(first posted 4/25/2017) One of the things I enjoy most about April in Chicago is how rapidly spring seems to manifest itself once the snow melts for the last time. I’m a pretty early riser, and on the morning I drafted this piece, I took a brisk, pre-dawn walk to my local health club to the beautiful songs of a choir of birds. Their chirps and calls seemed to reverberate against the houses and apartment buildings lining my neighborhood’s narrow streets, intensified by the utter silence of everything else around us that was broken only occasionally by the whoosh of a passing, elevated CTA train. Combined with the fresh, cool air and the sight of budding trees, this five-minute walk was exhilarating.
My mind often wanders off on tangents (I consider it one of my more endearing foibles), and these morning birds brought to my recollection a later-edition Buick Skyhawk I had spotted a few years ago along this very same street. When I had first found our featured car, my initial thought was to wonder just how many years it had been since I had last seen one. Like spotting my first cardinal (a pale female) just a few weeks ago, the sight of this Skyhawk had brought back a ton of memories.
These may not seem as common to many of you U.S. readers as GM’s other J-Body variants, but where and when I grew up, they were as common as sparrows. My 80’s childhood in Flint, Michigan – the former world headquarters of Buick Motor Division and the birthplace of General Motors – was heavy on tri-shield pride, regardless of where any given Buick had been built. I’d say that when new, this generation of Skyhawk was probably the second most-popular J-car in town after the Chevy Cavalier. There were a few Pontiac Sunbirds, and the Olds Firenza was downright rare, but there were lots of Skyhawks. Our neighbors, the Elias, had one.
In reality, Skyhawk sales usually sat squarely in the middle of the J-Car pack throughout its entire, eight-year run: For ’87, Chevy moved about 346,000 Cavaliers, Olds sold about 26,000 Firenzas, and The Excitement Division moved 107,000 Sunbirds. (For completists, there were also about 14,500 buyers who quite literally “fancied” the Cadillac Cimarron.) As it turns out, our featured notchback coupe was the most popular of the four Skyhawk bodystyles for ’87, with about 21,000 sold out of 47,000 total that year.
I was in the second grade when a local news story featured a brand-new, beige, ’82 Skyhawk four-door sedan that had rolled off its carrier and into the Flint River, not far from my elementary school. (Trust me when I tell you that given the state of the Flint River, especially then, there was probably no salvage on that car. Not a buck.) My first impressions of the new, J-Body Skyhawk at the time were, and in no particular order: 1.) They added a sedan and wagon, and swapped the previous coupe’s hatchback for a trunk – wow!; 2.) Wait, though… the new coupe doesn’t look quite as sporty as the old Monza-clone; and 3.) It looks a lot like the new Sunbird, especially from the back.
Indeed, it took this kid a little longer than it should have to differentiate the Skyhawk’s rear fascia from that of the Sunbird. From the front, the differences were more obvious, with the Pontiac carrying a vestigial trace of the “beak” shared with other Ponchos. I thought the ’87 restyle of the base Skyhawks, that slightly flattened the slope of the front nose cone, was deft. The blackout treatment of the headlamp surrounds, combined with the rectangular, sealed-beam quad headlamps, gave the base cars a slightly meaner, butcher, more predatory look – as would befit a hawk. The hidden-headlamped facade that had been introduced for ’86 on that year’s new Sport/Hatch model (which was later available for any body style, even the wagon), was beautiful, though I felt it didn’t mesh well with the blocky styling of the non-hatchback bodies.
I can’t vouch for this car being an ’87, but I chose that model year to write about simply because if was the first year of this restyle, which lasted through swan-song ’89. Base power for ’87 came from a Chevy-sourced, 90-hp, 2.0L OHV four-cylinder (discontinued the next year), with a Brazilian-built, Opel-designed SOHC four with the same displacement (a bored and stroked version of the previous year’s 1.8L) also available, in normally-aspirated and turbocharged versions yielding 96 and 165 hp, respectively. With this coupe’s starting weight of just over 2,300 pounds, the base engine / 3-speed auto combo would have delivered a 0-60 time of about 12.5 seconds – not great for an upscale subcompact of its day, but certainly not bad enough to declare it a deathtrap, either.
