There it was, on the pullout on Seavey Loop Road, with a plaintive note in the windshield, as we were heading out to Mt. Pisgah for our semi-daily nature immersion: An X-Body Buick Skylark, a car whose legacy is so much greater than its modest footprint. The only GM Deadly Sin that I’ve ever “owned” (as a company car), but mine was quite well behaved. In fact, I was rather impressed at the time, that GM could come up with something so modern, space efficient, brisk, and good handling. I feel a bit sheepish confessing that now, like those auto journalists that raved about the X-Bodies after their first drive of carefully prepared pre-production versions. Father, I have sinned: I…um…rather liked a GM Deadly Sin.
But then I did have something of a spiritual experience in one once. Maybe this is a GM Divine Grace.
The note in the windshield note is dated 5/10/20. We came by and shot this on 5/14. And when we came by again on 5/16, it was still there, but with a warning sticker on the side window, from the local authorities. Hmm; who is going to get it first: the unwanted kind of tow truck or the owner? Maybe the tools/parts were hard to come by? Waiting for divine intercession?
This is how the last of their kind so often disappear: un-elegantly. No Death With Dignity. Although I rather suspect that if this Skylark could take that option, it just might.
After 37 years, it’s looking a wee bit tired. I’m probably being harsh, because this will likely bring tears from some of you hard-core Rust-Belters.
All it has to show from its long life in rainy Oregon is some organic scum growing where the pollen stuck to the dirt. If left alone, that will eventually support lichen. And then eventually moss. But a good power washing would (dis)solve that problem stat.
If our Western Oregon climate was as perpetually gray and wet as it’s often made out to be, the vinyl top would still be healthy.
The reality is that our Mediterranean climate includes a long dry and sunny season; we can go 5-6 months with nary a rain; maybe a few random drops. And the result is vinylnoma, a terminal case here.
The 1980 Skylark that came to live with me for almost two years was pure white, no vinyl top, had the optional wider wheels and low profile 70-series tires (blackwall, natch), and the standard wheel covers. Our engineer at the tv station had carefully pored over the brochure and option sheet, and ordered the fleet of four identical ones to be as aesthetically amenable to our West Los Angeles import-loving sensibilities as possible. That was a bit of a stretch at the time, as among our cohort of young and (mostly) well educated professionals (Yuppies, in other words) in W. LA in 1980 felt the same way about Buicks as would a similar demographic today. We wanted European cars, or Japanese, if economically necessary. There were two or three Mercedes W123s in the parking lot, a couple of Rabbits, a Dasher, a BMW 2002 (or two) and a Bavaria.
But this engineer was still in utter thrall of GM, and convinced that the X cars were the second coming of Saint Mark of Excellence.
Issues with the new X’s were starting to surface in the press already, most notably their tendency to lock their brakes prematurely, due to GM leaving off a critical component: a load-sensing rear brake proportioning valve. I had only come to know what they were from my Peugeot 404, which had one:
Something like this one from a Toyota pickup: its lever arm senses when the body rises in relation to the axle, as during a hard braking, and reduces pressure to the rear brakes. In a FWD car, with its lightly loaded rear axle, this is essential. I had observed Citations with locked rear wheels coming to a screeching stop in traffic one or twice.
Oddly, our Skylarks didn’t show this behavior. Ours were ordered with HD suspension and the fat tires, as well as every HD part available on the fleet order list, so maybe that compensated for that tendency. But drivers complained, the NHTSA sued GM, and GM ended up winning in 1987. Oh well; it was just one of many various maladies these early X Bodies embodied, like barely-functional manual transmission linkages, driveability issues, etc. The very cheap interior of the Citation was an instant turn-off, and had a rep for premature degeneration. The X-Cars had a number of recalls, and their reputation plummeted quickly. My DS write-up on the Citation goes in greater detail.
I’m not sure which engine is under the hood of this one, but it’s giving off an Iron Duke vibe. Which is pretty impressive, considering it’s not running, or even capable of running anymore. If it was running, it would be noticeable from some distance, thanks to the excessive NVH of that august engine. Ah, that really was unfortunate, to saddle Detroit’s most ambitious new car in just about forever (which is quite true) with an engine straight out of the…1920s? In 1929, Chevrolet’s new six replaced its four, and GM never made another rough and tumble four until the 1962 Chevy II four, which is what the Iron Duke essentially was, with a bit of window dressing from Pontiac. And that Chevy II four was widely rejected, rarely bought, and ultimately given Death With Dignity in 1970. And then an even rougher four replaced it in the Vega… ok; compared to that paint shaker, the Iron Duke was suitable for bringing a massaging Lazy Boy to life, on the high setting.
