canadiancatgreen has found a car I’ve been on the lookout for, but with no luck. And a Gran Sport version at that. This was an odd car for Buick to foist on its elderly clientele, and one that seemed to have no family relationship with the rest of the Buick family. One wanted to appreciate that it was trying to be a bit different, but pulling it off is another thing. It was one of the last cars designed by GM stylist Wayne Kady, know for a few other eccentric and less-then stellar designs.
Oddly enough—or not—my father bought a red four door version of this generation Skylark, and kept it to the end of his driving days, which was well past what they should have been, leaving it bruised and scarred. My brother was driving down York Road one day, and saw the red Skylark at a self-serve gas station, with my parents standing and looking at it. He pulled in, and noticed a flat tire and bent rim: my father mistook a curb for an entry apron. Driving with macular degeneration was not a hot idea. Fortunately, he soon was forced to stop, and then just act as navigator for my mother, who could still drive reasonably well, but was having memory problems and would have gotten lost without his guidance. Thus ended their their driving days.
I drove it a few times, including a three-day trip down to Willamsburg and then across the Chesapeke Bay Bridge-Tunnel, and a return up the Eastern Shore. It drove…just like so many millions of GM FWD cars of the era. Adequate transport; reasonably sprightly, with its 3.1 V6; and not very roomy, ensconced in a world of mouse-fur and GM-grade vinyl.
It was a rather surprising choice, given that my father had only ever bought one other GM car ever before, and also at a Buick dealer: a pale-green 1965 Opel Kadett A. It only lasted three years, its premature aging process hastened undoubtedly by my older brother’s merciless floggings.
And the Saturn Ion in the garage next to his Skylark? One day, he drove off in my mother’s beloved Civic, and returned with the Ion. She didn’t appreciate that at all, and let him know it for some time. Last I heard, one of my nieces was still driving it.
aw….that image of the bright green Opel Kadett A epitomizes the dream of early 60s German middles class: An entry level Opel or Ford model parked in front of a house of their own. What more could one wish for? 😉
I find the Buicks just plain ugly. But that 1965 Opel Kadett is a real beauty.
As for the Saturn Ion, it has a reputation for being junk, but my ex wife has been driving one for over two years with no issues. I change the oil in it. It is an ’07 model, the one with the small rear doors that open backward. Another attempt by GM to disguise a 4 door as a 2 door. It’s certainly no Mercedes, but considering the way she abuses it, it seems to be doing just fine.
I test drove one of those small 2door Buicks in the 90s. Unimpressive. I was disappointed too, because I really liked the way it looked.
I drove these as rental cars from Avis often during their tenure there.
As described by Paul, I found these cars quite satisfactory. Avis’ versions had, of course, four doors but for my use the coupe would have been fine. I was traveling alone and needed only the additional room for luggage and briefcase. I liked these cars.
I remember one I had for a week and drove from Chicago to Milwaukee to Minneapolis to Moline and back to Chicago. It was my favorite color combination – white car with red interior. For some reason I liked the Buick version of this car over the Grand Am and whatever the Oldsmobile was called (Achieva? – can’t remember).
There is a red 4 door driven by an elderly couple that I see at my church occasionally. Aside from the weird side sculpting, the VERY pointy front end, and the way the front track looks appreciably wider than the rear track….these ALMOST seem to be decent cars. I’ve always thought whoever styled these cars was working from the Monty Python school of design (now for something completely different). And I actually think that for this price point the interior looks acceptable. But I still think the 4 doors look strange, the 2 doors? Almost Citroen-like with that neo-floating roof.
Would rather have the Achieva (?).
As for the Ion: the 4 door coupe was done better as the Saturn SC. The whole Ion lineup looked like they put less, a LOT less than an hour’s thought into it. Copy the gauges in the center of the dash from the Toyota Echo, it might make the car look appealing in a Euro sort of way. But the Ion and it’s “sister” the Cobalt looked too long and narrow to be good looking or even pleasant. They also killed the most interesting (to me) Saturn models…the wagons, to concentrate on the Vue.
Wow, I may have seen a Skylark dressed as a Gran Sport before, but certainly don’t remember it. In a CC effect of sorts, I was talking with my oldest son a week or so ago. The Dominican community in Denver where he is spending a year as a novice has 4 cars – 3 Hondas and a Buick Skylark. He tells me that he is the only one who likes driving the Skylark, but just because he kind of likes Buicks. I suspect that it was a donation or bequest.
