Mere days before Christmas of last year, I stumbled across this sad specimen of a Chevrolet Citation while on one of my long, meditative walks. To see any Citation anymore, the newest of which would have been thirty-five years old as of last year, would have been an extremely rare occurrence, but the grille pattern on this one was exclusive to the Citation’s first, extended model year on the market. It’s plausible that this car is not actually a 1980 and that its grille was a replacement from a donor car. Which parts were original to this car, given that over 1,642,000 were produced over six model years? It would be hard to tell absent a closer look than I was afforded, given that this car seemed so complete.
At least one owner didn’t even bother to replace the body panels that had rusted all the way through, which leads me to believe that most of what I had photographed was probably as from the factory, if not replaced under one of myriad factory recalls that Citation owners were subjected to. It struck me that this car was the perfect sighting with which to end 2020. This car was 2020… for many people, anyway. I have documented at Curbside what some of my own personal journey has looked like over the past year and a half, and there was a lot of good that came from last year for me. With that said, I will never forget what it was like to survive what may have been the single most challenging year of my entire forty-something existence on this planet. This was true not so much on a personal level, but in terms of daily functionality and the inability to safely do even simple things I had been able to do with ease before.
This Citation appears to have gotten here to this patch of pavement under its own power. Missing its license plates and other ways of identifying it, this unloved and used-up X-Body hatchback sat, very illegally, at a crosswalk. I have a vivid imagination, but even I’m having trouble with coming up with the scenario under which this Citation ended up here. Was it cheaper to drive it to this stretch of North Broadway and abandon it than to pay for a tow truck to the junkyard? Who would tow this thing only as far as this specific spot? Did the junkyard straight-up refuse to accept it when someone had made a phone call earlier? What then? What does one do with a car they no longer want that they can’t get rid of that’s taking up valuable real estate on one’s property? Some might do this, and hope they don’t get caught. I have many questions.
There is just so much rust. Merely looking at this car makes me want to get another tetanus booster shot. At some point, its owner had taken matters into his or her hands and did a very artisanal job of applying almost-matching silver duct tape to the lower door panels. Remember when you were learning how to use crayons in kindergarten, and the teacher taught you to color using strokes made in the same back-and-forth directions instead of scribbling, and how much better your pictures looked as a result? Someone took great care to apply the duct tape to the doors in parallel lines to almost give the appearance of a two-tone paint job. It’s almost as if they had asked themselves, “How do I make this car look, well… less crappy?”, and they took care to bandage this Citation’s festering rust-sores with something approximating precision.
The condition of this car also begged the questions: What of this car could actually be salvaged or reused? Does it have any value at all? The glass looked alright, but I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on this busy thoroughfare getting too up-close-and-personal with this car, as I didn’t want anyone to assume I was responsible in any way for getting and leaving it there. The Citation model, itself, has already been chronicled at CC as “GM’s Deadliest Sin”, so my intent here is not necessarily to restate any of that. It just seems to me that this particular car seemed to be the most perfect embodiment of the Citation during its entire, unfortunate life, in terms of what it turned out to be for many trusting consumers, what it did to contribute to the diminishing of GM’s once vast market share and reputation, and for the kind of lasting impression it left on many who had expected much, much more from the United States’ largest automaker.
“Murphy’s Law” is commonly described along the lines of a set of circumstances under which if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Not everything went wrong with the Citation. The stylists did a nice job. The interior was roomy, and the hatchbacks swallowed a lot of luggage and had a high utility factor. Fuel economy was good from the standard, Pontiac-sourced “Iron Duke” 2.5L four-cylinder with its 90 hp, which was mounted sideways. Chevy’s new 2.8L V6 yielded over 25% more horsepower than the four, with 115 hp on tap. The entire Citation range was also moderately light, weighing in the 2,500-pound range which was generally about 100 – 200 pounds less than the entire two-door Monza line-up. As detailed in the link above, things did not end well, with many of over 811,500 first-year Citations leaving a bad taste in the minds of many buyers. For the record, my Uncle Bob really liked his, which he still maintains was a good car. Apparently, they had gotten one of the good ones, and that car served as their primary family hauler until my other cousin came along.
I was in elementary school in Flint, Michigan when the song “Murphy’s Law” by dance band Cheri was a hit on R&B radio. It’s a song I remember hearing from the tinny speakers at the front of the school bus. The sped-up vocals in the chorus reminded me a little bit of something from some song on one of the Disney records I was actually allowed to have at that age (played, of course, on my plastic Fisher-Price turntable in two-tone brown and beige). “Got it all together, dont’cha, Baby?” “Murphy’s Law… is sure out to get you.” Words that could have been uttered directly from this Chevy Citation or last year’s calendar, if either could talk. Let us all collectively cross our fingers, toes, and everything else that there will never be another, ever again, like either this car or last year.
South Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Tuesday, December 22, 2020.
Click here for related reading on an ’81 found a year ago by contributor Jim Klein.
What a strange ad to list every curb weight, when you rarely see any dimensions at all. The V6 adds less than 50 lbs.
Typical of GM to keep the height low for proportion’s sake, just like the Corvair and Vega. Didn’t they realize America was becoming taller–and fatter?