Meanwhile; never mind, let’s not meanwhile about the Japanese fours. It’s a waste of time.
Needless to say, the KSCI Skylark fleet all sported Chevy’s new 60 degree V6, something of a mini-me SBC, for better or for worse. Pushrods, a carb, and not the smoothest V6 by far, but it had a certain SBC-like urge to it, unless it was saddled with a too-heavy S-10 Blazer or Jeep Cherokee.
As the newly-minted GM of the station, I had the pick of the litter. And just how did I pick which one of the four was going to be my steed? By driving all four, flat out, and seeing which one pulled the hardest. There was more variation in that than should really have been the case. It reminded me of the variations in each of the 12 supposedly identical 35′ New Look buses at Iowa City Transit. I can assure you that #4 pulled the hardest, and quite noticeably so. It wasn’t #6, pictured above; in fact, that was one of the slower ones in the fleet.
The beauty of buying GM vehicles in fleets is that you’re bound to find a good one; the larger the fleet, the better the odds. And the one I picked pulled hard; forward as well as to the left. That was the reality of the early X Cars; the whole front subframe sort of crabbed under hard acceleration, a different sort of torque steer. Never experienced it in any other car.
This is a Skylark Limited, as were ours. Plush; a mini-me Electra, actually. And that was pretty smart on Buick’s part. 1980 was the utter depths of the second energy crisis, and unlike in the depths of the first one, when big car divers traded in their big barges for wretched little Pintos and such, now they could turn them in for a very nicely trimmed very compact Buick. No wonder the Skylark sold so well, and continued to sell well even after its other X-Body relations were on life support, or adding a “II” to their nomenclature.
And for being such a short car, merely 182″ long, its interior accommodations were shockingly good. The Germans would call it a raumwunder (space miracle). Well that same basic body with a space-wasting longer front and rear ends became the venerable GM A-Body, and nobody complained about its interior room, at least not until late in its life.
I remember sitting back there one afternoon, on the drive back from our San Bernardino studio with two other co-workers. I asked one of them to drive so I could meditate. And I had one of the deeper meditations I’d had up to that point in my life. In bumper-to-bumper traffic on the I-10 in the San Gabriel Valley smog. Anybody who says you have to be in a cave or on a mountain or a retreat to meditate well doesn’t know their mantra from a Manta.
Looking at the back seat of a Skylark Limited will always bring back a special flash of memory for me. Will this be the last time?
So I have a soft spot for what I called GM’s Deadliest Sin. There’s something quite utterly perfect about that.
CC 1980 Chevrolet Citation: GM’s DS #13 – GM’s Deadliest Sin
I have a soft spot for these, as it was the last car my grandfather owned before he passed. I think his was an ’81, white with a very comfy blue interior. It was the only front-wheel-drive car he had ever driven and I remember him being absolutely floored at how well it handled in snow.
It seems like no matter how poor the design, or how badly cost-cut a certain model was, or what the state of Labor-Management relations was – on any given GM vehicle, at any GM plant, on any given day – they always managed to churn out a decent number of better-than-expected examples.
Write a post disparaging the Corvair, and someone will comment they drove theirs 400,000 miles without ever experiencing a self-ejecting fan belt. Disrespect the Vega, and someone will tell you how they drove theirs for 20 years and in all that time they only had to replace one part, one time, and it didn’t have a speck of rust on it when they sold it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Most of the GM X body horror stories were from first-year (1980) or sometimes ’81 cars. By 1982 these were mostly sorted, in part because they received some of the mechanical upgrades fitted to the new A body that year, including relocated steering racks that reduced torque steer and throttle-body FI for the Iron Duke. The ’83s got some A/J-car parts like new mirrors, wheels, and bucket seats (bench seats like this one got new seatbacks with separate headrests and more padding on Limited models). This was a familiar GM story; they had fixed the Vega engine, cooling, and rustproofing problems by 1976 but their reputation by then was shot.
We’ve spoken of the Mopar Quality Lottery in the past but I guess at its’ depths GM had the same thing going.
I wonder if people’s reactions depended on what x-car they drove. Had a 81 Citation. Absolutely hated it. Base model. It felt cheap and tinny and to my mind rode like a truck.
Later a friend had a Skylark Limited like above. Could not believe it was the same vehicle. It was everything my Citation was not. If my first experience had been with it I’d have been singing a much different tune about the GM x-cars all these years.
After owning and/or driving many 80s GM X, J and A body cars, Blazers, S10s etc, my chief complaint is that GM simply put the wrong engines, in them in two ways. As noted, the 4 cyl engines were rough, slow and miserable, faults their reliability couldn’t overcome. Buyers noticed, even the most clueless can spot the shortcomings. The V6 was so much better, it should have been the standard engine. Many X cars were sold at a higher price point and deserved better. The few dollars GM saved on each 4 cyl wasn’t worth sullying their reputation.
