1980 Buick Skylark, similar to mine but different color
Disclaimer: Do not read this article if you are depressed, sad, melancholy, or despondent – it will only make your condition worse. It can also elicit a chuckle at how much bad luck one person can have.
1979 Subaru Wagon from internet
In 1980 I was working and living in upstate New York at Plattsburgh AFB, located near Lake Placid and about thirty miles from the Canadian border. A gorgeous area, albeit quite cold and with a significant amount of snow. When I arrived I had bought a new 1979 Subaru 4WD Wagon – which along with the AMC Eagle Wagon, were familiar sights on those wintry roads.
The Subaru was a great car for that area – it would just scamper right through the snow. However it had two major liabilities; first, it was small – very small. To drive it I had to scrunch up, with knees at the same level as my elbows. Second, the four-speed manual needed a fifth gear. I made trips back to Ohio every six months or so and at 65 mph on the expressway the little 1.6 litre flat four was spinning over 3K rpm.
So I decided to look for something larger, and perhaps a little sportier, but still good in the snow. GM’s X-Cars had just been introduced and were getting strong, positive reviews. They were Compact in size, but with the interior room of an Intermediate, with the choice of a thrifty four cylinder or a more powerful new 60 degree V6 motor, and they were front-wheel drive. Motor Trend selected the Chevy Citation as its 1980 Car of the Year (a choice that they have yet to live down).
I looked at several GM brands but the Buick dealer had a very nice Skylark two-door coupe, in black, with a black and white houndstooth interior. It also had the V6 and was a 4-speed manual. I took it for a spin and was impressed. The interior room was indeed as large as a typical intermediate. The V6 was smooth and had a “revvy” nature, very similar to a Chevy small-block. Handling was better than most domestic competitors. The only thing I didn’t quite like was the cable shifter – it had an artificial and somewhat cheap feel to it.
But the overall initial impression was good – so after a little dealing, I left the Subaru and drove the Skylark off the lot.
And so the nightmare began…
The first week went by with little issue – but giving it a good wax one day I noticed quite a bit of orange peel in the paint. I took some polish to it but it didn’t improve much. Over the course of ownership, I never could buff the orange peel out – a symbol of GM’s “cheap” approach to this car.
Then several weeks later I noticed that the rear wheels would lock up prematurely when braking. With our first dusting of snow, I could feel the rear end stepping out – not good. I took it back to the dealer and met for the first time the Service Manager – Sherman. “Sherm” (I got to know him quite well) said he’d look it over and after a day or so, he called and said they had adjusted the rear brakes. He also said, “don’t expect a whole lot of improvement – they all do that”. And indeed, there was a little improvement but I still had to carefully modulate the brakes, especially when the roads were slick.
Several weeks later, the clutch pedal started acting up – making a loud ratcheting sound when depressed and released. I went back to see Sherm and he kept the car for a couple days, then called and said they had replaced the clutch pedal.
The clutch pedal was now fine but about a month later the transmission started having issues – first, shifting became much harder. Then, it would jump out of gear with a loud “BAM”. Finally, as I was heading to the dealer it slipped out of gear and just locked up – the gear lever was frozen and wouldn’t move at all.
A tow to the dealer and Sherm said; “I think your transmission is shot.” We’ll have to order a new one and it will take at least a week, maybe ten days for us to replace it. I really needed a car for work – this was before “courtesy cars”, so I asked the Sales Manager if he had something he could loan me. He thought for awhile, then pointed at a rusted 1972 Ford Country Squire – with a broken back window – “How about that?” As they say, beggars can’t be choosers…
After about ten cold and drafty days, Sherm called and said the car was ready. As suspected, the transmission had been defective.
Back on the road again – well, at least for three months. Then I started to smell gas one night after a fairly long drive. Popping the hood, I noticed gas leaking from the base of the carburetor. Geez… Call the tow truck and back to the dealer it went. Sherm had it for a couple days and then said to me; “I’m not really supposed to tell you this but your carburetor wasn’t torqued to specs at the factory – we replaced the gasket and tightened it to specs – it’s fine now.”