I have been spending time in my Mother’s 06 Lacrosse. She may have reached the end of her driving days as well. The same memory issues as your Mother, but without someone to navigate for her. Same color as your Dad’s Skylark. Even in red, the car just sucks the soul right out of a person. I have not seen Carmine around lately, so maybe it’s safe for me to write something about the experience. 🙂
Never underestimate the universality of GM badge-engineering.
Never confuse universality with prowess.
These were such unfortunate looking cars. Finding a two-door of any stripe is quite an accomplishment as they were simply so few and far between even when new.
My grandmother (who will be 94 next month) has two younger sisters who both bought Skylark’s at about the same time in 1995.
Ruth kept hers until about a year or so ago. It was a twin to the one in the Niedermeyer garage picture, although hers was a four-cylinder. It had maybe 60,000 miles when it went away for a Corolla. Not sure what happened to the Skylark of Thelma’s – likely one of her grandkids or great-grandkids destroyed it.
I was always intrigued with the low mileage aspect of Ruth’s Skylark, but imagining myself actually owning it was a totally different matter.
I did not even realize such a car existed, it went totally under my radar. It looks like a possible French Panhard prototype from the late 60s. Almost nice.
Ha! Actually there was such a thing… See more here (including one with a V6 Maserati engined as used in the Citroen SM): http://www.citroen-ds-id.com/ds/DS_Cit_Panhard_Proto.html
Styling was based on a Buick show car. Tons of these were around in the 90s in teal green [as were so many others. Nice color on the first 100 you see. The next 100,000 irritate the eyes]. Many were sold with the Quad 4 [a GM Deadly Mortal Sin ?]
ah, the teal green. With silver skirts and a red trim line. Prominently featured in the launch ad campaign, where Buick hired artists you’ve never heard of to make corporate meeting room images – color coordinated! – of this divine inspiration.
And all this while Honda was running its brilliant “We make it simple” ad campaign. And incidentally making brilliant cars in the bargain.
Man, GM’s body sculpting in this era was really painful. They just didn’t get aero in any way shape or form.
Any time I think of this car, that ad is the very first thing that pops into my mind. I have no idea why it has stuck with me all this time.
I have no direct experience with these Buicks, but I always thought the front looked terrible…. like a Ford Tempo with a “Bunkie Beak” stuck on it.
I have some experience with a Saturn Ion as a rental. Out of perhaps 8 times I’ve had a rental car, the Ion stands out as the worst.
These sold well as “program cars” to customers who had older (10+ years) Buicks that needed replacement. Budget priced almost new car with shift on the column. The new ones mostly served as props to show what a great deal the program car was. I sold many dressed up former rentals with Presidential Packages (simulated convertible top), stick on chrome and by special request continental kits and aftermarket leather. In 1998 they were offered as “fleet only” , so no need to stock hard to sell new ones.
Vinyl roofs and continental kits – as if these cars didn’t look bad enough as is!
I was friends with a girl in college who had a dark gray Skylark GS. The front end had a vague familiarity to a ’67 Skylark, or at least I thought so. Her GS had leather interior and was fully loaded, so it seemed like a really nice car when I was 20. I’m sure I drove it a few times, but I can’t remember what it had for an engine…did these have that 3300 or were they 3.1s at the time?
1992 and 1993 3.3, 1994-98 3.1
Grandmother had one of these (sedan, V6, non-GS) before buying her Aztek. Typical GM V6 it had enough torque to easily overwhelm the front tires.
The two-door looks like a Geo Metro three-door with a tacked-on “beak” and trunk – as if it dressed up as a “Buick” for Halloween.
I liked this look and I had one as a rental for an extended period of time. It rode nice and had plenty of power. Mind you I never would have purchased one.
I liked these. I mean, I never so much as sat in one; that may have changed my opinion. But I thought Buick at least tried to differentiate its car on this platform. See also my comment on the Olds Firenza today.
I have good memories of these. A good friend of mine had a black two door example. I remember doing the club scene and checking out the ladies while deafening 90’s club/dance music was pumped out of its stereo. He modified it with light blue neon pipes underneath and around the rear license which gave it a “unique” glow at night.The cops were not impressed and we had to uninstall our lighting upgrade.
He is a priest in an urban parish now and I’m a 40 something Dad with a wife, two little kids, a dog, and a mortgage. But I smile when I think of those old days!