The next problem is GM put the WRONG V6 in everything. The 135 hp high output V6 was much better than the standard 110 hp version but wasn’t even offered in most V6 equipped cars. An almost universal complaint (even when I worked at a GM dealer) is that the 2.8 V6 was too weak for the task at hand (in the cars and especially in the small trucks) creating customer frustration and dissatisfaction. The 135 hp V6 cost the same to manufacturer but was more satisfying to drive. It should have been standard. Instead GM didn’t even offer it in almost all models, even though it was developed at the very start of the X car program.
Can we blame that on the CAFE requirements?
These were still seen with some frequency here in the midwest until not all that long ago. GM did a really good job with rustproofing on these – the entire US industry was paying a lot of attention to rust by this time – and these were about as rust-resistant as anything built.
When flavored and packaged as a Buick, these hit a great demographic – older, traditional people who were ready for some luxury but who had been priced out of the bigger Buicks after not keeping up with the heavy inflation of the late 70s.
These were just barely into showrooms around the time my mother was looking at Omnis and Horizons. She was excited about a small, economical car that was “plush”. I have always wondered if one of these Buicks (or Oldsmobiles) might have called her name had she gotten to drive one before she got hooked on the Chrysler L bodies (which were a lot less expensive).
Good point about the rust. I lived in Vermont during high school, which is one of the rustiest places around. A friend had a 1980 Citation, in the late 80’s. It wasn’t very rusty at all, which was impressive for a car that old at the time.
Yes, these were very popular in the Midwest. Of course, this is the same part of the country where the formal roof Mercury Cougar regularly outsold the slant roof Ford Thunderbird, so there you go.
Now that it is no longer on every other car you see, I am beginning to appreciate Bill Mitchell’s “sheer look” stying more. It has held up well, and scales down nicely to smaller cars, especially in this application. Not all styling themes successfully transition to smaller cars (Lincoln Mark VI, for example).
That being said, if I were Paul’s GM-infatuated TV station engineer I’d have opted for the Pontiac Phoenix over the Skylark, both for being nicer than a Citation in a direction more amenable to the users and for the hatchback which would’ve come in handy lugging around cameras and equipment.
> I’m not sure which engine is under the hood of this one, but it’s giving off an Iron Duke vibe.
I’m searching that back seat photo for clues. Those boxes on the floor look like they’re for spark plugs and there are five of them, which obv wouldn’t make sense for a four-cylinder engine. But two of those boxes look different from the other three, so maybe these aren’t all spark plugs. There’s also a Wix oil filter box. A quick search on Amazon shows the Wix filter that fits the Chevy V6 has a more elongated shape than the filter that fits the Iron Duke. The boxes aren’t shown, but based on the filter shapes the box here looks like it’s for the V6 filter, so I’m going with the V6 in this Skylark.
Good detective work!
As someone who moonlighted at a used car lot, It was my experience most of these Skylarks had the V6, but most of these around here came from the same local dealer so maybe thats just how they ordered them.
Nice writeup, Paul. Hope the owner is able to retrieve the car before it gets hauled away.
Just think, instead of THAT Pontiac engine, they lopped 2 cylinders off the SOHC six.
That would be way too hi tech for GM in the Empty Eighties.. And where was the Buick 215 aluminum V8 when you needed it?
As I recall, I didn’t think the Citation interior was that bad, in terms of materials and execution, I thought it looked better than my family’s base Ford Fairmont’s interior, which was definitely cheap-looking.
The Citations’s design was not so great though. The speedometer was too “American” and not conducive to an optional tachometer. More importantly, the vertical radio just didn’t look right.
I rode in a Citation and Phoenix X-car as a passenger, never drove one. My father considered buying a new one, but did not because the dealer wanted full sticker (1980), hence the Fairmont.
One note: If the Chevy II 4-cylinder motor was the same as the Iron Duke, it would mean Chevy used a Pontiac engine, since this motor was basically half a Pontiac V8.
” If the Chevy II 4-cylinder motor was the same as the Iron Duke, it would mean Chevy used a Pontiac engine, since this motor was basically half a Pontiac V8.”
Absolutely not. The Iron Duke shared nothing with the Pontiac V-8 except the bore and stroke of the 301.