But that was it for me – I’d had enough of that car trying to kill me. I traded it in after just six months – the shortest period I’ve ever owned a car.
Fortunately our founder Paul had much better luck with a similar Skylark during his radio station days. I’m glad he managed to skip the pain and aggravation.
Previously I posted an article on my 1969 Olds Delta 88 – that car had over 100K miles on it and the only thing I replaced was the water pump – and even with all those miles it still felt rock solid and well made. Fast forward a decade and this is what mighty GM had become.
So, I hope this tawdry tale didn’t depress anyone over their breakfast. Just smile – after forty years, I can chuckle a little about it now too…
If it is any consolation, yours is one of millions of similar stories that resulted in GM going from over 50% market share to about 16.5% market share in our lifetimes. Why do they still have a market? The government buys lots of vehicles and they say there’s one born every second.
There’s a 2016 Malibu with expired inspection and tags sitting on my friend’s lot because of catastrophic vacuum pump failure. The vacuum pumps are back ordered and all indications are that it will need an engine once the pump is replaced, because the pump failed in such a way that it sent shrapnel into the oil passages of the head. Fortunately, GM had just shortened their powertrain warranty to allow for the disposable nature of small displacement turbocharged engines in big cars.
In the experience of my friends, the Buick Skylark was the least treacherous of the X-cars, but I didn’t know anyone who had one with a 4-speed. I remember how shocked I was when the first two X11 owners I talked to detested their cars, cars that the magazines generally made sound like BMW 320i-slayers.
In laws bought an 80 Skylark with the famous iron duke engine with a 4 speed.
It looked great in emerald green, and the interior looked nice, felt like crap. No real power, and shifting that think was horrendous. After two years of little use, they had to replace the passenger fender as it rotted out in the bottom. Traded in after 4 years for a ford Tempo… another terrible car, which they then moved in one year with to florida. Got divorced after that, so only know that they always bought inexpensive econoboxes.
Actually, I expected your experience to be far worse than that……it was definitely best that you got rid of it after a half a year. I can only imagine how the next owner(s) felt in trying to make sense of the poor workmanship.
Naturally, the first pop-up ad I got on this article was for a Buick Encore. “Give Buick a try! We can’t _still_ be that bad, right?”
Well, the Encore is an Opel Mokka made in Korea.
Subaru must like gearing their cars high. I had a 2012 Impreza with a 5-speed, and it too ran at about 3000 rpm at 70 mph as I recall.
Just FYI, but high rpm at a given road speed is low gearing, not high. The gear ratio is numerically a higher number, but nevertheless it is low gearing: low speed for a given engine rpm.
That doesn’t strike me as unusually LOW (not high, as noted elsewhere) gearing for a four-banger of the era. My ’87 Jetta GLI turned about 3500 rpm at 70 mph, and that was with a 5-speed.
Tragedy time = comedy.
At least you had a nice service manager.
Seeing one of those Subarus makes me.shudder.
My mother had one in 1977 when I was 6.
She drove a stick very very jerkiily and I was always carsick in it. When it wasn’t breaking down that is. Then I got the joy of riding on the rubber seats of Grandpa’s Torino.
Then she married her cocaine dealer but I will end it there…😬
Supposed to be tragedy PLUS time equals comedy.
I know the plus sign was there. I saw it.
Somehow it got lost in the edit.
Makes me sound like a psycho without it.
What? Just when it was getting good!
I assume that today the dealer would have to buy it back under the lemon law.
You lived the same GM trajectory that I did. From cars that were the Toyotas of the 1960s to cars that 1975-era Chrysler would have been embarrassed about by the early 80s.
I think my mother probably dodged a bullet when she bought a Plymouth Horizon not long after the X cars came out. The Horizon had an issue or two here or there, but nothing like what you experienced.
’89-95 I moolighted as a mechanic at a friends used car lot. These front drive GM products were by far the most problematic machines. I can still change a steering rack blind folded. But they were dirt cheap to buy at auction. If I never see another one it will be too soon. Just awful cars.