The engine and exhaust note of this ’87 Skyhawk didn’t make music nearly as sweet as that of the birds that had serenaded me last week. I can faintly remember the buzzy, nasal whirr of the four-cylinder engine from many of these cars pulling away in traffic. I’ll bet that based on Buick’s core demographic, probably 90% of them came with the 3-speed auto. I didn’t get a peek inside this one for verification.
As a kid, I had started to wonder if Buick was going to add another “bird” model to its nest. After all, the concurrent Skylark seemed only nominally larger, and both bird-car names started with “Sky”. This prefix seemed redundant, almost like naming a boat a “Waterfish”. So-naming these cars didn’t appear to be for the purpose of any legitimate literary device. Did one really need to be e. e. cummings or Langston Hughes to come up with something better? Dang it, Flint. To your credit, though, you didn’t dust off “Wildcat” or “Invicta” – powerful, dynamic names, in my opinion – for use on these small cars. After all, Oldsmobile reused “Starfire” for the Firenza’s little predecessor.
I haven’t seen this Skyhawk for at least a couple of years now. Like so many birds in the winter months, I presumed it had just flown away after the college graduation of its owner, who looked to be the age of a student at nearby Loyola University. The dealer sticker on the trunklid indicates this car was sold by Schepel Buick-GMC, which is still in business in Merrillville, Indiana (about 50 miles and an hour and fifteen minutes from this neighborhood). To the gentleman to owned it at the time I took these photos, I hope you can appreciate, with your firsthand experience, just how far small cars have come since about ten years before you, yourself, came down life’s assembly line. And to you, little bird, I hope you’re still nesting somewhere comfortably.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
January 25 – February 11, 2013.
Related:
CC Effect: two days ago, I found a 1985 Skyhawk wagon in the junkyard.
Joe, another great piece and more great photography. How I wish I could take good night time shots… I admire your courage in just being able to whip out a proper camera and snap away. I’m a shy photographer, I always feel like I have to hide what I’m doing. Yesterday I saw a Citroen DS in traffic and I pretended I was taking a selfie with the internal camera of my iPhone while I snapped a photo with the external camera! Awk…
I genuinely find these to be good-looking cars. Hell, all the first-generation Js were. It’s interesting that Pontiac and Buick received the turbos while Chevy and Olds got the V6 versions. In Buick’s case, it makes sense–they had reintroduced domestic turbos in ’78. But the Skyhawk T-Type and the pop-up headlights always seemed a tad incongruous.
I’ll never understand why the Firenza sold so much worse than the Skyhawk. After all, the Skyhawk and Starfire both sold in almost identically pathetic numbers in their 1975-80 generation. Then again, the Starfire offered more engines (including a V8) and still couldn’t beat the Skyhawk in sales…
Will, thanks so much. My camera usually remains tethered to me during the week, and after owning an SLR for about 7 years now, I’ve got the motor memory / reflexes down when I spot something interesting: camera strap back over left shoulder, lens cap off, fire away. 🙂
I actually liked the T-Types… Most of the ones I remember were two-tone burgundy-over-gunmetal gray. One of the leader’s of my church’s youth group had one, so I got to ride in it on occasion. It seemed like a really nice car at the time – not exactly a budget BMW, but still a fairly quick, respectable machine. I remember seeing quite a few turbo Buicks when I was growing up.
I don’t know – I kind of liked the hidden-headlight look on the Skyhawk.
I am quite fond of the hidden headlamps of this Skyhawk. I would love to see a pic. of the sedan and wagon with that feature!
These were very much background noise to me. Much like the springtime birds, now that you mention it. Central Indiana was still very much a GM stronghold in the 80s. I think these sold fairly well to older drivers who were on a budget but who still perceived luxury in the Buick name.
Like you, I cannot recall seeing one in awhile. Which means I’ll probably see 3 today.
In late 82 I bought a new, hatchback J2000. I guess because of it’s manual transmission it had sat on the dealer’s lot for months. Oddly (?), after I bought that car, J cars suddenly popped up at my workplace like mushrooms after a summer rain. Cavaliers were the most popular, and usually in the cheapest trim available, with a few Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs. Buicks never seemed to be represented.
Over the years I would see LOTS of Cavaliers and Sunbirds, with a few Buicks, and almost never see an Oldsmobile model.