I just donated my 1985 Citation X-11 to my oldest son that I purchased new. He wanted something to tinker with. Just over 1600 X-11’s produced the last year. I noticed also how small these cars were when I had it parked between my truck and my work car, a 2019 Chevrolet Cruze!
In the thumbnail and before I looked at your text I thought that was a Chevette!
Amazingly, Chevy designed completely unique inside door panels and seats for those final 1600 ’85 X-11s, as well as the only use of the 3 spoke steering wheel in a Citation. The dashboard was 1985-only too although used in all final-year Citations; it eliminated the weird vertical radio.
At least it’s easy to spot a 1985 Citation. And a 1985 X-11 would be rare, although I’m rather dubious of that making it ‘valuable’.
pic:
Ah geez. It actually makes me kinda sad to see a Citation this battered, and then this obviously ditched in a precarious location and left behind. I’m going to guess it was out in the world and being driven for the majority of the last 35-40 odd years, as one usually doesn’t show this level of advanced deterioration by just sitting dead in a driveway for half its life. I would guess it *is* 1982-on with an earlier grille, as I do see a blanked section where the amber rear turn signal resided in 1980-81; Chevrolet went full chintz when they took the amber section away, combining the turn signal with the brake lamp in the outer compartment… and it would take more effort for the average owner to rewire the brake/turn signal circuit to that configuration than it would to just put a red lens over the separate turn section. The tail lamps were completely disassemble-able, though. Lenses unscrewed from reflectors, and the rear side marker was even a separate piece, so piecing stuff together was possible.
I’m not quite old enough to have experienced the Citation and other X-bodies when they were brand new, so can only remember them after the newness wore off. Many of my friends got various X-bodies for their first cars, and most of them were middle of the road cars… some of them were a little junky, but there were a couple that held up to unusual levels of intentional abuse. I even seriously considered a well optioned 1985 X-11 for my first car.
Still, I can’t deny the Deadly Sin designation. Going from being a car that people lined up to buy as fast as they could be built to a complete punching bag and butt of jokes in such a short period of time… They were pretty close to having a good car, as GM quickly mixed up almost all of the same X-body ingredients into a slightly different shaped cake a couple years later (FWD A-body quadruplets), and the end product was pretty palatable. Cars like the Pontiac 6000 STE and 6000 AWD were actually very *good*, and the then elderly 1990’s Ciera and Century were as reliable as a stump. How different would it have been if those latter four cars were what they started with in 1979-80?
“I’m not quite old enough to have experienced the Citation and other X-bodies when they were brand new”
I am. General Motors was going to rule the world. Both Ford and Chrysler had become jokes by 1979-80, with little money for new product and what new product that came along was riddled with compromise. GM was a gushing fountain of new product – 1977 B/C bodies, 1978 A bodies, 1979 Eldo/Toro/Riv. This early-arrival 1981 was going to put the nail in competitors’ coffins. Nobody expected that this car would not follow the series of success stories of recent prior new models.
I was a freshman in college when these came out and remember reading all the accolades in Motor Trend, Car and Driver and even Road & Track who generally disparaged American cars. We were a GM family with the a relatively new 78 Estate Wagon. A car superior in every way to the 72 estate wagon it replaced.
I was a VW fan, in fact in 81 I bought my first new car, a VW Scirocco and VW along with Honda made front drive, transverse engine cars main stream. Efficient and good performing automobiles. The x-car promised this technology in a larger package marketed by the largest, most successful auto company in the world. They were attractive, efficient, quick, handled gret and were American….What could go wrong?
40 years ago I had just started my first job out of college….was actually a senior when in 1979 I heard about the X cars, and they seemed like a huge deal….maybe the equivalent of the K cars for Chrysler in terms of how they would likely dominate the GM product line.
Sliding into a guard rail cable with my ’74 Datsun 710 on black ice outside Sharon, Vt, on my way back to visit my Parents on a Friday after work changed things for me. Got the 710 bodywork fixed, but I didn’t trust a light RWD automatic car anymore. So, started looking at cars, but was a bit scatterbrained about it…primarily I didn’t think whether I should be looking at new or used cars. Used cars were nominally less expensive, but loan rates were sometimes much higher than for new cars (my co-worker got a 24% loan on his Sunbird), and inflation was in full force, so prices even of used cars were very high (stories of someone buying a ’79 Toyota and selling it a year later for more than they paid for it). One of the cars I looked at was an X car, namely a Pontiac Phoenix. Also looked at the even newer K cars (not sure, maybe an Aires?), as well as a Dodge Omni (my Father had just bought a 1980 Omni the year before.
I ended up with …a ’78 Scirocco. Maybe not the best choice for a carpool, but nevertheless, I was in the rotation with 2 other people, all of us had 2 door manual transmission cars…seems almost funny in retrospect. I loved the car and even got preferential financing through our company credit union (my Manager at the time was president of the credit union, a volunteer job, as our regular job had nothing to do with banking or finance).