I have been anxiously awaiting this tale of woe and was not disappointed.
@ CJinSD, as the 80s wore on gm quality did dramatically improve but unevenly. The a cars were pretty good by the mid 80s but the j cars still overheated. The g and b bodies were the best and they stopped using those awful thm200 transmissions. The c and h bodies had a horrible first couple of years then went on to be some of the best cars gm ever made.
But gm definitely seems to have slipped in quality and there’s no way I’d recommend one to anyone nowadays. Hyundai/kia learnt their quality lesson and even audi and vw have significantly improved. A friend has a 2013 cruze bought new and babied. Transmission went out at 40k and it has a mysterious coolant leak. If it’s my money, I’ll go for a corolla or civic or elantra well before a gm product. They just haven’t learnt.
Perhaps, but I worked at an Oldsmobile dealership in 1989 and the last of the G-body Cutlass Supremes were legendary for the horrific condition they arrived at the dealer in. The service department had to introduced any number of new pre-delivery inspections to compensate for the indifference of the people building the ’85-’88 G-body cars. Every new inspection reflected another customer who had something fall off because it had never been fully attached or seize up because it was shipped without lubricant. Most Oldsmobiles didn’t seem to have that bad quality, since they shared a location with our Saab franchise, but the G-bodies were a running gag with the mechanics.
Even Motorweek noted several quality issues with an ’84 Cutlass Supreme:
From what I was told, they only got worse as time went by. Watching that review, I was thinking that 22 MPG with a V8 sounded very good, but then they said it took 13 seconds to hit 60 MPH and I wondered why so many people bought them again.
Can’t speak to the G-bodies, but the A -bodies, especially the Buick Century and Olds Cierra by the early 90’s were some of the highest rated JD Power vehicles being produced….Interesting sas they were based on the x cars
JD Power was dominated by Lexus, Acura, Honda and Toyota in the ’90s. I rented an A-body Century in 1996, which I picked up right off the truck. I got to finish assembly, such was its slap-dash treatment by the factory. It then ran reliably, but it bounced after it came to a stop just like the shocks had been assembled without oil.
People in the 80’s were not willing to pay for quality domestic cars, period ! END OF STORY.
You get what you pay for.
Vehicles now from GM and Ford are 2000% better quality than the 80s.
Two thousand percent better? Seriously? GM is still dealing with several recalls on their SUVs and truck products. Don’t forget that their 3.6 V6 engines have one of the worst reliability records in existence. When they finally eat their own timing chains, your entire engine is history.
This is also the same company that made millions of cars with defective ignition switches, a defect that killed eighty people! All due to a company that prioritized profits over human lives just to save thirty cents on an ignition switch over a much safer and slightly more expensive design. Imagine that. For less than the cost of a twelve ounce soda, GM prioritized their bottom line over the lives of their customers.
Ford has horrific quality today. You’re only hurting yourself by not buying a Toyota. GM is a Chinese company, so I wouldn’t buy from them for reasons of social responsibility. Also, vacuum pumps.
Funny, but last night I watched an old Motorweek episode of a 1984 Cutlass Supreme. The car had stuff falling off it, missing parts and loose, or missing, fasteners.
It’s no wonder you’ve had a string of Toyotas since (well, except for the current car). You’re quite a tall guy, I can’t even imagine you in the Subaru driving through the snow all hunched over…:-) It’s been said many times before but it’s still mind-boggling how a company can foist such a pile of crap on so many customers. And many of them keep coming back!
Thanks Jim – yes, the Subaru was quite the confined experience but at least it always got me to where I needed to go…:-)
You’re right – it is amazing how many keep coming back. I’m also surprised that no matter who the CEO is, or whether they face bankruptcy and “re-organize”, not much seems to change…
Your experiences with your 1980 Skylark were unfortunately similar to mine. I bought it in large part to the reviews I read in the auto rags that were breathlessly screaming about how wonderful they were. I bit and bought one; it was absolutely the worst car I have ever owned. Between the recalls and all the breakdowns it was a totally exasperating experience, I have never purchased another GM car since then.
