GM’s N-Bodies may be considered worthless and highly disposable in their home country, but apparently they are held in high esteem elsewhere, like the Grand Am we saw the other day in Tokyo and now this Buick Skylark in Budapest found by Roshake. This car is utterly immaculate, and its interior is every bit like new, as was the Grand Am’s. What gives?
Wow! It’s like I’m opening the door in the showroom, to check it out. Never mind; I’d never have done that. I admit to a particularly strong dislike for these cars, as I thought the styling with its vertical back window just didn’t work on this small of a car.
This interior does remind me a bit of the white ’80 Skylark Limited I had as a company car; it had a blue interior too and plenty of that fake wood. But these seats look better than the X-Car seats, which had a steel frame member that one could just sort of feel in the lower back; not the ideal kind of lumbar support. But these look much better.
I suspect this likely has the V6, given that it’s a high-trim version. That would be the 3.3 with fuel injection, which came along in 1989 and was a much nicer mill than the carburated 3.0 it replaced.
I’ll let the expert(s) weigh in on the headlights.
I first saw the Somerset coupe version of these in Santa Monica some months before it was released, being tested by GM engineers, with wires coming out the window and another car following it. I was not impressed.
But it’s nice to know that someone in Budapest is deeply in love with their N-Body Skylark.
Well, I am familiar with how American cars are appreciated by many in Europe and these cars fit what I know is appreciated. Nothing else looks like these cars, and when you take into consideration the brougham-touches, there is little like them. Just as we often are delighted by French and Italian design, many over there are delighted by design touches like these. These cars grab attention in a world of global designs.
They are a terrific size and fit this environment.
Even I have to admit that if I was still living in Niedersachsen, I would really cherish the American-ist look and feel of these cars. They are both cringy, and delightful. From the cheap velour interiors, the plastic wood trim pieces and the bizzare formal roof line – there is nothing else like them.
Those headlights don’t appear to me to have any of the off-angle fluting that’d suggest a pattern other than the regular US DOT. It has amber rear turn signals, but not the front repeaters.
I suspect Daniel will come along and explain how this car was compliant in Hungary in 1990 despite all that.
I would say that this car, with its presumed 3.3 would’ve been a happy purchase for someone with very American automotive tastes in spite of being a styling question mark. It appears well optioned for a Custom, so I suspect that it was exactly what the original buyer wanted even if today’s car fans can’t imagine that.
This Skylark has the look of a North American car that was imported privately, with minimal modifications.
Apart from the amber rear turn signals, the exterior looks original…with non-European touches like fixed mirrors, red rear side markers, and a small licence plate well. But it has a metric speedometer (note that it goes up to 180 in the interior picture)…and unlike on a Canadian-spec car, I don’t see a supplementary scale with miles on it. It also looks like it may lack a third brake light…although with reflections on the window glass, it’s tough to tell.
I think this is the classic example of the car that was “good enough.” It obviously didn’t sell to car enthusiasts but it was perfect for someone who wanted a car that wasn’t hard to drive, got decent gas mileage, had a lot of features, and could be worked on by most any mechanic. There were much better cars available in 1990 — if you lived in the city. If you lived in a small town like I did and still do, the Skylark was a great choice — but the Century could usually be had cheaper.
I looked it up, and yes it does have the 3.3.
Distained? Really.
I can see it. Owning this over there is like owning a Benz here. Pure status.
Given the relatively greater expense of buying and maintaining American cars in Europe, I could see where this Buick might be owned by an affluent iconoclast who can afford to keep it in fine shape. Also, as discussed in CC previously, it seems Europeans and Japanese are more inclined to follow maintenance schedules religiously, a behavior reinforced by stricter annual inspections than is common in the U.S. In those conditions, it’s nice to see that an American vehicle can hold up equally well as locally produced vehicles.
In Russia, Ladas are seen as less desirable than Renaults, Nissans or Mitsubishis even though their parent company until recently was Renault Nissan Mitsubishi.
In Japan. left hand drive vehicles are seen as status symbols and Japanese right hand drive vehicles are seen as ordinary.