It is a bit sad looking at this car, kind of a metaphor for GM itself…in 1980 they were flying high, and 41 years later, not so much. My Father’s last 2 cars were Chevy Impalas, he actually returned to GM after a terrible experience with a new ’84 Pontiac Sunbird, easily his worst car, but he also had a ’78 Caprice Classic and ’65 Oldsmobile F85 wagon which were decent cars. GM knew how to make FWD cars, the ’79 Tornado/Riviera/El Dorado were albeit expensive versions, but they seemed to forget that when they came out with these. For me, it was a problem avoided, as I could see myself having bought the Phoenix back then…but then I wouldn’t have owned VWs for 40 years consecutive (even though VW itself has had its issues and whose cars are hardly trouble-free).
Yep, I remember the hype and fell for it myself by goading my parents into buying a Pontiac Phoenix. The Car and Driver issue below (their most embarrassing cover ever) reflected the general initial appraisal of these – they devoted about 20 pages to the new X body quartet.
The amber vs. red taillight thing on the Citation confuses many. Citations, at least in the first few years, could have either red or amber rear turn signal indicators. The amber ones were included in the Exterior Decor Group option, which also added chrome window frames, wheelwell moldings, and rocker panel moldings. The outside rear view mirrors changed to the newer style butted against the A pillar (as in the Cavalier and Celebrity) in 1983 as well as those cars’ new wheels, so this one does appear to be 1982 or earlier. But all 82 or earlier cars had high-back front seats, even those with bench seats, and I don’t see any headrests in the photos. Are the seats reclined too much? Or just broken, since reclining seats (separate option for each side) weren’t common on Citations?
And yes, the tragedy of the Citation and other X bodies was that with another half year of development these could have been terrific cars, and they could have still got them out for the usual beginning of the 1980 model year. As noted, the 1982 A bodies shared the same basic engineering and many of their parts and were reliable from the get-go, and became more as the years went on. What was the hurry? Ford, Toyota, Chrysler, and Nissan had nothing of this kind in 1980, small front-drive cars with big back seats and trunks suitable for family-car use. Ford was still selling Pintos.
Ford, Toyota, Chrysler, and Nissan had nothing of this kind in 1980…
True, but the much better (which is really saying something) Chrysler K-car was just around the corner for 1981.
As was the Ford Escort, though a smaller class of cars, soon to be followed by the Tempo.
I bought my first new car in ’81, and test drove all the American brands (Pontiac Phoenix, Mercury Lynx, AMC Encore, Plymouth Horizon coupe…) before deciding the Toyota I bought was of superior build. I wish I had the extra cheese for the Accord but they were a hot commodity back then, and with the Voluntary Import Restraints applied to all Japanese cars it got pricey.
The only issue I ever had with the Toyota was a repetitive bad rear axle bearing, but that was more a bad collision repair than a Toyota issue.
If you look at the bottom of the cover there is also road test of the new downsized Eldo included. I had this issue as I was a subscriber at this time. The review of the Eldo was very positive, as the testers were quite surprised as how well it performed, they could also imagine why a buyer might find the car so appealing, it was a quantum leap over the whoppers of the recent past! There is a photo of the Eldo cornering at speed with the sidewalls of the tires bent over to an amazing degree. I wish that I was able to find that photo on the web.
I’ve got that issue; I’ll see if I can find it…..
I know the picture you mean Jose, but it’s not in that issue’s test. Another year perhaps? I don’t have time to look through them all right now, but I’ll try tomorrow.
You are welcome:
Ford was not a joke in ’79-80. Yes straddling the fence of bankruptcy, they still managed to give us ground breaking products like the Fox body Fairmont and Mustang, an all new full size truck for 1980, and even the ’83 Ranger was on the drawing board at the time. And they even got Holley to redesign the primary side of their 4bbl carburetor for them, known as the 4180. (side note, the best 4180 was on the 1985 351W truck engine)
How do you reckon this was some kind of big, exceptional achievement? Suppliers like Holley provide what their automaker customers order. An automaker such as Ford go to a supplier such as Holley and say “We want something like your existing widget, with this list of changes and specifications”, then Holley provide prototypes and Ford test them—this step gets iterated several times, often with multiple suppliers in parallel—and then if Holley’s prototypes meet Ford’s requirements, terms of the supply contract are negotiated. If those negotiations are successful, Holley supply Ford’s carburetors. If not, perhaps Carter get the contract, or Ford decide to build it in-house and the cars get Motorcraft carburetors.
(And yes, I would argue Ford were a joke in ’79-’80, turning out pathetic cars like this one)
“Ford was not a joke in ’79-80”
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this. As much as most of us today (me included) like RWD cars now, they were considered positively cro magnon in 1979 and particularly 1980. Then, “which mid-size car would you prefer, sir – a 79 LTD II or an 80 Granada?” The 80 Thunderbird? Or the subcompact Pinto?
I can agree that much good came from the Fox and Panther platforms, but I would also argue that it took until 1983-86 to get us there. I think the same thing goes for the trucks – I cannot recall a lot of love for the early versions of that 1980+ F series.
Not the F-series however the early to mid-1980s Bronco might receive some love from what I read on Hemmings blog.