IIRC Consumer Reports (and other rags) gave the 1982 Pontiac 6000 an initial rave review and a friend rushed right out to buy one. That also did not go well and she’s never bought another GM car to this day…
I haven’t owned a GM car since my Vega, which sounds like it was better than this Buick. But by the mid-90’s, it seemed like older X cars and of course newer A bodies were everywhere on the roads, so either they got better or there were a lot of lucky people that got “good ones”.
That seems like a phantom memory. The A body was dead after 1990 except for Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Bub buying Cieras and Centurys. The last year for the X body was 1985.
Did you read his comment? Here’s what he said:
But by the mid-90’s, it seemed like older X cars and of course newer A bodies were everywhere on the roads
Why exactly would you characterize that as a phantom memory? It quite accurately describes reality at the time.
A terrific – and, yes – depressing Saturday morning read. May I assume the depreciation curve, even after only six months of ownership, affected your trade-in value? Demand was probably still high for these cars within the first, 18-month model year. That’s why I’m wondering.
Thanks Joseph – yes, the bloom was still on the rose when I traded it in, so luckily I didn’t take too big a hit. I probably would have still traded it in even if I didn’t get much in trade, just to get rid of it and relieve the frustration….:-)
Back in the day, A friend bought a brand-new ’74 Subaru DL sedan. I don’t remember it being that cramped, except for the time we took it on a trip, and I tried to sleep across the back seat. But we weren’t as tall as Lurch, the butler from the ‘Adams Family’. Eventually though, it rusted with a vengeance!
The Vega was the worst, but I hated working on the X-cars much more.
I’m really wanting to know what replaced yours.
Happy Motoring, Mark
This is interesting. I remember GM having so much trouble around this time. I own a 1978 Buick Electra. I purchased it from the original owner a very long time ago. I never had a day of trouble with it.. It currently has 294,000 miles and runs perfectly fine to this day. Perhaps my car is the anomaly more so than the 80 Skylark or other models?
Your Electra was a tried and true GM big car, they didn’t have trouble in that segment until they started cutting corners on engines and transmissions and coming up with half baked ideas like V8-6-4 and Oldsmobile Diesels, but that happened in the 80s. The Skylark was all new, and well out of GMs engineering comfort zone in almost every department.
The Skylarks problems don’t translate to the whole lineup having them as well, but unlike the Vega where “it may be a dud, but ehh, it’s an entry level car for kids anyway, they’ll move up to a Malibu when it breaks down“, as the big three treated the subcompact segment at the time… The Skylark and the X body platform were poised to become the defacto segment of the post-energy crisis 80s, having these oh so common stories circulate did nothing for buyer confidence, let alone repeat business as Buick et al’s lineups morphed to X body derivatives between 80-86.
Matt’s right (again). Of all the GM Deadly Sins, the X-body, while maybe not the worst, is easily in the top 5 (maybe the top 3), and the reason is, of all the radical or revolutionary cars GM introduced, the X-body was the first to be aimed squarely at the mainstream market. Previous ‘ground-up’ cars like the Corvair or Vega were considered second cars to a traditional, reliable family car like a full-size or even intermediate. The X-body was intended as a family’s main transportation vehicle, so when their mechanical ills reared their ugly heads, it was much more of an event.
And it’s true that the Skylark faired better than other division X-bodies, simply because most of them came with the automatic. When the X-body’s engine flopped around on its rubber mounts, it wasn’t nearly as noticable. Not so much with the manual. I’ve often told the story how C&D’s X-11 Citation would pop out of fourth gear when decelerating, only to be told by GM’s press guy that it was a pre-production model and cars that made it to the dealers wouldn’t do it. Well, not long after, I test drove a 4-speed X-11 at a dealer and, sure enough, it would pop out of fourth gear when slowing down. I had to actually hold the lever down to keep it from doing it. Needless to say, I passed on the X-body. A real shame because, on paper, it could have been a game-changer for GM. I guess it was, just not in the good way most expected.
