pontiac Tempest 4, Buick Special V6, Olds F-85 V8 – Decisions, Decisions (by Paul N)
Car Show Classic: 1963 Buick Special Sedan – What I Say, What I Do (by Aaron65)
This was interesting – I had never noticed the grille and other trim changes to the 61 Skylark, always assuming that those differences were a 61 vs. 62 thing. Although the 61 Skylark grille does seem to have been used for all Specials in 62.
The interiors seem especially nice. I have always thought that carpet on lower door trim panels added a real luxury feel to cars of that era. GM and Ford did this pretty extensively, but that kind of thing was always rare on Chrysler-built cars. The Skylark dash is the one part of that interior that is a let-down for me.
Yeah, I agree. I think the problem was that the dashboard was the main area it was prohibitively expensive to redo from the very basic base Special. What the Skylark really needed was something like the dashboard of the 1967 Mercury Comet I featured a while back, with round gauge bezels in a ribbed metal-and-black panel.
Having read a lot of 1960s road tests, I remember at least one or two of the magazine guys owning Y-body Skylarks as their personal cars, and they were a little sad when they grew into intermediates. The size was just about perfect, and like you said, they had the best combination of attributes of the BOP trio.
With that being said, I still think the Tempest was the best-looking of the three.
In 1961 and 1963, I’d agree, but I don’t care much for the 1962 Tempest facelift.
The early Pontiac Tempest is famous for its flexible driveshaft, but I didn’t know Buick also had a center-tunnel-reducing setup too.
I find that ever so slightly different rear fender on the Skylark vs. Special to be bizarre. Why bother with such a subtle difference hardly anyone will notice if not pointed out to them? I know this isn’t the only example of this phenomenon though.
Yeah, at first I thought it was 2-door vs 4-door. At least there’s some logic to that since you need different rear fenders anyway.
Looks like Buick was ahead of it’s time. In the 90s people wanted small cars with options.
About 1971 a classmate’s father (who today we would call a flipper) bought one of these. It had low compression in one cylinder, but we drove it anyway. We loved the car, and called it a ‘Baby Cadillac’. We especially liked the somewhat goofy clock placement in the upper middle dash.
It ended up having a holed piston, a small hole near the ring land, causing the miss. Probably from detonation, since I’m sure it long ago stopped receiving premium gas.
The piston was replaced and the car sold.
As a 10 year old car it was already a rarity in the rusty Great Lakes area.
It’s a little hard to tell from the pics, but does the underdash AC just have the two vents, at the extreme ends of the dashboard?
I’d imagine the Frigidaire compressor would weigh about half as much as the V-8! Wonder where they crammed it into the engine compartment.
It looks like the center unit has an outlet that’s rolled into its closed position, so there are the usual three air outlets typical of GM at this time.
I loved these Skylarks as a kid and still do. An historic example is one owned by Sarah Hughes, the federal district court judge who swore in Lyndon Johnson as the new president on Air Force One on November 22, 1963. She would have been a logical candidate for the Skylark: an urban female professional who prefers, and with the resources to own, a luxurious but small Buick. I’m guessing it would have had A/C given the location.
The car was featured in the David Wolper documentary film Four Days in November (and hence an image of it is available on the IMCDb.org: Internet Movie Cars Database) in a recreated scene of her hurried drive to Dallas’s Love Field airport to swear in the new president. William Manchester, in his book The Death of a President, somewhat fancifully refers to it early on as her red “sports car.“ His description of her skidding arrival at the airport continues the theme:
“He [undertaker Vernon Oneal] saw her gay sports car swerve around the ’Spirt of Flight’ statue and shouted ’There she is!’”
Perhaps Manchester, who was clearly not a car guy, was deceived by “Sports” as part of the model designation. Or maybe he was trying to reinforce his dramatic portrayal of Judge Hughes’s “race” to the airport that day to fulfill a request from her old friend LBJ to swear him in; she knew he wanted things done in a hurry.
I was something of a Buick fan back then, and remember building a plastic model of the Skylark. But I didn’t remember that clumsy kickup over the rear wheel. It spoils the Buickness, turns the Sweepspear into a Shakespear!
My parents bought one of these (a 62) new and went on to drive it for the next 19 years. It had over 150,000 miles on it, which was pretty much unheard of at the time. This car sold them on Buicks for the rest of their lives. It was a great car to have during the oil embargo and gas lines of the 1970s. I don’t recall them having cooling issues with their car until the car was very old. They lived in Texas for part of that time which is obviously a hot place to live where you want your cooling system to work well. I don’t recall them telling me about issues with the cooling system during that time. The one disadvantage these cars had, in my opinion, was the lack of a temperature gauge, even as an option. With an aluminum engine, you want to have that. This car, in particular its styling, also sold ME on Buicks. Many years later, I came to be the owner of 3 of these Y body Buicks. I’ve personally been very happy with them. I personally haven’t had cooling system issues on any of them. They are the size of a modern car. They are the same length as an 80s/90s Century/Cutlass Ciera/Celebrity and therefore are easy to drive and park. Performance with the V8 is good. General reliability is good. The only disadvantage to me is the non power drum brakes. They require a fair amount of pedal effort and don’t respond all that fast. Power brakes is an improvement, but not many of these cars had them. One photo of the interior (of the driver’s seat) the center section doesn’t have the right pattern on the seat. It must have been recovered. There’s another photo of the back seat in a different car that says it’s cloth and vinyl, but it appears all vinyl to me. Both all vinyl and cloth and vinyl were available choices. This appears to be the correct pattern on the seat, which has buttons on it.
Oops, you’re right on both counts. I fixed the captions and substituted a photo of the seats of the Desert Fawn car, which do look to be all-vinyl.
Thanks! Looks good now!
My Uncle, a well paid engineer, had one as his commuter car. I remember him talking about the overheating issue. He said it was due to aluminum engine vs copper radiator corrosion. Solution that worked for him was always fresh Prestone. Too many people, especially here where it never gets cold, cheap out on coolant and even used plain water back then.
When grandpa passed and grandma had to start driving, the stick shift Falcon Sprint had to go. Uncle got her a ’63 Skylark, perfect. Super nice car that was small and easy to handle, especially in the narrow streets of Hermosa Beach, California.
I know it is kind of late to comment on this. The compact and mid-sized Buicks (Special/Skylark/Century/Regal) seemed to have an appeal to a couple of different groups. There were those who wanted to buy the prestige of a Buick at a lower price than that of full-sized Buick.
And then there were the well-to-do, many of them women, who wanted a luxurious car that was smaller than the full-sized offerings by the American manufacturers. In the ’60s and early ’70s there were, arguably, were not any luxury Asian models and European luxury cars still had comparatively small dealer networks limited to larger cities and to the coasts. Until Cadillac introduced the Seville in 1975, for many people the mid-sized and compact Buicks (usually heavily loaded with options) were the most luxurious “small” cars you could buy. The word “small” is, or course, being relative.
It is interesting to note that Buick, having gone to an all CUV lineup since 2021, is planning to reenter the conventional automobile market again in the near future with a mid-sized sedan that will share its platform with the Cadillac CT5.