Car Stuff: Random Sighting #19

When I look back at this series, it's surprising to me how many of the cars I've found just by walking around my neighborhood and paying attention. I didn't think there were many interesting older cars around until I started looking for them.

Today's car is one that I had noticed long before I started taking photos of them, but didn't have the opportunity to photograph until I encountered it during a random walk. It's a Buick Skylark, one of the compacts designated X-bodies by General Motors that arrived for 1980 to replace the aging Chevrolet Nova and its badge-engineered cousins (Pontiac Phoenix, Oldsmobile Omega, and Skylark).

The new vehicles were front-wheel-drive, a first for GM other than the luxury Eldorado and Toronado of the 1960s. This car was 19" shorter in length than the car it replaced, but had better interior room, quite a significant accomplishment at the time for a company in the process of relearning how to design and make cars.

The X-cars were built and sold from 1980-85, and while initially successful, they were plagued with problems, though the Skylark managed to keep on selling in decent enough volume throughout its six-year production run, suggesting that they somehow managed to have fewer problems than the other X-bodies (the Chevy Citation was the worst). That might help explain how this one survived. The car's exterior styling changed very little over six model years; I can tell you from the grille that this is at least an '82, while the "Custom" badges on the rear fenders suggest that it's either an '84 or '85.

I didn't notice until I was preparing these photos that this car has wheel covers on only one side. I can't say for sure whether or not this car gets driven; I've never seen it on the roads around the neighborhood, and when I see it parked it seems to always be in the same spot. But it still has license plates, and it's still here, which is something 30 years later.