Your 1978 B Body was the pinnacle of sled-dom. GM had the formula all worked out until 1980. Things like axles and brakes were lightened. The Buick plants tended to have better quality.
The real plummet for GM was not started by the X Cars but they sure mad it go faster.
awesome car….The nice thing about the 77-79 Electra is that they all came with V8’s…Most likely the Buick 350 or the Olds 403….Those engines only came with the THM 350 transmission, not the THM 200 found in the B body V6 or smaller V8 models….I grew up with a 78 Buick Estate Wagon with the 403…great car….Unbelievably only 185 hp bit a whopping 320 Lb-ft of torque
My 78 does have the 403. I just took it out yesterday, in fact. While it wouldn’t win any races, it most definitely peels tire (I know because I did just to see if it would), and it can yank tree stumps out of the ground all day. And yet it’s so smooth and quiet.
GM, Ford, and Chrysler have always only been good at RWD full size cars and pickup trucks, and it will always be that way.
Yeah, that may be the case but that is how ALL cars should STILL BE.. Big V8 and RWD only.
Except for the 66-78 Toronado and Eldorado. Those were GM’s first and best efforts in FWD technology.
Yahoo! What fun. This post puts me in mind of this GM movie.
(Point of clarification: you say the Subaru was geared high (…) at 65 mph the little 1.6 litre flat four was spinning over 3K rpm. The four speed manual transmission really needed a fifth gear. So the car was geared low; you wanted a 5th, higher gear to be able to shift into.)
Sounds like the least exasperating period of your six months of ownership was the 10 days when the dealership let you the beat-up Country Squire.
I remember hearing peoples’ complaints about having owned early X-cars, but this is simply incredible.
That GM could make the manual transmission the troublesome choice shows how undercooked the X body program was. The braking issue was a clear “just use the proportioning valve from a LeSabre for testing purposes, we’ll bias it for FWD after we sort the struts and stuff… and that day never came.
I drove quite a few of the family’s Valiants since I had my driver’s license. I learned to handle quite a few Chrysler full sized boats like a ’73 Dodge Royal Monaco wagon, a 1970 Chrysler New Yorker, and a 1975 Spirit of America Chevrolet Impala coupe.
Then I was given a 1982 Citation.
FWD was incredible. I remember the first left turn I took on an icy intersection on Alameda in Lakewood Colorado. It was amazing. No slipping, no sliding the rear, no need to goose the accelerator just so. It was as if the ice and snow was not there!
That, and the amazing room in the Citation 4-door hatch I had were the only bright spots I had in the year after I was given the new Citation by my company.
So your initial thoughts about getting the Skylark were correct. The X-cars were the first cars I drove that had FWD and that roomy feeling. I wish it was a good car, but it was an X-car, and they were very bad cars. Deadly Sin indeed!
1982 Citation. **1982**.
The third model year – third-and-a-half since it was an early calendar 1979 launch. That really should’ve been plenty of time to work the bugs out.
GM management had a real bad habit of sending out half-baked, first-year models and letting their customers be beta testers to work out the bugs. With earlier vehicles, the incremental problems weren’t really bad enough to turn off GM loyalists (at least not permanently). But the X-body was so new that the engineering issues of drivetrain configuration really killed what should have been a good car, maybe even a game-charger. The X-body might even be considered the turning point when GM ceased being the market leader and, instead, became a follower.
FWIW, the car that was essentially the X-body’s follow-up, the A-body (Celebrity), was generally okay (well, by GM standards, anyway). Unfortunately, by then, the damage had been done.
I remember upon first sight of Mom’s new ‘85 Cavalier the vast amount of “orange peel” on the lower portions of the body. Not impressed. If your Skylark was similar, I’ll bet it was the same thing we discovered about 5 years on; that texture was because GM sprayed a “special” polymer on the lower body to prevent corrosion prior to final paint. I’ll give credit to GM here, it worked. The car rusted from the door handles down over time…
That is probably correct, and that “primer” was also resilient to reduce chipping from rock impacts.