Is it possible that the Oldsmobile sold so poorly because Buick and Oldsmobile often shared the same dealerships? And for nearly the same monthly payments you could own the nicer ( looking, at least on the inside ) Buick?
At least around here, I don’t recall there being any Oldsmobile-Buick franchises, unless maybe the dealer sold all GM brands. Most Oldsmobile dealers were either standalone or Chevrolet-Oldsmobile, whereas Buicks were either standalone or part of Buick-Pontiac-GMC.
In the small town I grew up in, the Chevy brand was the only “stand-alone” GM brand. Pre AMC-JEEP, there was a Buick – Oldsmobile dealer that also sold Jeep, and the Cadillac brand was paired with Pontiac at a 3rd dealership. The next town over from us also had a Buick-Oldsmobile dealership, with Chevy again being stand-alone. In the small Texas town where I bought my J2000, Pontiac was paired with Chevrolet and Cadillac. The next small town had an Oldsmobile-Buick-GMC dealership.
These may have been exceptions, and being more of a Ford guy (except in that instance) I can’t say for sure if there were other instances.
With the caveat that I grew up about 40 miles away from Brendan, my experience was similar to his. I was always under the impression that GM tried to avoid having the same dealer sell two brands representing two consecutive rungs on the Sloan ladder – so you would see things like Chevrolet-Oldsmobile, Pontiac-Buick, Pontiac-Cadillac and Oldsmobile-Cadillac. (Off the top of my head, I don’t recall seeing Chevrolet-Cadillac.) Chevrolet and Pontiac tended to have similar model lineups, as did Oldsmobile and Buick, so those pairings in particular would seem kind of redundant.
It may be that in less populated areas that couldn’t support as many distinct dealerships, GM was more relaxed about this, and was more concerned with simply having an outlet for each brand.
Brendan, this is also what I remember.
Howard and MCT, to your points, I do remember my city of 200,000 (at the time) having a Pontiac-Cadillac dealership (Superior), which were four “rungs” apart on the Sloan ladder. Apart from that, I remember seeing stand-alone GM franchises…though I wish I had paid more attention.
That GM makes always seemed to have stand-alone dealerships in my GM-heavy area made Chrysler’s “Chrysler-Plymouth” and Ford’s “Lincoln-Mercury” stores seem a bit less substantial. This is just what I remember from my impressions of growing up in Flint.
The “Chrysler-Plymouth” pairing didn’t seem nearly as odd as “Lincoln-Mercury” did as there at the time was a “respectable distance” between the two Mopar brands. L-M OTOH seemed like “Buick- Cadillac” I could imagine a buyer in the 1970s seeing a Cadillac Calais and Buick Electra Limited on the same lot and thinking: ” What the hell?……” In the Pittsburgh (actually McKeesport area) John Naretto Buick was Buick and proudly nothing but Buick for it’s entire 30 year existence. It’s gone now, Not for anything they did, It was a successful dealership with a good reputation. It was a victim of the “great GM standalone Purge of ’08”. Sad.
I used to see a beat-up brown Skyhawk wagon around where I live a few years back, but no longer see it. Other than that, I can’t recall ever seeing any Skyhawks in the metal.
It’s actually rather impressive that the Skyhawk sold as well as it did, as its economy car status didn’t necessarily fit in with Buick’s premium image.
Brendan, what’s funny about this is that I remember seeing (or photographing) just two Skyhawks since our featured car. I saw this early one in October of 2014. That’s how scarce these things have become.
I remember reading when the Skyhawk had been discontinued that Buick was honing its image of “Premium American Motorcars” – which the Skyhawk, decent little car that it was, just didn’t fit so well.
Good read Mr. Dennis. GM, at this time, seemed to be coming out of their styling slump, this little Skyhawk really wasn’t hard on the eyes. The rust issues look terminal, not something I’m used to seeing in the desert southwest.
I remember seeing some of these in Tucson sporting the “turbo” insignia. Not sure why that caught my eye aside from the rarity of turbocharged cars at the time. I still wonder about the drivability of the turbocharged engines of this vintage.
Thanks, K. Johnston. I was also curious about what 165 hp would do in a car of this size and weight. One source I was able to find showed a 7-second 0-60 time for the Skyhawk Limited Turbo notchback coupe, with the optional 5-speed manual. I do wonder about what the torque steer was like.