You’re thinking of the half-a-389 slant-four from the Y-body Tempest. (1961, ’62, and ’63)
The Iron Duke was strongly based on the Chevy II four popper, which itself was based on the “new” 230-cube Chevy six-popper. The early Iron Dukes could accept a Chevy II crankshaft with appropriate pistons for a “stroker” displacement increase. As for the “Pontiac” part, so far as I can tell, the “Iron Duke” was developed from the Chevy II engine in Brazil, of all places. GM of Brasil was using the Iron Duke in locally-made vehicles years before the Duke came to America. I think Pontiac was given credit for the engine to hide the Chevy II heritage.
Yes, I thought the Y-body Tempest engine was resurrected as the Iron Duke (in the wake of the Vega engine debacle, as Iron Duke made it’s debut in Vega derivatives).
I had forgotten the Chevy II four even existed, and then I figured, it was a low end car, GM just put the Pontiac four in it.
I will say this–I drove a manual trans 1989 or 90 GMC S-truck with the 2.5 liter. It was a crude, truckish motor, not in remotely in the same league as Ford’s 2.3 Lima engine (Pinto/MustangII/Fairmont).
The 2.5 hated to rev–it was loud, vibrating, coarse, and leisurely, and it hated to CHANGE revs. It did have some low end grunt though. Probably worked much better with an automatic, even if it was slow, as the auto would mask its worse traits. And I recall C/D noting the auto had a pretty low axle ratio, to boot highway mpg and reduce noise.
By comparison, the Ford four was fine–it got coarse above 3800-4000 rpm (I estimate,,,20 mph in first, 65-70 in third), but it would get up there.
And I think a Fairmont 4-cyl auto would, flat out, stay even, or maybe even autoaccelerate and X-car 2.5 auto. There is a Consumer Reports road test somewhere that has the answer…
Anyway, thanks for clarifying.
Were there four cylinder automatic Fairmonts? Eventually there were four cylinder automatic Mustangs, but it seemed like in the early Fox years they had six cylinder engines with four cylinder horsepower for use with the automatic transmission. I’ve driven some four cylinder, four speed manual foxes. I don’t know that I’d bet on one of them against an Iron Duke automatic Skylark, let alone a four cylinder automatic fox.
My grandfather had a 1980 Fairmont with 4 cylinder and automatic…Horrible drivetrain. The engine would lose speed while traversing bridges, sometimes downshifting from 3rd to 2nd at highway speeds. Didn’t increase speed, just made a lot of noise. I never drove an x-car with iron duke and auto, but can’t imagine it worse than the Fairmont
I found most of the X designs quite attractive. But we all know what Deadly Sins they were.
A dear family friend owned a brand new ’85-’86 Skylark that was nothing but trouble. The dealer laughed at her after the engine blew around a year into ownership.
She has ONLY owned Hondas after that. Got 14 years out of a Civic and 20 years between two CR-Vs. The only American vehicle she’s even remotely considered was a Tahoe, nearly 20 years ago.
I can’t believe they didn’t even use a proportioning valve…actually I can.
As I’ve written elsewhere, the last several GM’s I’ve driven/owned have actually been wonderful. We’ll probably replace our current 2011 Equinox – now closing in on 190,000 miles – with another. Although I wish I could talk my wife into an Impala…
I don’t believe that the first year of the Oldsmobile Toronado used a brake proportioning valve, either. One was added for 1967, along with the option of front disc brakes, after every single reviewer complained about the lousy brakes.
I don’t suppose it occurred to the owner to leave a phone number?
Or does he /she even have one?
As with Tauruses, there were a lot of these X Body Skylarks around Silicon Valley in the late ‘80’s through early ‘90’s. The Tauruses were (perhaps apocryphally) assumed to be mostly former Hewlett-Packard fleet cars, purchased by their owners; in hindsight I wonder if the X cars were also company cars, though anecdotally HP was the only local tech company that had offered them to many employees in the FWD era. Is the company car pretty much a thing of the past?
It was already becoming a rarity by the 1980s, unless your job required lots of driving or involved driving clients around. Even then, companies would often rather just reimburse for mileage on the employee’s car. Well in the U.S. anyway; company-provided cars are still commonplace in the UK and throughout Europe from what I understand.
Our daughter is on something like her 7th or 8th company car, the 1st was a 2002 Dodge Intrepid, since then she’s had everything from a Dodge Caravan, Honda Prius, Jeep Liberty, Ford Escape, and others I forget, presently a new Equinox. She drives about 20k miles a year in sales.
Change in taxation under Reagan, if I recall, company cars began to be taxed as income. Used to be a perk, then became a burden.
As I recall it the deal was that the tax rates came down and the swap was that many of the old deductions went away. I think that was around the time when the ability to deduct interest on anything other than mortgages went away, too. So, of course, the banking industry began pushing “home equity loans” that were deductible.