I am eternally thankful that I was not in the market to purchase a new car when GM sprang the X cars on the world. All, or at least all I remember, of the car magazines fell all over themselves singing the praises of the cars that were going to lead GM out of their malaise and back to prosperity. Of course it only took a few months to learn that the X cars were sloppily assembled which resulted in their owners becoming extremely dissatisfied with the frequent trips to the service department. Several people I knew purchased X cars and I don’t think any of them stayed more than a year with the initial owners. One of the women I worked with bought a Pontiac Phoenix and had the entire shift linkage come apart within the first week she drove it. Things went downhill from there as problem after problem reared its ugly head. As it happened the woman’s uncle was an attorney and, after he hinted that a law suit was imminent, the dealer bought the car back from her for what she had paid for it, plus the value of the car she had traded in. The last time I saw Tracy she was on her 11th or 12th Honda, counting the ones her husband and children had purchased. I didn’t ask but I’m certain the Phoenix was the last GM vehicle she purchased.
Same here. One of my aunts had a similar experience with an ’80 Skylark which put her off both GM and FWD compacts for life.
Myself, I had no problems at all with my (Hot Wheels) Citation X-11 and (Majorette) Olds Omega other than the fact that even then I noticed their windshield shapes weren’t as identical as they should’ve been…but as an adult modeler/collector I’ve seen worse from two castings from the same company.
The Majorette looks like it was modeled from pictures because some of the angles are odd, like the very flat sides. I do like the gold-wheeled HW Citation though.The Johnny Lightning Citation is the most accurate. (fellow collector here)
I’m just happy someone made an Omega or any X-car at all.
GM was in no malaise when the xcar was introduced….Quite the contrary, the B and C body cars were the best full size cars in the industry, not only hailed by the media but succesful with the public…The same could be said of the A bodies…Even with the ugly aero Buick Century and Olds Cutlass, they were a great success. These were followed by the E body Riviera, Toranado and Eldorado. I contend that the x car was the start of the malaise. Technically fascinating with horrible execution….The beginning of the long slide of GM
I don’t worry about becoming more depressed, sad, melancholy, or despondent when reading about GM X-cars because in our family, we had one!
Schadenfreude, then?
We had an ’86 A-body that was decently made and served us for almost 8 years. Had Jim kept that Subaru buzzing about a couple years longer, he could have gotten a Buick Century that might have been a better car (Hindsight is for a**holes, of course). Good thing you got rid of that Skylark after only 6 months, Brophy-san. Who knows how many other faults it had in store for you?
I’m glad you had such good luck with yours. Seems like with some GM cars, it really is the luck of the draw…
By the early 90’s the Buick Century and Olds Cierra A cars had some of the highest JD Power scores…no luck. By then GM was building a reliable car
I recall in the mid-’80s seeing a hair-raising news magazine indictment of the X-cars as deathtraps. The phrase “slip-fit sandwich of parts” featured heavily, I think because that phrase was used in a products-liability lawsuit in reference to the steering and/or suspension. Pretty sure it was Time or Newsweek or something like that. When I search “slip-fit sandwich of parts” all I get is some people using it in re the X-cars, so I guess I didn’t make up the phrase, but I can’t find the original article.
Recommended 1980 Skylark 4 door v6 to my then-new father in law. Fuel leaks, brake problems, paint pealing. The final straw was when he opened the right rear door and it fell off…300 miles from home. Finished the trip with the door in the trunk. Seems there was a batch of improper welds on the hinges. He eventually forgave me.
Gone after 6 months?
You missed out on “Morning Sickness”; where the steering rack wears prematurely where the seals ride on the aluminum. When cold, fluid bypasses the seals, no power assist. Then at some point, the thing warms-up enough that the seals actually seal, and Poof! the power assist comes back.
You missed out on the differential exploding; or at least the output shafts getting so wobbly that the fluid leaks out. The aftermarket came out with “supports” that held the output in place so the seals didn’t get wiped.