A March 1987 Car and Driver comparison test of small sport hatches and coupes included a mechanically identical Pontiac Sunbird turbo GT: 7.2 seconds to sixty, and a 15.5 second quarter mile with an 88mph trap speed.
A Chevrolet Cavalier Z24 was also tested, and that car achieved sixty in 7.8 seconds, and 16.1 seconds in the quarter mile at 83mph.
That’s not quite the whole story, however. In the 30-50mph top gear acceleration test, that Z24 bested the turbo GT by 2.7 seconds (11.0 versus 13.7). It was noted between the two that “the Z24 specializes in no-fuss speed” while the turbo GT “gasps and hisses whenever you ask for a bit more power – even at cruising speed”. They did rank the GT above the Z24 in the end due to the sheer power and the hard figures it produced (best in test, by far) but summarized that it was a “relentlessly sporty” vehicle and one can imagine that party trick getting old rather quickly for those who don’t want to emulate F1 qualifying runs day in, day out.
I think the Skyhawk might be my favorite of the J’s, although truthfully I never thought much of any of them as compared to the H Bodies that preceded them. I “get” that they were front-wheel-drive, which was considered an “improvement” over the H’s, but I always considered all of the J cars to be rather characterless. A friend’s mother drove the hatchback version of this car back in the late 80’s. Hers was the higher trim model with the hidden headlamps, alloys and maybe a turbo although I’m not sure. I was unimpressed by it, but I seem to remember that Buick did a reasonably nice job on the interiors of these as compared to the Pontiac and Chevy J’s.
Joe, you trigger memories the latest of which involves a Skyhawk.
Carolyn and her husband Ernest lived in the same small town where I grew up. He was a commercial fisherman and she worked part time jobs. For a while she babysat my sister and I after school.
They had five daughters, much to Ernest’s annoyance. The drama ran high in their house and I got to witness some fierce mother-daughter disputes. Carolyn could handily take on her five without breaking a sweat.
For a long time they had a ’72 Chevelle. One day it went away for a brown Skyhawk two-door that she drove for years. She always referred to it as “my Buick”.
Jason, I’m thinking “a Buick is a Buick is a Buick” was the thought process for at least a few buyers when cross-shopping the Skyhawk against other small cars! When the Skyhawk was new, it was a new car, but imagine going from a 2-door Skyhawk to a ’72 Chevelle in present day! (In all fairness, I’m sure by that time that the Chevelle was just an old car and pretty worn when it when away.)
It may be hard to believe now but at one time, and I’m talking well into the ’80s, old GM midsizers like that Chevelle were just old, cheap used cars. The muscle car versions had started to escalate in value but there were still so many of them around, most of them beat up quite a bit. My high school parking lot was full of them.
I can remember a friend’s mother saying something to the effect of “be careful moving your car in the drive – don’t hit the Rover”. That was a 1989 Rover 213 (Honda Ballade clone) saloon.
More evidence the Buick is/was America’s Rover, or Rover was Britain’s Buick, probably
Haha!! Actually, Roger, Rover was probably a little more upscale than Buick. If I’ve been reading your posts correctly, Buick’s market position was probably more equivalent to Humber’s… except that it still exists.
The (few) Rovers that made to the US were high-end models usually with the biggest engine, so Americans may have perceived this rare-over-here British car to be more upscale than it really was.
Been quite a few years since I’ve seen a Skyhawk.
I always liked the look of the Cavalier & Skyhawk coupes from the 1st generation, just a really clean looking car and the Cavalier wore the Z24 package really well, I much preferred it over the Z24 hatchback.
A really cool find, I haven’t seen a Skyhawk of any kind for many years, even here on the Island where CCs roam the streets in numbers.
I couldn’t agree more with your first impressions Joseph, particularly, “… the new coupe doesn’t look quite as sporty as the old Monza-clone”. I never really noticed the Skyhawk after 1985 or so, but I am struck at how much the front clip looks like the nose of the 12 year old 1975 Monza. Only the Monza front clip looks better integrated with the rest of the car.
Upon introduction, I thought the J-cars were exceptionally bland looking, the 3 door hatchback being the exception. And like many at the time, I somewhat accepted this was the price of progress, GM style.
