Junkyard Find: 1984 Chevy Citation II 5-Door Hatchback
Ah, the General Motors X-body cars! Always good for some anecdotes from readers about rust-through on two-year-old cars, amazing quantities of warranty repairs, and Stuka-dive-style depreciation graphs. After the Citation, the Chevy Corsica seemed like a fine automobile.
So far in this series, we’ve seen this ’80 Skylark, this ’81 Citation, this ’81 Citation, this frighteningly rusty ’81 Citation, this ’82 Citation, this ’82 Citation, this ’83 Citation, and this ’84 Omega, and (because I just can’t resist shooting these things when I see them, no doubt because I believe this ’84 X-body Pontiac to be rivaled only by this 1986 Plymouth Reliant wagon for the dubious prize of Worst Car I’ve Ever Driven), this late-production ’84 Citation II.
The Citation II name was part of The General’s attempt to show that the reliability problems that plagued the 1980-83 Citations were over, forever. Car shoppers were skeptical, and 1985 was the final year for the Citation.
A vertically-oriented cassette deck. It’s not quite a telescreen, but as a member of the Class of 1984, I belonged to the future and understood that vertical orientation was the only way to play my mix tapes.
This is the kind of rust you get in California, where I shot this car. Paint flakes off in the harsh sun, rainwater gets under the trim (back when it used to rain in California), and this happens.
Remember the signature blue AlmostVelour™ of 1980s GM cars? Turns out it survives pretty well.
“After making so many engineering refinements, we made one more change: the name!”
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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CC ect ! . I was at Valley Mercedes Thursday evening and the same old Oldsmobile of this platform was still sitting there all dusty with it's original paint... Being a four door I imagine it's worthless . -Nate
CC effect ! . I was at Valley Mercedes Thursday evening and the same old Oldsmobile of this platform was still sitting there all dusty with it's original paint... Being a four door I imagine it's worthless . Wait ~ it has a hatchback so it's a five door ? . -Nate