And your brake problems were due to GM cheapness; and the Federal regulations requiring the park brake to actually hold a car in place when applied by a Non-Hercules-sort of person. GM used a piss-poor rear brake design; then when they tried to meet the park-brake regulations, they failed. Their quickie fix was to use more-aggressive rear shoe lining material, which made the park brake work better. The more-aggressive linings caused brake lock-up in normal use. There was a family that bought cars from the dealership I worked at, that sued GM over the rear brakes, and according to The Story at the dealership, got over a million bucks out of the deal. It may be that one of the family was killed when the Citation went out-of-control.
At least you didn’t have the Iron Duke; possibly the worst engine to ever come out of GM during my lifetime.
Yes, I think my decision to “cut and run” saved me from even more frustration and pain…:-) I do feel sorry for whoever bought it.
My dad had a 1980 Citation as a loaner when his ‘77 Century was in the shop for a few weeks after an accident. He took my sister and I for a ride in it and even let me drive it on a side road (this was before I got my license). Nothing scary happened in the time he had it, and he quite liked the way it drove and handled but after reading the horror stories of the X-body cars it’s a good thing we never bought one.
I worked with a guy who bought one of the original Olds X bodies. It was such a nightmare that he bought nothing but Camrys after that. Tragic. Just tragic. Camrys. So sad.
In 1981 I was not expecting a trouble-free car. I was expecting a new car that wouldn’t have an engine that twisted and shook out of it’s mounts, sound like gravel was being crushed in the pistons, and shut itself down after two hours of driving.
I traded in a nice Fairmont and thought the Citation would be as good. I never imagined blasting off all the grille chrome with its first car wash. Or having the new car towed across Colorado from one Chevy dealer to another when it broke down regularly.
My expectations were very modest – it was my first new car and given to me and I was excited and very happy for the first five trouble free days. The Citation has only SEVEN miles on it when it was given to me!
After a year of horrors, I abandoned it in the company parking lot for the loaner car-an Escort, which was 100% better.
My boss was miffed at me over the Citation, so she took it to meet me at Keystone Resort for a meeting. She never made it. When she finally arrived, she immediately apologized for not believing me.
The entire fleet of Citations our company bought were returned due to their unreliability. 32 of them. It was a scandal. Chevrolet lost their business with us.
Deadly sin?
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Well, a decade later into the 90s, and GM still lived up to its reputation of inferior construction quality and engineering. My ’97 Grand Prix GT supercharged that I bought new spent lots of time at the dealer for warranty fixes. All before 45,000 miles I had the A/C compressor fail, water pump failure, belt tensioner fractured and busted off, the made in China Delco alternator burnt out, EGR sensor fail, airbag sensor fail, had to replace the headlight housings twice due to the lenses popping off, had to have the entire ventalitation fan and rheostat replaced due to it shorting out, water leaks from improperly installed seal in the firewall, had to have the entire steering rack and pump replaced, and ignition failure due to a bad ignition switch that shorted at 65,000 miles. I got rid of the car at 90,000 when the head gasket blew. After that delemma I got myself a 2004 Honda Accord coupe that never gave me a single problem for 211,000 miles I had the car. It’s no wonder why GM is on its deathbed now. Who’d remotely consider buying their junk? If not for the Chinese market Cadillac and Buick would be loooooong gone by now. PS the only other car in my immediate family that was a miserable load of doo doo was my dad’s ’86 Audi 5000. That junk Audi made my Grand Prix seem well made!
One time Vega and Citation owner here, the Citation was much worse that the Vega, but they weren’t the only GM turds in my stable. I feel your pain…
In 1980 I was living just South of Burlington Vt , across Lake Champlain from Plattsburgh (OK, maybe not exactly, the ferry went into Port Kent as I recall). That year I graduated from University of Vermont and got my first (professional) job in Massachusetts where I ended up moving mid-year (almost exactly 40 years ago this month).