Daniel, thanks for posting that photo comparison. I agree with you – the front clip of our featured car does look a lot like an updated version of that of the first-year H-Bodies. Seeing both cars side-by-side shows just how retrograde the styling of the J was by comparison, but then we take into consideration that the overall J-car styling had to accommodate more body styles than just two sporty coupes.
My favorite of the original J-bodies was probably the Cavalier “Type 10” hatchback, with its soft, body-colored nose cone and dual headlamps.
Buick used the Hawk as its brand image/mascot for a while, even though the Skyhawk wasn’t a big seller. Brochures, ads, and dealer promos had it, with tag “Free Spirit…”.
I think this was to get younger buyers? But then in 1988, GM swapped the “brand images” of Olds and Buick. So, no more Hawks, Turbo v6’s and black trim. Olds was given “Euro” image and that overlapped Pontiac’s “sporty” image. We all know how much that worked for Olds!
Yeah that was so weird, especially since sales of the Grand National were taking off.
Regarding Buick’s sales in Midwest, since Skyhawks sold better here, the car lasted one year longer [’89] than the Firenza and the infamous Cimarron. Then, the Skylark took over the ‘baby Buick’ role.
Why were there 5 divisional J cars? Predicted high gas prices from Oil Crisis II
I think the multiplicity of near-identical J-cars reflected sheer corporate panic at the onset of a second Oil Crisis. Economy at any cost! Unfortunately that cost was divisional autonomy, identity and, in the case of Cadillac, credibility.
But then, nobody else was trying to keep five brands afloat at this time.
GM’s response of course was to add even more brands…..
I wonder if FCA’s current approach to having too many brands – incomplete lineups for all of them – would have served GM better.
I’m pretty sure even without Oil Crisis II there would have still been four J-cars, just as there were four H bodies before that. Only the Cimarron was rushed into production in panic mode, with Cadillac latching on with one year till intro.
Great find… this is a car that’s always flown under the radar: seemingly obscured by the more numerous J-cars on one end, and by the “proper” Buicks on the other.
It’s interesting that the 2-door notchback achieved a plurality of Skyhawk sales. I would have guessed that the 4-dr. was much more popular. My guess is that the Skyhawk appealed largely to frugal retired folks, who liked the cachet of a Buick, and — being out of their family-raising years — didn’t have the need for a 4-dr. Two-door cars seemed to be the retirees’ choice for vehicles in the 1980s (Olds Cutlass Supremes come to mind), so that may account for the 2-dr. Skyhawk’s prevalence. Just my guess.
Eric, thanks, and I agree with your theory about why the two-door might have been more popular, and of its core demographic. My original draft of this piece included a paragraph (deleted, no way to resolve it) about how I had thought this car might have been a gift from the owner’s grandparent – which would explain its great condition (save for the rust).
I’d guess this Skyhawk was probably both garaged and not driven all that much by its original owner, and then was used as just a regular car by the owner – hence being subjected to the Midwestern road salt.
My grandparents always had four-door cars (which I had presumed was for when family or their friends would visit), but I could totally imagine them being content with just a 2-door to get just the two of them around. Grandma drove a silver, ’79 Fiesta as her little runabout for a while. 🙂
My first new car purchase as a 19yo student was a 1985 Skyhawk T-Type, black, with the 1.8L and manual trans. (and a sunroof, of course). This was the first year all chrome had been removed, and my black car was very unique in suburban Detroit – even then the Buick buyer of this car was older and favored wire wheel covers. I bought a spoiler for a Sunbird GT, and drilled the holes in the trunk lid myself to install it. This ride served me well through college. When I sold it in 1990, the paint was getting thin from my frequent polishing.
I was jealous of the new ’87 nose (and hatchback), but time has proven my 85 looked much better.
Well blow me down, I read this article and then walked out to grab lunch and spotted this. It has been ten years or more since I last noticed one.
Awesome. I love that the front license plate says “RETIRED”. Indeed, my former neighbors who owned one – he was a Buick retiree, IIRC.
I love the ‘Camaro-esque’ nose on these early J-body Skyhawks. So comically out of place with the rest of the design.
If memory serves me correctly, my former brother-in-law owned a tan Skyhawk sedan in the mid-80s when he met my sister.
