While Chrysler's front-wheel-drive K cars were giving the company a new lease on life after near-failure and a government bailout at the tail end of the Malaise Era, The General wasn't doing quite as well with its X-Body platform. Sure, the X was front-wheel-drive and quite roomy for its exterior dimensions, but the performance was pretty grim and the build quality even worse. You could get a Citation, an Omega, a Phoenix, and a Skylark version of the X, with the Iron Duke four or the 2.8 V6.


These things are really, really rare on the street nowadays (I haven't seen a Phoenix for at least a decade, and even Citation sightings are noteworthy), so I was happy to find this daily-driven Skylark beating the odds.

When you go to car shows full of Detroit machinery, you'll probably see more of the Buick GS than you will of the regular Skylark, much as you do with the GTO-versus-LeMans situation. Here's a Skylark owner who took the best-looking feature of the GS (the hood) and kept the rest of the Skylark badging and trim, which I think works pretty well. This car isn't perfect by any means- in fact, it's a little battered- but it's in excellent shape for what it is: a nearly 40-year-old car that parks in a busy downtown urban area and sees regular street service.


The standard '69 Skylark engine was a 230 horsepower, 10 billion foot-pounds torque (slight exaggeration) 350-cubic-inch V8. If you got the GS 350, your engine was a higher-compression 350 with280 horsepower; GS 400 buyers got the monster 340-horse 400 engine. There's no telling what's in this car; by this time it might have a junkyard 455 or even a Pontiac or Olds powerplant.

The Skylark Custom came with the luxury trim package, including fender skirts and plush padded vinyl interior. The standard engine was a 250-inch six, but just about all buyers opened their wallets for the 230-horse Buick 350 (and some went ahead and paid for the 300 horsepower 400).


Mmmm, padded vinyl! This car listed at $3,098 new, which was 97 bucks more than the Fairlane GT convertible (and 700 bucks less than the '68 Lotus Europa).


These photographs date from more than a year ago; it was actually one of the first cars I shot for this series, but I saved it "for a special occasion" for so long that I forgot the photos even existed.

This car has been in its neighborhood for a long time, but I've never been able to find out whether the owner (who's clearly a fan of Bianchi bicycles) chooses such a beautifully wretched car in order to express contempt or admiration for the very concept of the automobile. You never know with bike freaks- they tend to appreciate machinery more than most, but they can be touchy on the subject of motor vehicles.


Very clever homemade bike racks here- looks like you strap the rear wheels into these channels and then attach the front forks to the pipe running across the rear edge of the roof. Perhaps the trio of Bianchi cars would be a good addition to the stable of bike haulers.


Here's a classic example of what we in California call "Living Near The Ocean Rust." If you park a car within a block or so of the Pacific (e.g., 48th Avenue in San Francisco), the constant salt spray makes your car rust from the top down. While this car now lives within a block of San Francisco Bay, the 6" waves you get from that body of water don't get salt into the air; clearly, this Skylark spent a few years living near the big waves.


I've never heard this car run, but I hope it's good and loud.

At the Oakland Coliseum BART station yesterday, we spied this '69 Buick Skylark sitting proudly by itself in the parking lot. Not so much a donk as a car heavily influenced by donkism (and Oakland, proud home of 2 $hort, is certainly on the leading edge of donkitude, what with the box Caprices teetering on absurd-diameter wheels you see towering over traffic around here), this Skylark actually looks halfway decent with the treatment...

The wheels completely fill the wheelwells but don't bust up the nice lines of the car's body, and nothing that permanently screws up the car has been done here. It's possible that this Buick has been subjected to every trend of the last several decades; maybe its rear was jacked up four feet on big air shocks and Mickey Thompson steamrollers back in the late 70s, followed by a stint as a lowrider with negative-offset 12" wheels. That's the beauty of the '68-'72 GM A-body- it's incredibly adaptable.

We're giving a thumbs-down to the Pep Boys HID headlight conversion, of course, but lights are easy to replace. No lasting harm done.

We'd like to think that there's a 455 living under the hood, all ready to burn some more tread off those tires, but (sigh) it's probably just a 350. Yeah, one of these days we'll get a better camera phone. For now, stay tuned for the next Down On The Street car. – Murilee Martin

Related:
SEMA Show: Donk a What? [internal]

So what happens when a car manufacturer puts a truck bed on one car model but not on all the other models based on the same platform? Madness, that's what happens! Here's a very nice Buick GSXamino (dubbed the "X-Camino" by its owner), built by a guy who wanted to go fast with class and haul bales of hay in the back. Say what you will about the sacrilege of making non-Chevelle A-Body-aminos, but I think the GSX-amino actually works (though the combination of Stage 1 455 and zero weight over the drive wheels might make for some hairy handling hijinx). – Murilee Martin

The X-Camino [Classic Car Interiors]

Related:
Fun With GM A-Bodies: El 442 [internal]

When pretty girls write prose poetry about your old car, the back roads of Contra Costa County and a comet that inspired mass suicide a decade after the fact, it might be worth revisiting said vehicle. Such a prose poem was sent to me today, and got me thinking. My 1970 Buick Skylark was both the best and the worst car I ever owned. The guy I bought it from was planning to make a GS clone out of it, so he installed a Turbo 400 trans with a fairly aggressive shift kit. Then he put orange reflecto-tape where the emblem between the taillights was supposed to go, in what I can only assume was an attempt to make it look like a Lincoln Mark VIII. 15x8 Chevy Rallye wheels and shaved trim earned the car parking tickets from non-auto-enthusiastic Berkeley cops that read "Chevelle," and since I always had something on my dash covering the VIN plate, I realistically could've fought the law and won.