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/way-out-of-the-box
Eeyeah…maybe the article’s any good, and maybe it’s not. Either way, it says very little about how good or lousy those trucks were. It would be nice if Hemmings would stick to running automotive classified ads, which is what they do well. Check your facts! is the Prime Directive of journalism, and Hemmings’ efforts and standards on that front are nonexistent. Their sloppy, revisionist nonsense has inspired at least one detailed automotive history article here on CC.
Ground breaking? The Fox bodies? How?
I was in grad school at Berkeley in 1980 when these came out. Of course I wasn’t aware they came out since I cannot recall ever seeing one given that what I saw was mostly small Mercedes, BMW, Saab, Volvo, VW, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan.
I had a brand new 1982 Citation.
So I remember them.
Nicely styled, fuel efficient, good space utilization pieces of CRAP.
A company car from a company that ordered 20 of them, and then turned around and returned all of them because they were so bad. Except my POS because I put so many miles on cars, I got a long term lease. So I was able to get a Ford Escort while the Citation was living in the dealer’s garage fixing God knows what else went bad -and I discovered Fords were better than GM. Imagine that – Citations were far worse than Escorts. There you go. That bad.
Oh, much better! Eek.
The amber rear signals were optional to the end, part of a deluxe lighting group. I’m not sure what the take rate was.
This is something I just learned today! Thank you for this. I just found an online posting of an ’85 Citation X-11 that was all-stock with the amber turn signals.
It would take too extensive a rewrite of my essay to incorporate this information (especially my lead-off paragraph), but I thank you for pointing this out.
Wow, this is the most pathetic beater I have seen in some time. A championship End Stage Beater if ever there was one. The duct taped doors remind me of the old biplanes with their varnished fabric surfaces. It was light from the factory and is even lighter now!
Is it me or does the full-on side view show a rear axle that is becoming detached from its mounts? Rambler Americans from the early 60s had rear wheels that looked off-center in their rear fenders, but I do not recall Citations looking this way. But this one sure does.
I was never a fan of the Citation – everyone loves the styling but I never cared for it. But once a car gets to this condition I get the urge to start rooting for it, hoping it can go on for a little bit longer.
Yikes…I think you’re right about the rear axle; it looks like it’s come loose on both sides. The brochure shows that the axle is held fore and aft by a pair of trailing arms, one of which looks to be hanging down on our featured Citation.
A guy in my neighborhood was driving a late-’70s Nova daily until a few years ago, and his left front subframe had come loose from the floorpan and was visibly hanging in the back. For those who don’t know, the subframes were attached by four large bolts (two per side) with rubber mounts. Well, this Nova was down to two or three, and it made me wonder how many cars on Michigan’s roads were in similar disrepair. I don’t like thinking about it.
Yes, that rear axle is the culprit. Too far back on one side and too far inward on the other. This car put up a really good fight.
Some friends of my parents had two Citations at the same time. I have no clue if they had issues (although likely not with the first one if they got a second) but they didn’t keep cars long at all. They (in their mid-70s) still believe a car is on its last legs at around 20,000 miles. They once had a 3.8 liter powered Olds 98 which was approaching 35,000 miles and they were a nervous wreck about it being so high mileage.
LOl I agree with you about the rear wheel positions but how could you tell given that all the rust may have relocated even the rear windows as references haha
The price of scrap steel is pretty good right now but I’m not sure on current values of brittle plastic and rust scales.
Oh, I’m glad you said that about the styling, JPC, as I’ve never much liked it either. It seems often assumed that at least that aspect was a strong point: it just isn’t.
A Lancia sedan from ’74 or so shows just how this exact shape could be so much more elegant, as do many, many others that followed that basic formula (which was possibly derived from the famous ’67 BMC 1800 Aerodyndamica from Pinin, though the only direct follower of that was the Citroen CX). For a company with GM’s styling heritage – let alone sheer size! – the styling of the X car was and is really below par.
Agree with the championship End Stage Beater assessment. This Citation really looks like someone, somehow, managed to keep it going for a very long time (for very little money) and drove it until it broke in a major, simply unfixable way. So, to keep it from (theoretically) being traced back to them, they removed the license plate and left it for the local municipality to haul off to the county auction lot (where I can’t imagine anyone making an offer on it).
As to the Citation story, it is truly sad, sort of like a good television show in that, to many, it can be definitively pointed to as the moment when GM ‘jumped the shark’. True, the Vega might be considered arguably worse, but it wasn’t intended as a household’s primary vehicle. Owners certainly didn’t like the crappy way it was engineered and quickly stopped running/fell apart, but the Vega was more in the mold of a second, disposable vehicle that was eventually going to crap, anyway.
Just imagine anyone who had gotten burned with a new Vega, then turned around and gave GM a second chance by buying a Citation. Sheesh, talk about a double-whammy. There’s someone who would absolutely never buy another GM vehicle for at least a couple generations, probably forever once they got a taste of Japanese auto reliability.
The Citation showed so much promise and was supposed to be a game-changer, a mainstream car that was going to, once and for all, crown GM as the dominant automaker of the world. Maybe if the press hadn’t been so fawning and they hadn’t sold so many, it wouldn’t have been so bad.