I found the car to be about as boring as he was/is…:-D
In Joseph’s second photo, the side view, it almost looks as though the front fender and door are from a larger car than the rear quarter. The swoopy style of the front part somehow doesn’t ‘gel’ with the truncated, boxy style of the rear part either.
I remember looking through the Buick brochures as a bored college student and seizing on the newly-unpackaged turbo engines (which previously were mostly restricted to the T-Type or other sporty models). 1987 was the last year of GM a la carte options, so I would read through the 40-item-long option lists configuring my dream cars that I couldn’t afford in real life. The 1.8T in the Skyhawk was quite powerful for its day, so I imagined my velour-lined Skyhawk Limited sedan with the turbo and a 5-speed stick. The turbo still required something now called the ‘T’ package IIRC, which included whatever suspension and tire upgrades were necessary to handle the extra power, along with red dash lighting (I’ve never seen a red-lit dash in a Buick in person, but that’s what the brochure said). Not being able to configure new cars as I wished has led to me buying more used cars than I would have otherwise.
la673, thank you for this – I hadn’t realized that it was ’87 that was the last year people could pick and choose a la carte options on new, GM cars. I had a copy of the 1988 new car buyers guide from Consumer Reports (not Consumer Guide), and I remember finding it interesting (as an adolescent) to see certain options available only with certain package groups.
Your reference to the red-lit dash also made me remember something I had completely forgotten about these cars. I remember one of my older brother’s college friends had a Skyhawk T-Type and I remember the red dashboard lights (in three strips over the instrument panel – is that correct?), and thinking how cool it looked. I do not recall having ridden in another car with red dashboard lighting, though I’m aware some recent Ford Mustangs so-equipped had a rheostat by which the color of the interior lighting could be changed.
I’ve never seen the Skyhawk dash (either the standard pale green or the T-Type/T Package red) so don’t know if it has three strips of lighting. The first car I know of that used red dash lighting was the 1963-64 Studebaker Avanti. The Mustang used red lighting from about ’83-’86. Other cars with red lighting included several early ’80s Pontiacs like the silver special-edition Trans Ams, the 6000 STE in 1983 only (the only year it had standard analog gauges, with a horizontal-strip speedometer which was incongruent in a European-style car), and all 2000’s from that year. Starting with 1984, Pontiac adopted an orange-red interior lighting color it used on most of its cars thereafter. This was very similar to the interior lighting color used in BMWs since at least the late ’70s. For whatever reason, orange lighting was very popular on Japanese cars in the mid-’80s, with Nissan, Mitsubishi, Honda, Subaru, and Mazda using it on most of their cars from that period, after which green or blue-green made a comeback.
Other cars with red dash lighting included Audi in the ’90s; starting in mid-2000 they retained red for almost everything except the gauges which became white. VW also had mostly-red lighting with blue on the gauges and radio LCD display only, which lasted from the late ’90s to a few years ago when they went all-white. Red lighting was also on the door switches (windows and such), center console, and overhead console switches. During the time Audi and Volkswagen used all- or mostly-red interior lighting there were two red LED floodlights on the overhead console that threw light on the shift knob below. I am irrationally fond of that feature because my manual-transmission 2007 Rabbit was so equipped, and a girl I took out on a date one night when the car was still new thought my hand bathed in warm red light working the stick shift looked sexy. Understand that no woman in my entire life has ever thought I was “sexy”, but thanks to VW, at least my hand was…
I always thought of the first generation Skyhawk as being the successor to the Opel Manta/1900 Coupe in the U.S. The second generation Skyhawk as a the successor to the Opel 1900 (Ascona) in the U.S.
After Buick dropped the Skyhawk, it seemed like there wasn’t a successor for many years until the the Buick Verano (Buick Excelle/Opel Astra) came along in 2011.
Granville ave between Sheridan and Broadway!
Another great post, Joseph.
I think others have said this before, but my sticking point with the J cars is that distinctive- and to my eyes, ugly- C-pillar they had. It sticks out like a sore thumb no matter what front clip the stylists come up with.
Thanks, CJC! I’ll agree that the shape of the C-pillar on the original 2-door notchbacks seemed uninspired (very geometric and Lego-like), and I did like the updated roofline on the ’88 Cavalier and Sunbird.