At that same time my Dad got his only “mid-life crisis” car which I guess was fairly tame (a manual 1980 Dodge Omni 024…his last manual transmission car) giving his 1976 Subaru DL automatic to my Sister (my twin, also graduated from University of Vermont that year…my Mother graduated from Trinity College (now defunct) also in 1980 so we had a 3 person graduation celebration that year. My Uncle came up in his 1980 Oldsmobile Omega (sibling to the Skylark). I think his was the 6 cylinder automatic, don’t think it was a good car, but he had it a bit longer, I think he kept it until he got his 1984 Audi 4000, which I think he told me was one of his favorite cars…so I think his worst car was immediately followed by his best car.
As for my Dad, the year my Uncle got the Fox (1984) my Dad ended up buying his worst car, a 1984 Pontiac Sunbird…later given to another sister (my youngest, since deceased), which went through 2 engines in less than 80k miles (and had lots of other problems, including needing a new timing belt with less than 1000 miles on the car.
As for the “mid-life crisis” car, he traded it for a 1986 Dodge 600…having moved to Central Texas in the meantime, the Omni lacked air-conditioning, though he did keep it for 4 years after moving south, eventually gave in and decided he both needed A/C and a more “family” oriented car.
Is it me or at 1:25 in the video does the front passenger door and front right fender look like 2 different shades of brown?
I had to go to Google to find out what “Trfwy” meant. Is “Trafficway” a Missouri thing? I never heard that term before.
Not all X-car stories have a bad ending.
My brother-in-law asked my advice on whether a 1979 Pontiac Phoenix with a 4 speed would be a good choice for dealing with his upstate NY winters. I had been a Ford mechanic. At that point, I had never driven or worked on an X-car. I did some reading and found nothing but positive X-car reviews. I gave his Pontiac choice a thumbs up.
He never asked for my advice again.
If your’s is a 1979 model then it has to be a RWD (Nova body) model, the 1975/79 X body cars were decent cars.
I didn’t write that very well. He was asking my advice right before Christmas in 1979 when the X-cars had been newly introduced. I never saw the car he bought, but you’re quite right in that it would have been a 1980 model.
What is the red sedan in the “back brakes locking up under low traction”? An A-body?
Along with many of the commenters, I was not in the market when these had a good reputaiton, and I’m grateful for that, because the 5-door would have tempted me.
So glad I missed all the fun and excitement of American cars in the 80s and 90s. The last new American car I had use of was a 1976 Chevrolet Nova six cylinder as a company car up to 1977. Then used sparingly my 68 Cougar and a 74 Audi 100LS to the beginning of 1980 going back and forth to UC Berkeley. Bought a new 1980 Civic Wagon and then the 86 Mazda 626 which lasted till 2006. The next American car was the 2004 Focus ZTS bought for the day the Mazda needed to be retired and still in use today. Come to think of it I have only bought one “brand new” American car in my entire lifetime.
Only GM could manage to screw up timing chains. Probably the most reliable way to turn a camshaft and they muck it up. My brother-in-law bought an Olds Omega, only car I ever saw that had a front sway bar rust away enough to fail. Iron Duke, a boat anchor from day one. You would assume that GM had purchased competitors products and disassembled them to see what the competition was doing. Apparently they mis-read the memo to build a better product than the competition. Also I wouldn’t have put much stock in car magazine reviews as we know who was paying for the ads in the magazines. In fact I would consider most articles as just product placement ads. The lame a** problems that GM keeps coming up with is the beancounter constantly beating the cost the cost drum, damn the quality, full speed ahead!
From reading posts on here over the years, it seems as though quality in American cars comes and goes in cycles rather than companies learning their lesson and being committed to quality from that point on. I’ve noticed this with Ford and Chrysler, not sure whether GM has taken the quality message to heart yet. I’m guessing that’s according to whether it’s engineers or accountants in management calling the shots.
I’d hazard a guess the accountants don’t drive their company’s products…
My sister-in-law purchased one new, and loaded. It was a real pain in the you-know-what to start.
Some years ago I had car that was just about that troublesome, but it was 22 years old, so it had some excuse. This is far enough in the past that your post doesn’t depress me.
So were most problems due to poor engineering or poor manufacturing or poor assembly?