The Citation was like GM’s version of Chrysler’s 1957 ‘Forward Look’ cars. Stunningly successful at introduction (as described in the article, the Citation really looked good on paper), neither sunk the maker (at least not immediately), but both did virtually irrepairable damage to their company’s respective reputations, a couple of the most classic Greek tragedies in auto history.
One of the ironies of the Citation is that, 31 years later, facing bankruptcy, GM would prove that they ‘could’ make a truly good, game-changing, revolutionary vehicle if they really tried: the 2011 Chevy Volt, the car that is widely credited with dethroning the Toyota Prius as the premier hybrid. Unlike the Citation, over a decade later, there are still many of those 1st gen Volts happily and reliably on the road to this day.
I would root for this car, but I fear it is one hook away from the junkyard. On the plus side, I will say that someone did a nice job of duct taping that door panel.
I drove one of these around Florida for two weeks in 1982. It was, at the time, an upgrade in the rental fleet, consisting mostly of Chove-vettes.
About the styling. To me that basic shape was okay, but it was spoiled by the ultra-square, fussy and overchromey front and rear treatment. Stripping off some chrome and going to black trim helps a lot. Still doesn’t look European, but better. 🙂
It looks like the whole bottom fell out of the car and is sitting on the pavement! Done!
It looks like the front wheel drive version of the famous Chicago Cutlass
https://drivetribe.com/p/the-legend-of-the-chicago-cutlass-KBAH0MehQsioPpy9a5PiZA?iid=FMNbGZkzQvqzH1LiFV9nEw
Wow, I need to keep an eye out for this Cutlass… in one of those photos, he’s driving past the closest expressway entrance from here!
That Cutlass looks in even worse shape than this one I had posted to the Curside Cohort back in 2014, as parked at a local, neighborhood supermarket:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cohort-wordless-outtake-one-reason-why-i-dont-live-in-the-midwest/
Love it. It just looks so sad sitting there in the crosswalk, like it’s waiting for someone to stumble into it and help it.
Never heard that “Murphy’s Law” song before. This car and the X-body in general made me think of the song “I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down”, of which I first heard the Paul Young version and all its “orchestral hits,” but much prefer the original Ann Peebles version. Anyway, I first thought the song would be from the perspective of the Citation, but after reading the lyrics it’s really from the Japanese automakers:
“You think you’ve got it all figured out
You think you’ve got the perfect plan
To charm everyone you see
And playing any game you can
But I’ve got news for you
I hope it don’t hit you too hard
One of these days
While you’re at play
I’m gonna catch you off guard
I’m gonna tear your playhouse down
Pretty soon
I’m gonna tear your playhouse down
(The way you are)
Room by room”
Corey, you know I always appreciate a great musical reference. Thank you for this one.
Just the other day I was thinking about beater cars, and mostly how you just don’t see serious beaters (like this Citation) very often any more. Clearly some states – California and my state Massachusetts – have had aggressive programs to actively remove beaters from the road…but even in my travels to those parts of the country where there aren’t rigorous state inspection programs, I seldom see something approaching the duct-taped piece of art that is featured here. And yet, these used to be fairly common nearly everywhere. Heck, I suspect that most of us who started driving during the last century likely drove something more or less like this for some period of time.
You also don’t see cars abandoned on city streets (or along side of the highway) quite this way any more…that used to be common as well. I always wondered (as I do about this Citation) who thought that they could simply take the plates off of a car and vanish. As if plates were the only way to trace something back to the owner.
I suspect that Obama’s 2009 Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), colloquially known as “cash for clunkers”, is the primary culprit for the dearth of beaters on the roads today. Back then, anything less than 25 years old that could limp into a dealer’s car lot under its own power would net the owner $4000 towards the purchase of a new vehicle.
But there’s the irony: anything built before 1984 would be ineligible. So, something like this old Citation (and nearly all of them that were built) would be spared the crusher!
Jeff Sun,
Most states require the plates be turned in, either to the MVA/DMV or Police, before you can end your car insurance. In some states that require you to renew for 2 [or more] years at a time, if the second year has not yet started, you can get a refund, so the plates can be of value.
The most effort the authorities will do on a vehicle in this condition, is to check the NCIC database to see if it’s been reported stolen. Typically the MVA/DMV will send out a notice to the last registered owner notifying them it’s been impounded [When & where], and how to reclaim the vehicle if desired.
Many states, cities and local government authorities have arrangements with contracted towers or city owned tow trucks, to remove a non-licensed vehicle once the Police have tagged it for removal.
40 years ago many large US cities had hundreds of abandoned vehicles littering the streets and alleys. Not today. Cities now realize there is money to be realized, and are quick to remove most abandoned vehicles, sometimes within hours, especially if it’s in a marked tow-away zone.
Local government impound lots often make a sizeable financial income off impounded items by auctioning the items off on a regular basis. Most vehicles are bought either to send directly for scrap, or to a salvage yard. For example, the city of Baltimore handles over 40,000 abandoned vehicles every year, and has dozens of city owned tow trucks on call 24/7.
I investigated the city’s towing operation a number of years ago [I was hired as an expert witness in a court case] and determined the average profit off a vehicle sold at the auctions was $28. Times 40,000, that’s $1.12 million!
