Junkyard Find: 1985 Buick Skylark Limited Sedan

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Remember the misery of the Chevy Citation, which had such outstandingly bad build quality and horrifying public reliability problems that the damage to Chevrolet’s image took decades to repair? Only the staggeringly nasty Pontiac Phoenix (a Pontiac-badged Citation sibling) might have been worse; meanwhile, the Buick Division leaped on board the oil-leaking, prematurely corroding, Iron Duke-powered X-Body bandwagon, and fired a full spread of torpedoes into the once-beloved Skylark name.

Not many of these best-forgotten automobiles remain uncrushed, but I was able to spot this ’85 sedan in a Northern California wrecking yard last winter.

If America tried Roger Smith for treason for allowing this car to help befoul the reputation of what was once the most respected American icons in the world, the Iron Duke engine might have been Exhibit A. It was a noisy, rough-running, primitive, 2.5-liter pushrod four-banger. The Iron Duke managed to make the optional 2.8-liter V6 seem sophisticated. It wasn’t.

The interior is a cacophony of low-bidder velour, greasy offgassing plastic, and some of the phoniest-looking “wood” ever ineptly glued into a car by angry drunks. The base price of this car was $8,283, which is just about exactly half the price of a then-new 1985 BMW 318i. However, a simple-but-well-built 1985 Mazda 626 could be had for $8,295, while the comfy 1985 Ford LTD sold for just $8,874 with its four-cylinder “Pinto” engine.

Mercifully, 1985 was the last year for the X-Body Skylark; after that, the Skylark name went on the N-Body, where it stayed long enough to be a sibling to the revived Chevy Malibu in the late 1990s.

“We couldn’t get all the reasons people like Skylark into this commercial, but we sure got them into the car.”

Even when the X-Body Skylark was new and exciting, Buick had to dole out big cash bonuses to get these off dealer lots.

[Images: © 2016 Murilee Martin/The Truth About Cars]






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Superdessucke Superdessucke on Apr 14, 2016

    I think the rep these have brings out certain, shall we say, embellishments in stories about these vehicles 25+ years after the fact. My Citation was an Iron Duke 4-door hatchback. It was oddly optioned with automatic transmission, cruise control and power door locks. No AC or anything else. I owned it about 2 years and it never broke down or did anything out of the ordinary. It was actually pretty quick, was easy to park in the huge city where I lived back then, and could haul a ton of stuff. I wasn't in love with it, and never missed it, but it did its job for me over that two year period in the early 1990s. A faithful commuter car in short. People now make them sound like the anti-Christ of cars. Maybe there were some bad ones out there, but mine sure wasn't one of them.

    • See 2 previous
    • Rise2it Rise2it on Apr 18, 2016

      My Citation had the same engine...bought it used while in College, maybe 50K on it..one owner, older adult. After one week, lost the clutch...2 days later, lost 3rd gear in the manual tranny. Multiple water pumps (which, of course, required radiator removal, etc), an alternator, etc, etc. About a month later, the hood flew open and dented in the top of the car (so much for the 2 step hood safety feature)...ripped loose the panel around the wipers, but amazingly didn't crack the windshield. Hood now tied down with a boot string, but the faster you drove the higher the hood would rise. By the time you got to 50 MPH, you were Buck Rogers flying into space. Then it got finicky and started stalling out. Had a friend take me back to it after it stranded me on evening, opened the hatch, took out the jack, beat the windows out of it, and called the junkyard. $50 and thank you. Oh, and I still owed money on it, so I got to spend the next year paying it off. No real troubles from anything else I EVER owned...and I SWEAR this story was NOT embellished :-)

  • Laserwizard Laserwizard on Apr 14, 2016

    Say what you will GM during this era of going front drive and ruining everything that they touched in the process, but that psuedo-velour material used for the seats was almost as durable as cockroaches. If you didn't rip the fabric, it wore well and would outlast the vehicle. It might fade (like Honduh and Toyoduh and Ford materials from that era), but it was the most durable part of the vehicle. I'm surprised that some bean counter didn't come back and ask management to make the fabric less durable: "Why are we putting in a material that will last 20 years when the car will only last five?"

  • Jpolicke In a communist dictatorship, there isn't much export activity that the government isn't aware of. That being the case, if the PRC wanted to, they could cut the flow of fentanyl down to a trickle. Since that isn't happening, I therefore assume Xi Jinping doesn't want it cut. China needs to feel the consequences for knowingly poisoning other countries' citizens.
  • El scotto Oh, ye nattering nabobs of negativism! Think of countries like restaurants. Our neighbors to the north and south are almost as good and the service is fantastic. They're awfully close to being as good as the US. Oh the Europeans are interesting and quaint but you really only go there a few times a year. Gents, the US is simply the hottest restaurant in town. Have to stand in line to get in? Of course. Can you hand out bribes to get in quicker? Of course. Suppliers and employees? Only the best on a constant basis.Did I mention there is a dress code? We strictly enforce it. Don't like it? Suck it.
  • 1995 SC At least you can still get one. There isn't much for Ford folks to be happy about nowadays, but the existence of the Mustang and the fact that the lessons from back in the 90s when Ford tried to kill it and replace it with the then flavor of the day seem to have been learned (the only lessons they seem to remember) are a win not only for Ford folks but for car people in general. One day my Super Coupe will pop its headgaskets (I know it will...I read it on the Internet). I hope I will still be physically up to dropping the supercharged Terminator Cobra motor into it. in all seriousness, The Mustang is a.win for car guys.
  • Lorenzo Heh. The major powers, military or economic, set up these regulators for the smaller countries - the big guys do what they want, and always have. Are the Chinese that unaware?
  • Lorenzo The original 4-Runner, by its very name, promised something different in the future. What happened?
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