Seems this happened right around 1986…My Dad bought his Dodge 600 (which I remember because it was the first vehicle that had the high mounted center stoplight in our family). He traded in his ’80 Dodge Omni on it, and I remember that being able to deduct interest and sales tax was a consideration on when he bought it…but the big factor was that he had moved to central Texas from Vermont, and his Omni didn’t have air conditioning, but he still suffered for a few years without A/C (I did the same thing when I moved to central Texas from Massachusetts a year later, my ’78 Scirocco didn’t have air conditioning, and I was too cheap to add it…my ’86 GTI was purchased in no small part because it did have air conditioning. Fortunately the traffic in our city still was reasonable back then such that you mostly were moving and thus had a breeze with windows open, and on the way home you’d change into casual clothes anyhow once you got there (we were still having to dress up for work back then).
Since there’s no state income tax in Texas, we can still deduct the sales tax on large ticket items, but of course we need to clear the large standard deduction put in place a couple years ago to make itemizing worthwhile like people in other states.
My sister used to work in pharmacuticals, and had a company car, but still had her own personal car, which she still owns (23 years later). Her personal car hence doesn’t have many miles on it for it’s years, and turns out to be one of the last years Nissan made 240Sx’s, so lots of people want to buy it from her (despite it being an automatic).
I had a friend that also had the V6 in his Skylark X car, he loved it and had no problems with it. He later had a complete career change, went from engineering to being the owner of a beauty supply operation, where he bought several Chevy Astro vans which worked well for him and were durable. My Uncle (40 years ago) brought his Olds Omega X car to my undergraduate graduation, but I forgot to ask him how he liked it….wonder if he still remembers owning it ?(he’s not much of a car guy).
Clarification: The 4-cylinder Chevy II engine, the Pontiac Tempest “Trophy 4” engine, the original Vega aluminum block engine and the Pontiac “Iron Duke” engine were completely different engines. They did not share common cylinder blocks, heads, etc.
Of the three, only the Trophy 4 was based on the Pontiac V8 and it was in production only 3 years, from 1961 to 1963. The Trophy 4 was created from one bank of Pontiac’s powerful 389 cu in. Take 389 and divide by two and you get 194.5, which was the displacement of the Trophy 4.
The Chevy II engine, and the Iron Duke were strongly related. The Iron Duke was clearly a development of the previous Chevy II four-popper. The bore and stroke were different; but other parts interchanged–timing gears, for example. Early Dukes had a similar if not identical non-cross-flow cylinder head as the ‘II, similar distributor in an HEI version, similar Chevy-style bellhousing bolt pattern, and many other common items.
Over time, GM made at least 200 changes to the Iron Duke, the later ones did not have much in common with the Chevy II engine. That development can be traced by model-year, and vehicle body installations. (A-body vs. N-body, etc.)
I said what I did somewhat tongue in cheek. Yes, technically, they are different engines. I strongly suspect that Pontiac used left over production equipment for the Chevy II four to facilitate its production. And they did closely study the Brazilian version of the Chevy II four, which had a different bore and stroke (4″ x 3″) to reduce vibrations. Pontiac adopted that same bore and stroke for the Iron Duke.
Not the same engine, but there’s some Chevy II DNA in the Iron Duke.
In 1977 when the Iron Duke was first introduced I remember reading an article about it in Car & Driver; according to the article it was based on the 4 cyl. engine used in the Chevy II and Nova. General Motors discontinued the engine in 1970 and according to the article they sold the tooling to General Motors of Argentina. In the late ’70’s when GM needed a new 4 cyl engine they bought the tooling back and redesigned it. I also remember reading that the Iron Duke and the Pontiac 301 shared the same pistons.
I bought an ’80 Skylark; it was an absolute POS. Listing all the problems I encountered with it would practically make a book. It was the last GM car I ever purchased.
The debate over the V6 reminds me of a 1980 Skylark I bought from a co-worker for resale. He said it had some sort of engine noise, but still ran and drove well. I had another used engine for it, so I pulled this one out and discovered that the co-worker’s son had worked on the crankshaft. He polished it to the .020 limit and then installed the largest bearings he could find to make up the difference. There was still a gap on a couple of rods. It’s a wonder it didn’t throw a rod sooner.
I later mentioned to the co-worker that maybe Junior wasn’t a very good mechanic and that maybe Dad should have his car worked on elsewhere. His response was that I was right and that the only reason Junior touched the car was that Dad was short of cash at the time and needed the car fixed fast. Junior was employed as a mechanic for a major defense contractor.
I may have mentioned this before on Curbside Classic, but in 1980, my parents bought a Buick Skylark Limited with a V6 and plenty of options.