That was not my experience in Colorado, Michigan, or Washington. Which doesn’t constitute “most states”, but…are you sure? How would that even work in states like California where the plates stay with the car rather than the owner?
IL gives no Fs about LPs. That is they don’t care about your registration at all; I have all the old license plates from my cars. You also don’t have to do anything when trading in or selling a car either- signing over the title is sufficient.
I, like many others, live in Wisconsin and work in Illinois. Similar registration regs; plates stay with the owner, not the car.
A co-worker recently bought a 2006 Mazda3 as a cheap commuter. He brought his new plates in the shop, and I saw him cutting an X across the new stickers he had just applied with a utility knife. I had never seen this- he told me it was so if there is an attempt to steal the stickers, they basically shred and are unusable.
You are assuming that whoever was driving this lump actually registered and insured it.
Yup, that’s a thing—I cut more than an X; I make a grid of crisscross cuts all over the decal. They might get one tiny little inconsequential flake of it off, maybe two, before they move on and steal someone else’s instead.
In MA, you have to cancel the plates in order to cancel the insurance…unless you get the insurance canceled for some other reason (e.g., non payment), in which case the registration is also canceled.
You can cancel your plates/registration online and the DMV will send you a receipt showing that they’ve been canceled. Then you use that receipt to cancel your insurance and get any refund that might be due you. You never need to turn in your plates here. The DMV offers that they can be recycled at your local recycling center.
All of which is likely moot for this Citation (and most abandoned vehicles) as in all likelihood they didn’t have valid a registration – or insurance – to begin with.
There might be some misunderstanding of this whole registration/insurance thing. I doubt you’re required to cancel your registration to cancel your insurance. The catch is, if you don’t cancel your registration but cancel your insurance, your license gets suspended. The insurance companies are absolutely insane about automatically (and instantly) notifying the DMV when auto insurance is cancelled. As to how insane, I once read that the overwhelming majority of suspended licenses are now for minor infractions, i.e., non-payment of insurance.
The bottom line is, if you want to stop paying your insurance but don’t want your license suspended in the process, you have to cancel your registration, too, and, in some states, to do that requires turning in your plates.
On older cars like this the VIN was usually only in 2 places, the little metal tag visible through the windshield and the sticker on the door jamb. Not too hard to remove or render them unreadable with the screwdriver or pocket knife used to remove the plates.
“On older cars like this the VIN was usually only in 2 places, the little metal tag visible through the windshield and the sticker on the door jamb.”
Yeah, that’s what you’re supposed to believe. That way the Government can catch thieves more easily.
In fact, “hidden” VIN numbers are stamped into various major pieces of the vehicle beginning years before the Citation was built. For example, my ’68 El Camino has the VIN stamped into the lower engine-compartment side of the firewall, near the frame-to-body cushions on the right side; and along the framerail on the left rear. I’m fairly sure the original engine had a partial VIN number punched into the engine block. There may be other areas that the full, or partial VIN is stamped into the vehicle.
If the same pandemic had struck us all in 1980, very many of us would not be reading this post.
Perhaps this rather ghostly Citation appeared on the crosswalk in 2020 to remind us all that this is what the past REALLY looks like, utterly decayed, soon to be gone forever, and always lesser than we remember.
Our nostalgia for that past is, after all, only a kind-of longing for our own selves as we once were.
Agree that the analogy of the 1980 Citation being a Murphy’s Law ‘pandemic car’ is a good one. GM seemed to have a whole series of Murphy’s Law cars through the latter part of the last century.
I think that’s an interesting perspective, but perhaps not that clear cut. I believe that we can still have mRNA vaccine technology and a whole bunch of other scientific and technical advancements as well as a longer and more respectful relationship to the “stuff” we use than is the case in present society.
But I very much agree with your overall point about nostalgia.
Wait, wait…are you suggesting the Good Ol’ Days™ maybe weren’t quite so completely good after all?
While the body rust is indeed horrific and more extensive than most salt belt vehicles, it does need a few more touches for ultimate beaterdom.
A plastic garbage bag duct taped over a broken side window.
The body panels appear to be dent free. (Those not covered by duct tape any way).
And you have to have at least one interior door panel removed.
And when you tell people “This is how it was back then” you’ll be looked at like you are a world class B.S. artist.
Haha! Great perspective. I know I had ridden in at least a few cars that looked like this when I was younger.
As a Chicagoan, this was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that car: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4fM5K5jK840
Wait! I think I had a Buick just like that!
I thought I knew what it was going to be before I clicked on it, and I was right 🙂
Still in business!!
The first brochure page shown describes a rare optional feature – a tiny crank in the headliner, reachable from both front and rear seats, that opens and closes the available rear swing-out windows. These were available on all three body styles, and were exclusive to the Citation amongst X-bodies. On either 2 or 4 door hatchbacks, you could tell if a Citation was so equipped with these from the outside by the presence of a black triangular cutout at the back of the window. In the lower brochure page with the four cars lined up, the second car from the front (2 door hatchback) has the flip-out windows.
And yet another heretofore unknown feature rears its ugly head. It never ceases to amaze me how new auto-related things are learned on this site.