These cars always struck me a just a “sawsall” away from being a great looking convertible. As the break between the upper & lower halves is so distinct. With the glitzy grille, two tone paint, & skirted fenders a factory job could have occupied the same niche as those woody K-car models of a few years earlier.
BTW My aunt in Florida had a red 4 door as her last car as well
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Besides an unimpressive week with a two-door rental, by main memory of these is their bizarre ad campaign, which was something like “We Asked an Artist to Interpret the New Skylark!” There was a photo of a teal green (of course) car with that red lower body stripe, and the artist displaying the painting “inspired” by it – a wild abstract with splashes of teal green and a red stripe.
Other than conveying that the car was loose and undefined, I’m not sure how great a marketing message it was.
“Other than conveying that the car was loose and undefined, I’m not sure how great a marketing message it was”.
I’m sure that wasn’t the marketing message they intended!
These Skylarks were definitely on the strange side when they debuted. The Pontiac Grand Am was by far the big seller, although I had preferred the Oldsmobile version (Achieva). The Achieva coupe was, to my eyes, by far the nicest looking version of the Achieva-Grand Am-Skylark trio.
Interestingly, the original version of the Achieva coupe was supposed to have a squared-off rear-wheel well, much like the one on this Skylark. Supposedly Oldsmobile management objected, and the car was reworked at the last minute to feature a conventional, fully open wheel well. The introduction of the coupe was therefore delayed for a few months. It was worth the wait.
The pointed prow, glassy greenhouse and character line at the body sides gave these Skylarks a unique look, but it was a look that wasn’t likely to be appreciated by Buick customers.
The Skylark and Achieva were initially introduced with heavily promoted upscale versions. Unfortunately, when sales didn’t reach expectations, GM pared away the sportier/upscale versions and basically turned the cars into dull fleet specials.
I think the Olds Achieva was the nicest looking variant as well. They didn’t seem to last long though. Probably most Achievas received the Olds Quad-4 engines, which I recall didn’t have good reliability.
While Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac had redesigned their FWD N-Body Cars in 1992, their Chevrolet FWD L-Body Car cousins aka Beretta/Corsica and the lone Canadian Pontiac Tempest remained the same through the end of the 1996 model year which was replaced by the new Malibu in 1997.
Way back in the early ’90’s I rented one of these-a white four door sedan-for a few days. Save for a few bizarre styling touches there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it. Maybe they were trying to imitate Buick styling in the late ’60’s when the cars featured curvilinear styling touches on the sides of their bodies. Apparently, the public did not care for it, as I saw very few of these cars. If I remember correctly, sometime in the mid-nineties, the Skylark was discontinued. It was a rather sad end to an automobile that in the mid-sixties was really a great looking car.
My former landlady, now next-door-neighbor had a sedan like Paul’s father’s. It was a bit of a disaster, as cars go. It had failed California’s SMOG check at its previous inspection, costing her $2,000 to get it legal. The next time, an independent shop and the Buick dealer couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again. After wasting much coin, the dealer suggested that the next step was to replace the dashboard, at an estimated two to three thousand dollars. It was regularly refusing to start when hot at this point, causing AAA to drop her and me to make several trips to retrieve her. Also, the power windows only rolled down. Her friends would regularly roll them down, which also created various headaches. I may not have mentioned that she was in her late 80s at the time, probably leading her to be comfortable at much warmer temperatures than even her elderly bridge companions.
I helped her shop for a replacement, which was a Kia Rio. The dealer offered her $500 as a trade in, sight unseen. I suspect this was actually just a discount. I left my car at the dealer and drove her home in her new car. My girlfriend and I returned with the Buick. On the way there, the heater core blew. I finished the trip Casey Jones style, with my head out the window to see where I was going. The dealer didn’t care. The car had less than 38,000 miles, having spent its life garaged in coastal San Diego, never having experienced hot or cold temperatures.
I’d take that Buick, if only for the weirdness. I’m surprised by how good that Kadett looks, too.
My great uncle terrifyingly drove with macular degeneration, until finally persuaded to stop. He was registered blind incredibly soon afterwards.