It was roomy inside for a small car, comfy and, once the engine warmed up, it was reasonably quick. Unlike my short-lived Renault Alliance, it never left my parents stranded on the side of the road.
On the downside, it was assembled atrociously with big gaps between the body panels, a crooked steering wheel, oil leaks, antifreeze leaks, and trans fluid leaks.
My dad took it back and forth to the Buick dealer several times to get them fixed, but if I recall correctly, the car was just a chronic leaker.
If you didn’t warm up the engine for twenty minutes, it would simply die when you stepped on the gas, leading to some hair-raising moments when entering the main street by our house.
And although it was a Buick, it had an Oldsmobile Omega escutcheon over the trunk lock. It eventually fell off.
After my dad passed away, my mom used it occasionally for shopping. She kept it nearly twenty years.
But I must say, in all those years, it had no rust. They got that part right.
Mine never had that warm up issue. But then we lived 9 blocks from the beach in Santa Monica, so it never really got cold.
Twenty years. I’d say that it was a good car. The annoyances were not enough to compel replacing the car.
A buddy of mine got 12 years and 170k plus out of an 85 Olds Calais, base car, 2.5 liter four with a five-speed. Reliable car, but rustbucket the last few years.
Nice write up, balancing the strengths and weaknesses of these cars, which had plenty of both.
I think the weaknesses won out in the popular mind. It’s funny how time has worked in the Front-Wheel-Drive era. It almost doesn’t matter how old a car is, an old one is hardly ever thought of as a classic. Most anybody coming upon this 37 year old car would just think of it as a crappy, junky old car. 37 years old, in pretty decent condition, and it’s just a hulk that will get towed away to a junk yard. It’s owner thought enough of it to write a nice note, but not enough to actually come back for it.
In 1983, a similar situation with a 37 year old car would find a 1946 Buick sitting there and it would be perceived by most every lay person as an unfortunate old timer, notable for its age and deserving respect.
Put a note on the car saying you’ll buy it!
Oooh, even better, break into the car, find out where they live, and drop it off at their place! That’s a joke by the way, it’s not nice to break into other’s cars.
I never fail to be impressed with how well 1980s GM velour holds up. If this were a Honda the driver’s seat upholstery would be torn to shreds by now, as would the top of the rear seat back because their cloth somehow melted in the sun.
And the Skylark monicker survived one more decade as a N-car model after being applied to an X-car.
My father had a much-loved 1971 Skylark Custom sedan in (silver fern?) with a 350. He loved it, as did I, for different reasons – I got my license in 1972.
After 9 years it was pretty rusty, so he traded it in on a 1980 Skylark Custom with a V6. It was as plush as the 1971 (although I wasn’t crazy about the velour), and I thought it handled and accelerated fine, although without the sweet roar of the vanished V8.
He like it until it swapped ends on him on a wet interstate; Luckily, he didn’t hit anything or anyone and there was no physical damage. His faith in the car was damaged beyond repair, however, and it was gone within a couple of years – unheard of for my father, who always kept cars exactly 9 years. One of the trivial questions I never got to ask him was how he arrived at that number.
I seem to have the “seven year” itch but regarding work, not marriage (I’m a confirmed bachelor) even within the same company having distinct assignments that all seemed to last 7 years. I’m retired now, but my last stint was as a contractor…when I went to a job meeting after getting let go, I got a big laugh when I told them I was let go as a contractor after 7 years; many people who had “regular” jobs were let go with substantially less time (let alone as contractor).
My Dad bought way more cars than I have; he would wake up and decide he wanted a new car and have it bought by the end of the day, but he also didn’t keep them long. I’m on year 20 of my (only) car and the one before that I owned 14 years, hence I’ve only owned 5 cars in my 46 years since I was first licensed (though I didn’t own any car until I was age 18).
Issues with the new X’s were starting to surface in the press already, most notably their tendency to lock their brakes prematurely, due to GM leaving off a critical component: a load-sensing rear brake proportioning valve.
And when the A-body came along (1982) GM still didn’t give it a proportioning valve. Both my Mother and my Grandmother managed to make different Celebrities do a 180 degree spin in icy conditions. One was a 1982 sedan with Iron Duke and the other was a 1985 coupe with V6.
You are correct. My mother had an 84 Celebrity Wagon. I was driving it during a typical snowy Buffalo day, had to stop quickly, rear wheels locked up and the car did a 180…scary experience
In the ’80s it was believed by many that Buicks were better built than their Oldsmobile and Pontiac equivalents. I recall that the first big FWD Electras enjoyed a reputation for reliability among people who relied on their cars for business that wasn’t enjoyed by anything else from GM. I don’t know if the Skylark was even made in a Buick plant, but Buick’s designers did a better job than anyone else at GM in styling the cars inside and out so that the approximate panel and trim fits couldn’t be seen from space.