As to the option itself, sort of like the manual version of rear power windows. But, considering how half-assedly GM engineered everything else on the X-body, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that the remote crank for the rear flipper windows quickly broke and was unfixable (at least not easily). But it’s still pretty cool.
I wonder how long it’ll be until the city removes it… it’s almost as if the owner put it in the worst possible spot on purpose so someone will get it out of there ASAP.
Chris, I wasn’t back to this intersection for months afterward to check, but your theory was also mine. This car was left in a very conspicuous location, so I’d assume that not a whole lot of time was wasted in removing it.
Years ago I bought American-made cars. My 1982 Chevrolet Citation X-11, ordered to my specifications with the four-speed manual transmission, was a cheaply made and unreliable abomination. The transmission failed at 37,000 miles, just outside the warranty. Its replacement, a 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity station wagon was another disappointment. I ordered a 1987 Pontiac four-door sedan, GM’s first car with anti-lock brakes. The Citation, the Celebrity, and Pontiac 6000 STE had GM’s weak and troublesome V6 engine. Later I ordered a 1989 Ford Taurus SHO, which was a miserable disappointment, more unreliable than the GM cars, even more shoddily constructed, and certainly not enjoyable to drive. GM’s X-cars were jointly developed with FIAT and SAAB, then part of GM’s European operations.
Er…no, Saab weren’t part of GM until 1990. Where does your idea come from that the X-cars were jointly developed with Fiat and Saab? I’m fairly certain they weren’t, but could certainly be wrong.
During the development of the X-cars, GM supposedly bought at least one Lancia Beta sedan to serve as a guide for the team working on the cars.
Says…who? “Supposedly” is carrying its full rated weight here; I’ll add this to the {{citation needed}} list.
Sorry, but (fish) stories have been flushing since forever. There were people insisting Chrysler paid Porsche to develop (or consult on, or fine-tune) the K-car, for example.
I’m pretty sure that Automotive News is a reliable source.
The article is behind a paywall, but an article from October 31, 2011 says that GM purchased Lancias during the X-cars development.
Here is it, if you wish to pay for it: https://www.autonews.com/article/20111031/CHEVY100/310319919/x-car-program-pushed-gm-into-a-front-wheel-drive-world
Geeber, I remember reading this, too. It’s what caused me to find out what a “Lancia Beta” five-door actually was.
Joseph Dennis, unfortunately, GM didn’t just copy the configuration and dimensions of the Lancia Beta. It also copied the reliability, too…
Thank you for the correction.
“…front-wheel-drive Lancias that were purchased and dissected to provide clues as to how the X platform should unfold.” (https://www.automobilemag.com/news/gm-x-cars-chevrolet-citation-oldsmobile-buick-pontiac-photos-history/)
I’m saddened to write that I have not bought or leased any Ford or GM vehicles after I sold the 1989 Ford Taurus SHO thirty years ago. My 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee Summit V-6 which I ordered to my specifications twice needed a transmission and suffered many electronic firmware glitches. Its replacement, made by a foreign manufacturer, has been reliable and enjoyable to drive.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned this:
The Citation & all the X cars were recalled for 7 different safety issues, BEFORE they were made available for purchase by the public!
This looks like a prime candidate for the 24 hour Lemons race, doesn’t it? I can’t imagine anyone ever restoring one unless it’s a high spec X-11
And here’s a longer version of Murphy’s Law
Aaannd Campion’s Citation from the 1994 miniseries The Stand
I don’t think this thing would pass tech… heck, you’d probably try to weld the roll cage in and the remaining frame would probably disintegrate. On the plus side, removing all the interior bits would probably be easy, as gravity and 80s GM craftsmanship have already probably done most of the work for you. 🙂
Nice catch on the Stand Citation. Been a long time since I’ve seen that.
Pull off the duct tape and you could probably remove the interior bits from the outside!
Back when I lived in Baltimore decrepit dissolving vehicles such as this were common. Battered by life in the city and excessive road salt, end stage beaters such as this were a frequent and interesting sight. Observations regarding interesting and illogical rust patterns, incompetent (and pointless) repairs, as well as strange customizations of something that is quite obviously terminal.
I think it’s somewhat regional. I’ve worked in the insurance industry in NJ, NY, CT and FL, and in all cases a tag has to be turned in or deactivated when insurance is taken off the vehicle it correlates to, lest DMV brand the registrant as owner of an uninsured registered motor vehicle. In other states/areas of the country regulations and rules vary. Sometimes it’s mind-boggling, and occasionally I scratch my head over seemingly arbitrary differences in vehicle registration regs in neighboring states. It sometimes seems like they’re different for the sake of being different. c’est la vie.
See my comment above. To be branded “the owner of an uninsured registered vehicle” equals “suspended license”, which can come as quite a shock if the DMV fails to notify the owner and is pulled over for some other, minor infraction, even if the current insurance is paid in full (even with a current proof of insurance statement). To get your license (and impounded vehicle) back is quite financially lucrative all around except, of course, for the owner.
Don’t ask me how I know…
I found something more than interesting in your excellent writing….your Uncle Bob still maintains his Citation.