The thing I disliked about those revised C-pillars, though, was that nasty seam where the C-pillar met the rear quarter-panel. It just looked so homemade. A smooth, welded seam would have made those coupes look much more finished.
My best friend was needing a new ride in ’90 when he drove up in a Silver version of this car. When I saw the trail of oil smoke trailing behind it I said Dude, NO! Since I was my groups car expert he took my advice and bought a 86 Celebrity from the same dealership for less and got a good trouble free 6 years out of it.
It snows in Chicago – a lot more than in some of these pictures. Whether or not cardinals migrate is entirely beside the point. In the middle of January when there’s a foot a snow on the ground and occasional 7 mph winds, even if cardinals are sitting on bare, exposed branches and chirping away, I’m not spending large amounts of time outside to look for them.
Thanks for your insight.
In northern Michigan I did see more Skyhawks compared to a few Firenzas, but nothing compared to Cavaliers and Sunbirds. Not sure why the Firenza didn’t sell as well. I would think if the Firenza was lacking, it would have made up for it with the other small Olds offering, the Omega. But again, I only saw a few Omegas. Meanwhile Skylarks were everywhere.
My grandma had a Skyhawk just like the one in the article. After a long run of Chevettes, it was her last car before going into a home. She carried over the Foxy Grandma front license plate from the Chevettes.
Only other Skyhawks I saw after that were 2 separate ones, both older red coupes with the 5 spoke alloys later used on some Cutlass Calais models.
I liked the roofline of the 4 door and earlier 2 door J cars. Actually kinda bummed me out when the curved rear roofline for the coupes came out. As a child of the 80s, I thought it was interesting how H bodies looked like large J bodies. And C bodies looked like large N bodies. And all the rest that looked similar. And how much the Citation and Eagle hatchback looked similar. Considering the parts that AMC borrowed from GM, I wonder if it was more than coincidence.
Maybe a coincidence, but this originally came out the same day of the year (only 6 years ago). I probably normally wouldn’t have noticed, but it’s a sad day in my family, my youngest sister died of ovarian cancer 15 years ago when she was 37.
Speaking of my sister….she inherited an ’84 Pontiac Sunbird, which my parents bought new, but ended up being one of the worst cars they ever bought….it went from new to the scrap yard in 5 years, despite being maintained per schedule at the same dealer my Dad bought it from…it went through 2 replacement engines in that time, maybe 40k on each of them…the first replaced under warranty, don’t remember exactly what went on it but the 2nd engine threw a rod. That first engine was ominous in that it broke a timing belt when the car had less than 1000 miles (from new) on it. Even after my sister inherited it, since she lived at home as commuter student at college, my Dad still covered maintenance on it, don’t think it varied much with time. It was the 2.0 litre 4 that was in many of these.
To be fair…believe it or not, another sister (who didn’t live anywhere near us at the time) had bought an ’84 Sunbird (in fact a few months before my Dad bought one, he didn’t often “copy” purchases of family members, but this is one of two times he did….I don’t think she had nearly the same bad luck with hers…but she still lived up in Vermont, so it died a normal (rusty) death…she bought hers new also, but that’s an anomaly, think this is the only new car her and my brother-in-law have ever bought, and they’ve owned way more cars than I ever have (like 10-20x more…I’m not one to change cars often though).
The rest of the car wasn’t promising either…the switchgear was pretty cheap with lots of crispy plastic that cracked (this in 5 years before it was scrapped)…the power steering leaked but the engine threw a rod before we got that repaired, just as well as it turned out. Understandably my Dad didn’t buy GM for awhile after this one, having owned 1 Dodge and 3 Mercurys in a row (all Sables) before he returned to GM for his last 2 cars (both Impalas). My departed youngest sister? She only owned imports after that (though she obviously didn’t live long enough after that to own that many cars as it turned out)…the car was so bad it dissuaded (or at least delayed) two different generations from buying another GM car. It was like we were being punished for buying a smaller car (Dad gave up a ’78 Caprice Classic Wagon for the Sunbird, his biggest downsizing of a vehicle, which obviously he should have kept instead).
My friend owns a private junkyard( Never crushes anything), where he owns a blue Buick Skyhawk coupe, maybe a 1987 or 1988? He’ll sell it to me for $200…If he can find the title, in the boxes of titles in his office.
It looks like an original time capsule.