A friend somehow received a cream-puff low mile Skylark as his second car when I was probably a freshman in high school. His previous car was a notoriously slow Chevette from the year when they still had small tail lights but had new rectangular headlights(1979?). The Buick was a nice upgrade. It looked like a little old lady should be driving it, but my friend was the original ladies’ man, and he spent many Saturdays and Sundays cleaning and treating the dark brown leather seats of his Buick to prepare them for the next customer.
X-cars were NOT made in “Buick” plants. The “Buick” plant was in Flint. Olds was in Lansing. Pontiac was in Pontiac. Cadillac in Detroit. Chevy plants were numerous–and everywhere, from sea to shining sea (yes, hard to believe today. THREE in California. Ontario. MA. MD, GA. And many more…)
The Chevy plants and GM’s Canadian plants built Chevrolet and other variants (for example, Baltimore might build Chevy Malibus and Monte Carlos and Pontiac LeMans and Grand Prix; Atlanta or Kansas City might built Chevrolet mid-size and Olds Cutlass. In the 1960s/70s, these plants stopped being owned by the division, and became GM Assembly Division (GMAD) facilities. But “Chevrolet” plants had long built cars for the other divisions. Up until 70s, peoples’ paychecks didn’t say “General Motors”–they said “Chevrolet”.
Well, sort of. For the body-on-frame cars (most of GM’s cars), Fisher Body Division always owned the body side of the plant. Sometimes it was a separate building. Fisher would build up the body, trim it out and finish with carpet, seats, glass, etc, and then send it across the street or across the aisle, to be dropped on a chassis built by Chevrolet (or whatever division owned that facility), and the car would be completed in the Chevrolet (or other division) assembly plant. GMAD took over FIsher Body also.
Even so, some plants stayed unique thru the 70s and early 80s, and tied to their original division. For example, the Lansing plant build mid-size and full-size Olds only, no other makes, on the same line, and the Toronado was in the same building (I think), but on a different line. I suspect Buick in Flint did the same, Centurys, LeSabres, Electras.
The X-cars were made in a (then) new plant in Oklahoma City, Willow Run, Michigan, and Tarrytown, NY. The Willow Run and Tarrytown plants built the Nova and variants before the 1979 FWD X-cars. With the huge sales volumes of the 1979-80 X-car (800,000-plus units for model year 1980, which started in summer 79), I’m sure these plants ran close to flat out, since in that era, a typical plant produced 150 to 300k units a year, 300 being pretty ambitious and on the high side 200k plus/minus being more typical.
Before GMAD there had been a handful of B-O-P Assembly Plants, which allowed those three lower-volume Divisions to cooperate on some assembly capacity outside of their Detroit-area HQs. Once the models began to proliferate in the 60s there were some odd mix-and-match combinations of what brands and models were built at which plants.
My impression is before GMAD, pretty much all the out-of-Michigan GM plants were Chevrolet plants. But they would build cars from other divisions where feasible. For example, the GM plant in Arlington, Texas built Pontiacs when it started up, but I don’t think it was a “Pontiac” plant.
CJ Colin—regarding Buick “quality” in the 1980s, if I recall, Buick did do better in JD Power Surveys. Also, even though it was a badge-engineered car, the PERCEPTION among older Americans of Buick as a premium marque remained.
Many Buick buyers were older. In the 1980s, even more than now, a 60-something was likely to drive more gently, take better care of, and give the car a better home (garage). So it’s logical that in objective surveys, Buicks would do better than other GM products.
Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older, and plush velour seats like this were popular when I was a kid (I would have been 5 or 6 when this Skylark rolled off the line) but that interior looks amazing. Sure, the interior in my 2018 Buick is more functional, probably much better put together, and has features people didn’t even dream of in 1983, but I’d love to take a drive in this one.
Annual auto club memberships are one gift I’ve given to a few friends/associates who are driving older cars, and they don’t have a current membership. Even if they can do some of their own repairs, having free towing (or battery recharging, etc.) available when you need it, is a wonderful source of piece of mind for some owners. Plus, it feels better knowing they have it.
Sorry, but I can’t get around my personal nightmare – a 1981 Citation and the sound it made similar to a wire coat hanger caught in a vacuum cleaner whenever it had to go uphill. It lasted a year until the water pump finally succumbed to the daily beating it got when the engine torqued itself free of the engine mounts. I kept waiting for it to explode, but instead, it repeatedly ruptured and blew hot liquid everywhere, like a volcanic pustule.
Fortunately, I worked for AAA at the time, so towing was always free, even if it meant being stranded hundreds of miles from home.