I only owned it for about two years. But 20 to 22 is a key time in a young man's life, and a lot happened in that car. I took my first road trip in it, a 13-hour slog to San Diego from Sacramento at around 45mph when the radiator took a dirt nap 100 miles south of Sac. I smoked my first cigarette in it. My friend Sarah called it "Dave's Fresh Ride" and consented to late-night makeouts on the bench seat after snacks at Eppie's. I scared the crap out of a fellow '68-72 A-body owner hooning it over Redwood Road between Moraga and Castro Valley. I later nearly slid his '68 Chevelle into the back of the Skylark and understood exactly why he was so frightened. Disc brakes, fat tires and swaybars make a difference. Then again, I also remember said fat tires contributing to a 45-degree angle hydroplaning incident on I-80 around Dixon that lasted for roughly a quarter mile. It's a miracle those cars didn't kill more people, frankly.

The interlocking three-point belts ruled, because girls could never figure out how to make them work, so I always got to lean over and do it for them. Unfortunately, guys had the same problem.

One of the most profound rock 'n' roll moments of my life was sitting in the parking lot of the Lafayette Starbucks listening to Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy and watching the sky get light, heater on, drinking the first cup of joe of the day; Kerouac preaching about the beautiful puff of clouds floating by from Oakland to the gates of Marin.

I once spun it across a suburban street in the rain with the woman most responsible for my writing career. I got rear-ended by a bunch of teenagers in a Maxima. I had red paint on my bumper; a bumper which may be one of the most magnificent examples ever fitted to any car, ever. It punched through their bumper cover. It went through the bumper itself. And the headlight. It cut into the hood. It wasn't just a bumper, it was a weapon. And you could fit a Marshall 4x12 speaker cab in the trunk. Barely, but you could. And of course, there was plenty of room for your Les Paul and amp in the back seat.

My Irish cousin Pierre, who occasional does stunt driving for movies and owns a Mini parts, repair and modification business in Dublin, came out to visit. Bombing down Van Ness after a 15mph tour of Lombard Street he exclaimed, "This is great! I feel like I'm in Bullitt!"

My friend Jeff and I would do what we called "The Loop" in it. We'd go from Moraga to San Francisco over the Bay Bridge, through the City and then across the Golden Gate, stop for a smoke at the vista point and then back over the Richmond Bridge. It was a late night thing. We'd get annoyed or frustrated and say, "Fuck it. Let's do the Loop." Sometimes we wouldn't get home until sunrise. One night, I forgot to put the gas cap back on on a pre-Loop fill-up. I left roughly a half-tank of Chevron Premium on the hills of San Francisco.

It nearly caught fire on the way to the shop to have the electrical system fixed. I was stuck in traffic with wisps of smoke seeping out of the cracks in the dash. The Petaluma PD pulled up during a parking session. I saw him go by out of the corner of my eye. We had just enough time to get dressed before he asked for our licenses and asked, "Are you okay, Miss Larson?" I suppose I wasn't doing that badly because she replied in the affirmative.

Not long after that, the transmission let go — the one part of the car I'd always had faith in. My parents were getting rid of their eight-year-old Legend and offered it to me. Meanwhile, my apartment-complex manager forced me to have the car towed onto the street. My pal Fabrice had offered to buy the car from me. The county had decided to rebuild a section of sidewalk. The selfsame small section of sidewalk where the Skylark was parked. I was getting ready for work when the CHP officer knocked on my door and asked me if I could move the car. I told him that it wouldn't move and I had to get to work. Fabrice called the next day and I told him that he could have it for whatever the impound fees were.

He turned around and sold it to our friend Marcus, who in turn fixed the trans and the dents, redid the suspension bushings and took care of an exhaust leak. He took me for one last ride in it before he sold it to a couple of Mexican guys at the Goodguys show in Pleasanton. It ran strong, but it didn't feel like my car anymore. Four years later, I was at the Rockridge BART station with my then-fianc . I saw a white Skylark and said to her, "Hey! That's just like the one I used to have." Then I looked at the plate. 2TBX 575. They'd replaced my Poot "Girls Kick Ass!" sticker with a K&N decal and added big slashcut exhaust tips, but it was undoubtedly my old car. "That is the one I used to have." She said I should leave a note. So I did. I hope somewhere somebody's still taking care of the automobile formerly known as the Millennium Falcon, a fast, white, kitbashed monstrosity that was generally dirty, broke a lot and offered up more smiles than any car I've ever owned.

What car couldn't you quit? – Davey G. Johnson

Related:
Oh No! Wrong Buick on eBay [Internal]

Our 1970 Buick Skylark was probably our favorite car we've ever owned. Every other car was more reliable and/or less-likely to hydroplane at 45 mph in a steady downpour. Our friend Sarah referred to it as the Fresh Ride. Teenage girls in bondage pants preferred to sit in the center of its front bench seat. So when we see a rad '64-72 Skylark we get just a bit happier on the inside. Unfortunately, this '65 model needs to be rescued.

Awful mesh all over the grille, a purple-painted Pontiac mill (complete with that stupid "Streetrod" badge affixed to the valve covers), and a blower hat that's not sitting atop a supercharger. Won't somebody please save this fine convertible? We promise that we'll do our part to find you a girl in plaid trousers with buckles on them. [Thanks to John for the tip.] – Davey G. Johnson

Buick: Skylark [eBay]

Related:
Sweatin' the Oldies: Buick Manager Aims for Younger, Luxury Buyers [Internal]