So…Bob’s your uncle
Oh, man! No, Uncle Bob’s Citation is decades gone. My writing was unclear in that regard… I had meant to say that he still maintains that his Citation was a good car. (I wonder how many others read that sentence the way you did! I realize that would be easy to do with my choice of words. 🙂 )
“Bob’s your uncle” still got a chuckle out of me, though.
In California, the cost of abandoned abatement is charged to the last registered owner. That is why it is so important to mail in that release of liability form upon sale. Police tows and especially the “storage fees” are excessively expensive, even for recovered stolen vehicles. Last year I was unable to meet the Officer who found my stolen Explorer before they called the tow, and the vehicle was stored at an official police tow yard. I showed up the next morning as soon as the yard was open, and I still had to pay for a day of storage even though it had spent only 14 hours in the yard. This little adventure cost me over 350.00! All out of my pocket. My vehicle only had liability coverage, most people with full insurance will never see those charges if their car is stolen because they will be covered by the insurance.
I’ve been trying since first thing this morning. I give up; that many buyers of this awful a car just will not compute.
The only person I ever knew who had one bought it from Hertz used cars. And the only time I ever drove one of these was as a state motor pool car when I worked for the state university. In other words, I suspect an awful lot were fleet sales.
The majority were sold during the first two model years. Chevrolet sold 1.2 million Citations during the 1980 and 1981 model years. Sales dropped like a rock as word got around regarding just how bad they were. By 1983, only 92,000 were sold, and the car was discontinued for the 1986 model year.
Yes! I was going to add earlier that nearly half of that overall sales total was from the extended first model year.
It’s a good job I’m not skeptical,* or I might be tempted to say it’s almost as if GM knew it was a steaming pile right from the start.
*cynical, even!
I was curious how the X-derived A-body (Celebrity) sales were in comparison and, surprisingly, they took off to a very bad, un-GM like start: only 92,330 for 1982, and 139,829 for 1983.
Sales would pick up substantially later, with a high of 404,883 for 1986. Even for 1989, the Celebrity’s final year, they sold over 200k.
But 1983 looks like it was a very bad year for Chevrolet with sales of the Citation and Celebrity only 231,829, combined, a rather paltry sum for the market share of a giant like GM, especially considering those first two years’ sales of 1.2 million Citations, and I wonder if the Citation’s bad taste made for a difficult sale of the Celebrity, at least at first.
1982 was allegedly the worst recession since the Great Depression. Or that’s my excuse for not finding a job for 7 months after graduation.
My experiences with a new Citation was so bad, I wouldn’t even look at anything produced by GM that could have been derived from X body parts. When the company I worked for returned all the Citations within six months of taking them, the dealership hustled to replace them with J cars, Cavaliers, J2000, and these cars were better, but compared to what – the Citations?
The company gave up after another year and let all of us choose our own rides. I ended up with an Escort for a while, and then a Cougar. Both of those cars were substantially better than the Citation. The Fox cars from Ford were wonderful in comparison – imagine that!
The Celebrity and other X-derived cars suffered too. The smoldering disaster of the Citation permanently put me off future GM cars until Saturn in 2000. I figured that by that time, the tainted rot from the X-cars had finally came to an end.
During the 1980s – over a million GM drivers learned to hate their rides and stopped buying anything GM was building during that time.
Simply – the worst car I ever had in my entire life. Never had an opinion about a GM car before the Citation, but never owned another one since.
Believe it or don’t, they –
sold– offered these in Japan. My Japanese friend had this to say over the Japanese brochure pics attached:How many people lined up to buy a Chevrolet Citation in Japan is questionable…more for the political reasons. They even sold Chevy Chevettes through Isuzu dealership network, and Pontiac Grand Ams through Suzuki network. The original turn signal inside the grill, apparently it was not good enough. Note the two horn button symbol stickers on the steering wheel, ditto the turn signal arrows, red catalytic converter overheat warning light on the dash, speedometer in red above 100km/h, and emergency flashlight (yip, had to have it to pass certification).
Original reflex reflector section of the taillights blacked out, and separate reflectors affixed to the rear bumper—probably the originals weren’t spaced widely enough apart, and/or weren’t bright enough. Side turn signal repeaters screwed to the front fenders, in the old Japanese position ahead of the front wheels. Different headlamps. Looks like different sideview mirrors. Probably a lot more Japan-specific parts, plus all the Japan-specific type approval testing costs. Imagine putting any political weight at all, let alone this much, on this car!
One would think coercing another country to buy Citations would be prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.
Right? And were they even listening to themselves when they came up with the name? Yeah, yeah, yeah, multiple definitions, right, sure, who cares? Whyn’t they just name it the Traffic Ticket? Or the Toothache, or the Toenail Fungus, or the Tax Deadline, or any of numerous other things we don’t like to think about?
“Things I’d rather have than a Chevy Citation.”
Hah!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car this bad in my life, outside of a junkyard.
When I was a kid, old cars often got dumped in the street minus various bits and pieces, and we used to play in them after school, making engine noises and pretending to drive them. But they were usually about 20 years old rather than 40(!), and they never had as much rust as this.
That one clean, bright whitewall tyre, though…. must be a story behind that!
“It’s the first Chevy of the Eighties…Chevy Citaaaaaaation!”