In Germany. a Mustang or Corvette is considered more exotic than a Porsche. In the US it is the opposite.
There was a post on CC about the Pontiac Vibe, where some commenters disparaged the car because it was a Pontiac and praised Toyota, even though it was really a Toyota with some lipstick on. I’ve seen the same comments made about the Chevrolet Nova. The Nummi built Toyotas also have lower resale value even though they are the same as other Toyotas.
I’ve also seen people disparage the Mazda engined and platformed Mercury Tracer/LTS and praise the Mazda 323/Protégé, even though they are basically the same car.
Don, very well stated. I agree.
Speaking of Ladas, people in the West go gaga over the ancient 1970s designed Lada Niva, but yawn at the sight of a much more modern and objectively more practical RAV4.
While it’s true there were few design or engineering differences between a Mazda 323 and a Mercury Tracer, they were not built on the same production line like the NUMMI twins. At least in 1988 when I bought my 323, a Mazda badge meant assembly in a Mazda plant in Japan, while the Tracers were assembled in Ford’s plant in Hermosillo, Mexico.
At a time when Big Three production lines weren’t know for their quality assembly, that was enough of a difference to send me to a Mazda showroom.
So I’m going to be the big defender of this car on here. I guess the style doesn’t fit your taste, but that doesn’t make it a bad car.
I sold these for many years starting in 1988. Personally, I felt they were very attractive cars and liked the more formal rear window. To me, it made it kind of like a mini Park Avenue. I also have zero clue why so many people dislike the fake plastic wood in these cars. You either have colored plastic, wood like plastic, vinyl, cloth, black plastic or something of that sort in cars. Personally I find the wood look to be warm and more attractive than most of the rest. And compared to many of the imports that had such cold and bland interiors, this Buick interior is very nice.
As for the way they road and handled? These really rode well and were very nice to drive. For those who wanted a more tight (handling) feel, you could get the T-type or later the Gran touring suspension. In 1989, this gave you a tighter feel, bigger rims, black wall performance tires, more gauges, and a fantastic 3 spoke leather wrapped steering wheel. And the price on it was very reasonable. People who purchased them like them and in my 12+ years with a Buick dealer, we had few issues with them and sold a ton of them.
I’ll end with a funny story that maybe I shouldn’t even tell. I wish to say up front that I do not condone running from the police! haha. So in 1989 I had a Skylark Custom sedan for a demo with the new 3.3L V6. That thing was fast and was fun to drive. One night after spending a few hours with some friends (I was NOT drinking), I was tired and decided to head home. I was just driving along not paying attention and must have been going a little too fast on the highway through town. All of a sudden, I noticed red and blue lights way behind me and I (wrongly) decided to just step it down and keep going. I got a mile out of town and around a corner decided to pull into this little car dealership and go dark. About 30 seconds later, the local police car went flying past with lights on and they went onto the 4 lanes. I decided to pull out and follow them from a distance. About 3 miles out, they turned off the lights and turned around to start heading back towards town on the opposite two lanes. I just kept going towards home and never looked back! Funny thing is a few weeks later I ran into a buddy of mine who was a police officer in that town. Jokingly I asked him why I saw them way out on the 4 lane with the lights going but nobody in front of them. He told me someone was speeding past and he tried to pull them over but the car was too fast for them. I told him that it was me and he called me a couple names before we both had a good laugh.
The annoying X body front seats with the metal bar halfway up your back were only mandatory the first three years. Starting in 1983, X cars with optional bucket seats used the new J-body hardware, which was also used in some A bodies (6000 coupe) and F bodies (most Camaros and Firebirds). These buckets all reclined and at the right pivot point, unlike early X reclining seats that reclined halfway up your lumbar area. The new seats were thinner for better legroom front and rear, and were generally more comfortable. X bodies without bucket seats (including fixed cushion with center tray/separate seatbacks) retained the old setup, but with separate height-adjustable headrests replacing the one-piece seatbacks used from 80-82).