Looks like a meth car…lol
Sitting here in the EU, I find these cars broadly the American equivalent of the Trabant and shoddy Skodas of the same period, but bigger and with more velour. They are obviously better but still rather terrible. While the Euromakers had their own troubles at the same time and for similar reasons, their bad cars didn´t manage to achieve the ingrained crumminess of GM, Ford and Chrysler. It has to do with the shutlines and panel gap management (in the US, awful – look at at front and rear and the Medieval bumper design) plus the interiors. US interiors at this time look like plastic reproductions of Renaissance furniture at 80% scale with spray on gold paint and mock wood. European intereriors were just deadly plain and often quite nasty but they promised little. EuroFord and Opel did minimal interiors of acceptable decency and this was not unusual. I think the big US makers had a hard time scaling down wherease the Euro aesthetic of simplicity was better suited to straightened circumstances.
It must’ve been hard for many American car buyers in the eighties. You’d want to support your own country’s carmakers in the face of burgeoning import sales, you’d feel you were doing the right thing, but then they turn out stuff like this.
The package would have seemed great – GM was right up there with the best of them! Reading the magazines at the time, I felt this was what Holden should have been offering. It would seem really impressive in the showroom, but then it was let down massively by the cheap mechanicals. Brakes without proportioning valves, rough low-performance old-tech fours, sixes without suds, and general overall quality…..
Reading the comments from those who had one in the family, it’s no wonder no many buyers turned off GM for life.
My father had an ’82 Olds Omega with a six, I’m not sure which one (was there more than one?). It was another reasonably well optioned company car, memorable only for being his first with front wheel drive. I remember noticeable but managable torque steer, and rear wheel lock when it was wet. My friend had a Citation with a four speed in it (to be fair it could have been a five speed, it was a long time ago). I do remember the odd bends in the shifter, and how it projected more backwards than upwards from somewhere near where the floor met the firewall. It was very notchy and unpleasant compared to the family Datsun and my MG, but surprisingly quick; at least compared to my dad’s automatic Oldsmobile. Quite a bit more torque steer too. The vehicle with the worst torque steer I ever drove was a turbocharged three cylinder Pontiac Firefly. It was also terrific fun, and probably the fastest thing other than a motorcyle from a stoplight to the other side of the intersection.
CrystalEyes, The X-cars never offered a 5-speed manual, only 4 (sadly, the V6 would’ve shined with 5-speed.
The 135hp high-out Citation X11 V6, was to me, at age 16, a viable alternative to a Saab 900 Turbo, even missing a gear and with the goofy speedometer cluster. I didn’t appreciate good seats then either)
The X-car (some one correct me by stating the correct car if I am mistaken) featured the FIRST cable operated manual trans shift linkage. Now it is the norm, in 1979, it was a new idea.
The X-car was the first mass fwd car with a TRANSVERSE mounted V6
Oh lord, no. BMC fitted a cable shifter to the 1964 Austin 1800. It was pretty bad, and BMC being diligent, it got worse in later models.
Hi All!
For those interested–
This engine officially is the: V6 – 173 2Bbl.
The V.I.N. is: 1G4AC69X6DWXXXXXX
Also, I doubt the four would have made it this far!
Stationed in Korea in the late 70’s through mid-80’s. Local GI taxi company had in use in this order, Ford Maverick (3 on the tree), Chevrolet Nova, Buick Skylark (X-Body), Dodge Aires and Ford LTD. The Skylarks had the nicest interior and ride until the LTD in 85. They were also the shortest lived.
My dad bought a new ’84 Skylark Custom 4cyl. First car he ever owned with a/c. Sadly, he passed away 3 mos. later. Mom drove it then. I added in a center armrest from an Omega Brghm, wheel opening moldings, & pillar trim. Turned it into a LTD. Mom passed on & my brother got the car. I was putting with it & found the glove box light harness and socket behind the glove box & just stuck it into the socket hole & wala! a light. How cheap to charge you for probably an aux. lighting pkg. when it was there the whole time.
In 1983, vinyl roof, velour, fake wires, poor engineering, solid iron pushrod V6 and stiff styling with an outright proportion problem aft, all from the biggest auto company in the world with 60 years of history behind it.
Or, in 1983, an Audi 100 with flush glass, generation-influencing styling outside and crisp cleanliness inside, 125 mph with 35 mpg, CD of .30 for the galvanised body, five OHC cylinders and fuel injection, from a 15 yo subsidiary of VW.
(Yes, I know the Audi has as much chance of needing a tow, if it still existed at all).
I can’t even enjoy it as quaint.
I think the owners have a soft spot for it too – but theirs must be between the ears.