These Skylarks are one of those designs that makes one rethink one’s past complaints about modern design being too bland. (“Okay, maybe bland isn’t all bad…”)
Modern design is very polarized right now, on one hand it’s bland, on the other it’s hideous. The Skylark is more the spiritual father of the current Lexus IS
I can definitely see that, although with the Lexus, I at least grasp why they’re trying to be “edgy” (separate from what I think of the results). The Skylark’s design is polarizing and confrontational, but the rest of the car is about as generic mid-90s GM as you can get and nothing about its intended market suggests that buyers would respond to this kind of thing. Younger buyers just bought Grand Ams and the sort of people who were in the market for a smaller Buick probably would have appreciated something that didn’t look like it had a migraine.
Man, I hadn’t realized how right you were. I saw a new Lexus IS on the road a little while ago, and from the rear, its resemblance to this Skylark is pronounced.
Really a strange looking front end on these. This is one of those few cars that seem to look better as a four door. Parent’s last car was 93 Lesabre that ended up pretty battered when Dad should have hung up the keys. It still had perfect interior and ran great with the recently rebuilt transmission and new AC compressor, but had dents in all four corners and right rear door was caved in. I have a feeling a lot of hit and runs were involved. The last few years I refused to be a passenger if Dad was was intending to drive, and always made sure I was behind the wheel. He had Parkinson’s.
One of my best friends had a sedan in high school, in fact he was the first of all of us to have a car since it was given to him by his mom, so we had a lot of interesting moments with it. It was white with red interior, had the quad 4. We all affectionately referred to it as “The Beak”
I think I’m one of the few people who actually likes these in coupe form. I was a big fan of the design when it came out–I thought the “beak” was very distinctive, liked the skirted rear arches, liked the pointy taillights, liked the roofline…and I still find them very underappreciated. Much more distinctive than the comparatively bland Achieva. Sedan form didn’t suit them so well, IMO, but they still weren’t bad looking.
My mother-in-law actually still has a Skylark of this generation, I think a 1995 or 96? Typical mid 90’s GM paint quality (clearcoat is gone gone and the undercoat is flaking off in places). Not sure if it’s the Quad 4 or the 3.3, but I do know they had the engine rebuilt about 5 years ago. So it’s in the curious position of looking like total crap with the paint issues but running quite well. Doesn’t get driven much these days as they also have two trucks. As my wife owned an Alero for 10 years, I’m quite aware of the uneven (to put it charitably) N-body quality, so I understand why you don’t see many Skylarks (or Achievas for that matter) anymore! Grand Ams of this era can still be seen but they’re inevitably basketcases, having lived harder lives as a frequent target of budget-limited tuner-wannabes.
In the early 1990s, I was a passenger in a car that was rear-ended by one of these Skylarks, and that sharp beak made quite a dent in my friend’s Cutlass Ciera wagon!
That said, I liked the Olds Achieva much better than this generation of Skylark, and at the time, thought it was one of the better looking compact cars on the market.
If I recall, Automobile mag, when DED Jr. had first opened it, did a story on a Skylark with the 3.3 (3300?) and it made a big difference over the standard 3.1. But yeah, they looked a little weird….
The 3.1 or 3100 V6 came later in this car’s life. Model years 1994-1998 had the 3100 with 160 HP and 185 torque which was the same output as Buick’s 3300 V6 which was a totally different engine design based on the older Buick 3.0 liter motor and related to the 3.8. But GM cheeped out on the 3300 and didn’t fit it with a balance shaft like it did with the 3.8. The 3100 was a 60 degree design and inherently smoother and quieter.
Also note in these N-body cars the Buick 3300 only came with the 3 speed trans axle tied to lethargic 2.39 gears as apposed to the 3100 which came with the 4 speed 4T40 unit and 2.93 gears which made for quieter, smoother and quicker performance overall.
Memories of my 1992 USA trip here. I rented a pair of these. One for an overnighter in Omaha, the other took me from LA-Tucson-San Francisco- LA.
Polarising looks, but comfortable enough. Topped out at 115 indicated, and I discovered that foot operated park brakes aren’t the best for handbrake turns.
I prefer a ‘real’ Skylark- like my ’69 sport coupe these days.
A classic case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Buick tried to give some individual style and flair to their iteration of the GM corporate platform and got panned for it.
Anyone note how big the trunklid is? I wish designers would bring back proper trunks on cars, no more mailslots!
For me, this style Buick Skylark is absolutely hideous, right up there with the Aztek and Caprice of the 90’s. GM styling in the 90’s left a lot to be desired, IMHO.
I would like to purchase a 1992-1995 Buick Skylark Gran Sport 2 door in nice condition if anyone has one for sale. If so, please reply to this thread