So an N body Skylark was only slightly better than a late X body Skylark, getting the new seats, new steering, revised brakes, new mirrors, and several other updates before the big body changeover in 1986. That included a newer, larger V6 to replace the 2.8L Chevy V6 in the earlier cars. Rear seat headroom and headroom was down some in the new bodies. The door panels were better designed, the dash not as attractive an Electra-looking as before, but still quiet nice. The exterior style was an improvement IME, less toylike. Too bad about the passive restraints; at least they weren’t of the annoying motor-mouse variety. Overall, a pleasant small travel convenience when well equipped that deserved better.
Kiwis like American cars though Ive not seen one of these maybe its only the classics that come over but its astounding just what is here, I saw a 57 Studebaker yesterday on the Auckland motorway it was just bowling along in traffic beautifully restored I havent seen it at any shows yet, and patina laden pickups are becoming common but no N bodies so far.
The mini-Electra style of these Skylarks really comes through in the lead shot. It looks literally like an Electra that was put into the oven for five minutes like a Shrinky-Dinks polystyrene transfer from the ’80s.
lol. In the second last pic, I get strong Pontiac 6000 vibes, in its profile. With only various takes on the formal roof C-pillar, creating much distinction between car models.
Everybody knows styling sells cars. Especially GM. Offering a buffet of bland, cookie cutter styled cars throughout the 1980s, GM shot their whole foot (and lower leg) off. Besides all their quality issues. Leadership, unworthy of the company’s legacy.
That trunk lid ‘spoiler’ looks so ridiculous and out-of-place, it’s pathetic. A car and company, that didn’t know what they wanted to be.
I don’t see any spoiler on the trunk.
The irony is that it might actually be aerodynamically functional. A perfunctory and sheepish-looking aerodynamic add-on is more likely to actually do something useful, whereas a big wing or ground effects kit is more likely to be purely fanciful. I don’t know if that’s the case here, but it may serve to break up the tendency of moving air to “stick” to the deck, thus improving drag and perhaps highway fuel economy.
Yeah, what kind of loser car company puts a curve in the trunk lid of a family sedan?!!
Yes, my criticize of the ‘curve’ or ‘lip’ at the rear edge of the trunk lid was harsh.
I think the points in my first paragraph, are more important, besides. If you want to offer a counter to those comments. Please, feel free.
There is no trunk lid “spoiler”. Look at the second to last photo; the trunk lid is perfectly straight to the very edge, which is sharp and is undercut. It might look like a spoiler from the rear, but it’s not.
That’s why I put ‘spoiler’ in air quotes. It looks like a spoiler from the rear.
Personally I think that little spoileresque protrusion is the highlight of the styling, other divisions N bodies like the Grand am and Calais looked soft from the back, the Buicks looked crisp.
Also that “spoiler” was present in the 81 Regal as well, a design which many people are quite fond of given the values of Grand Nationals and T types. N bodies were originally conceived to be successors for the G body PLCs as I recall so much of the styling choices of the Gs were evolved into them.
Applying subtle styling cues associated with an earlier successful design, onto a cookie cutter design, doesn’t necessarily make the whole car’s styling a success. It almost seems cynical. Knowing, 90% of the rest of car’s styling, is otherwise like the other look-a-likes. I’m not going to buy a Skylark because it has a nice trunk ‘lip’, unless I already accept the blandness of the rest of the car. Following the 80s GM styling template.
Didn’t GM try the same thing with the ’86 Eldo, Riviera, and Toronado?
I do understand they have to do whatever they have to do, to maintain any sort of brand identity. To be fair to the designers. And we as keen observers, have to appreciate whatever small details work. It comes down to how we each interpret it. That ‘lip’ doesn’t make it look like a Regal. But it may make the design more palatable to some.
That’s basically all car design is is applying cues from other cars, making the styling of a lineup similar. The same criticism could be levied towards the 1968 Skylark for using the side sweep of full size Buicks on the cookie cutter A body, or Ford’s for using the Aston Martin grille first used on the Fusion on almost everything new or facelifted in the 2010s. Many times these sorts of styling commonalities work, sometimes they don’t.
Being a “cookie cutter” is totally subjective, take any emotion about old school BOF and RWD and the lore of submodels like the Grand National out of the equation and the 81-87 G bodies were exactly as cookie cutter in design as the N bodies, right down to the lookalike formal roofs. Now the proportions pretty objectively suck on the N bodies, so I’m not defending them or saying they’re good designs, but I don’t believe the designers had any more of a cynical approach with the design of these over anything else.
The Skylark née Somerset (as in Regal Somerset, just like Cutlass Calais) would have been the downsized successor of the G body Regal, and the styling of the RWD G bodies simply transferred into the smaller package, much as how it did with the RWD to FWD A body sedans. One of GMs many other issues in the 80s was the noncommittal hedging of their bets running old cars and their would-be successors concurrently, making lineups bewildering to make heads or tails of. Made even worse by the E bodies you mentioned which were supposed to be the “premium” PLCs that were way too close in style to the N body PLCs and noticeably smaller than the still in production G body PLCs.
Nice car
Door mounted seat belts, a GM Deadly sin.
Fumbled product launch – typical GM Deadly sin in the ’80s. The Buick N coupe was introduced as the Somerset in 1985, overlapping with the X Skylark. The N sedan came in 1986 as the Skylark, the X Skylark coming to an end. Eventually the exactly same styled coupe and sedan merged under the Skylark name. GM apparently had total amnesia about how successfully, and SIMPLY, they introduced redesigned products in the ’60s and ’70s.
Throw in an airbag, scrap the X Skylark after 1984, introduce the N Skylark Coupe and Sedan for 1985. How hard would that have been?
Rant over.
It is an attractive mini Electra, much like some of the Skylark four door hardtops of the ’60s. It sold decently enough, and might have sold even better with just a bit more common sense in product launch, placement, and equipment.
Its Pontiac cousin, the Grand Am, was a smash hit, selling 225,000 copies in 1986, its first full year, typically to a young demographic.
“Door mounted seat belts, a GM Deadly sin.”
I never understood the rationale behind these. Why not just put them on the B pillar? It can’t be cheaper because you would have to strengthen the door to take the forces of a crash.
Someone could (and should) write an whole article about these door-mounted seatbelt abominations. These were GM’s way of “complying” with US regulations that called for passive restraints (airbags or automatic seatbelts) to be phased in on cars from 1987 through 1990. Of course they made a mockery out of the regulation, and were surely the most literal of GM’s deadly sins.
To hear GM PR explain it, you’d leave the belts fastened 100% of the time and simply wiggle under them whenever you got in and out of the car. Never mind that NO ONE ever did that (it was borderline-impossible to); that the door-mounted belts were weaker, too far forward, and afforded less protection when fastened than conventional pillar-mounted belts did, and that people who didn’t use seatbelts in the first place also didn’t use these.
They ‘were’ on the B pillar when the N body was introduced, as pictured, it had nothing to do with cost but compliance; cars starting in 1989 had to have secondary restraint systems – which was to say they should have an airbag without actually saying it in writing – so the solutions that some came up with were rupe goldberg seatbelt designs like this, the other being the similarly reviled electronic automatic shoulder belts.
The idea behind the door mounted ones being you leave it buckled into the seat 100% of the time, the door opens with the belt extended out and you essentially walk into the belt like a net as you enter the car. Nobody actually used them like this of course because it’s ridiculous.
Jól sikerült képek. A kocsi az enyém, de én még ilyen jó képeket nem lőttem róla. 🙂
Köszönöm szépen, örülök hogy tetszenek. Az autó is nagyon szép. Nagyot csodálkoztam mikor megláttam, nem gyakran lát ilyeneket errefele az ember. Viszont pont ezért a kedvencem ilyen ritkaságokra bukkanni 🙂
Van egy másik. Egy “testvér” az egy 86os riviéra.
Akkor azóta szerintem vele is találkoztam, szintén szép darab 🙂