mmcartalk
Expert
- Messages
- 4,157
- Reactions
- 2,675
MM Retro-Ownership Write-Up: 1980 Chevrolet Citation
(Couldn't find a close or exact shot of the interior/front seat....mine was a rare car done in standard knitted green-vinyl seats, a Sport-Gauge package, and a standard/non-Sport steering wheel)
IN A NUTSHELL: Brilliant idea / conception for the time, but, engineering and reliability-wise, one of the worst new cars I ever owned.
Ah, yes....the notorious X-Body compacts from GM. I was in my late 20s, in a carpool at the time, and had already had experience with an unreliable Plymouth Horizon for a couple of years (which I'll cover in another write-up), and, on paper, this looked like the perfect car for my needs. I was working and had a secure Federal job, but had only been on the job about five years or so, and didn't have a huge amount of cash to spend on a new car.
The FWD X-Body compacts, like the somewhat larger RWD compacts that had proceeded them, came with the Chevy, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac nameplates. I was attracted to them when I first saw them, despite some early warning-sings in the test-drives. Not only that, but there were already warning-signs of gross engineering and assembly-line defects in these cars even before I got my Citation. One of my car-pool partners also liked them, and ordered the Pontiac Phoenix version, with a copper paint-color and tan interior. He didn't have it home two days when, with the windows fully-up, a rainstorm leaked inside and soaked the carpet. His V6 and automatic, though, ran somewhat smoother than the drivetrain that I (naively) ordered, which I'll get to in a minute.
So, not only riding in his car, but in several test-drives of my own of the various different versions, I began to like these cars more and more...they seemed the perfect size for me, as the Horizon I previously had was smaller than I liked, and its non-overdrive FWD automatic transmission oversped the engine too much at highway speeds for my tastes.
There was an enormous amount of hype with these cars in the auto-press, and the Citation set a first-year sales-record for a new American car, yes, besting even the famous Mustang Craze of 1964-65. And that's the Citation alone, not counting the sales of the Olds Omega, Pontiac Phoenix, and Buick Skylark as well.
Yes, one could fault me at that time for being naive (part if it was still my relatively young age), too ready to spend money on new and unproven vehicle-designs, and, during the test-drives, being able to see some of these car's faults but (again, naively) thinking that, somehow, I would avoid being a first-year or Guinea-Pig Victim. Well, it just didn't work out that way.....as the rest of this write-up will show.
So, I ordered a base-level 1980 Citation, white with a green interior, at a nearby Chevy shop (which no longer exists), from a salesman who my late father had known previously from other work...he was now selling cars. Considering that these cars were going for full-list or more (they had more orders than they could fill), he gave me a discount (I don't remember exactly now much) because he knew my Dad. So, I gave them a deposit, got in line, and that was that. Considering the extreme demand for these cars, and the log ones for them, I got mine in a reasonable amount of time...I think it was around six weeks. But so many of these cars were being built and sped through the assembly lines that there was simply no time for quality control.
I'm the type of person, especially with hindsight, that learns from experience, and, right off the bat, when I ordered this car, I'll admit I made some errors. The first one was in ordering the four-speed manual instead of the 3-speed automatic. This transmission and clutch was pure crap. The cable clutch-linkage was awkward, jumpy, and often had to be slipped up the wazoo to get anything even resembling a smooth start. The overdrive four-speed, in order to get a long-cruising overdrive with only four gears, had ratios in it as wide as the Pacific Ocean, which meant revving the engine up in one gear only to have the RPM fall way off in the next....or see a big jump in RPM while downshifting. The weak synchronizers and cable-linkage allowed crunching in the upper two gears unless you moved the lever slowly....and I was never much good at double-clutching or heel-and-toe shifts to by-pass the synchros. Grabbing reverse gear would often crunch unless you first nicked first-gear lightly with the lever before going into reverse....a trick that a Chevy Technician showed me (one of the numerous technicians I had to deal with while owning this car). Not only that, but you almost never had the same feel from the lever from one minute to the next....there would be first resistance in the feel, and then, a minute later, a sense that there was nothing at all connected to it. Even with months and years of experience using it, this gearbox never had the easy-feel/use of, say a Honda Civic FWD unit.
Another error was in not ordering air-conditioning, as anyone who has lived through a D.C. summer knows. I felt it would save money, but it was uncomfortable, especially for some of my carpoolers.
Another error (though I couldn't realize it at the time) was in not waiting until 1982, when the X-Bodies got one of GM's first throttle-body fuel-injection systems. The two-barrel carburetor, with electric choke-control, was one of the worst I've ever seen...even worse than the Chrysler Lean-Burn set-ups (which I also had had experience with). In conjunction with the poorly-designed manual transmission, it made this car a pain in the a** to drive, and, sometimes even borderline hazardous in heavy traffic. The engine, when cold, would start up fine (unless the butterfly-valve stuck, which meant holding it open while cranking)...but then the electric spring, because of emission-reasons, would shut the choke off within a block or two when starting out, long before the engine was warm enough for the leaner mixture. You would then get BIG flat-spots and hesitation with the gas pedal until you got to normal temperature. And then, the engine-temperature would just keep climbing past the 195-degree thermostant-setting, because the electric cooling-fan would not come on until 230 degrees...another attempt to lessen emissions by burning them up in the exhaust. In fact, I had to replace the thermostat more than once, even at low mileage....it was a simple enough job on that engine that I could do it myself.
Another error was in ordering the heavy-duty suspension, which I thought would probably be needed because I was on the heavy side, and so were a couple of my carpool-mates when they were in the car. It made the car unacceptably stiff and noisy over bumps.
One thing, though, that I did right, when I ordered this car, was in specifying the Sport-Gauge package, which gave you gauges for almost everything instead of idiot-lights, and also included a small tachometer. It helped me notice the problems in the cooling system and temperature-regulation.
In addition to the problems that came because of the way I ordered the car, I had to put up wth a lot of other problems as well. The non-clearcoat white paint on the car's roof was so thin that one could see the dark swirls of the paint-primer under it. The wheels and tires, and possibly the front driveshafts, constantly shimmied and vibrated the steering wheel at highway speeds....endless attempts at rebalancing, remounting, and shaving the tires would help a little here and there, but only for a few days. Out-of-round wheels didn't help either. The awkward, vertically-mounted AM radio sounded tinnier than a soup-can, and the plastic dash-parts around it would rattle and buzz. The seats, made of knitted green vinyl, felt like a padded park bench. I liked the steering wheel, though.....it was one of the first uses of a padded-vinyl rim instead of hard-plastic. The brakes (and many other things on this car) were later the subject of a Government recall....I'm not usually hard on my brakes, but a couple of times when I had to make a hard stop, the rear brakes would lock up way before the front, and send the rear of the car sideways even on dry pavement...you needed quick-correction with the steering. Fortunately, the way I usually drive, I had that problem only once or twice. That brake problem occurred because some Bozo in the planning department, against the advice of engineers, decided to leave out a $2 brake-proportioning valve from production versions. "The 2.5L "Iron Duke" four of Pontiac-vintage was reasonably durable internally and had a lot of torque for a big four its size, but, like other older GM fours, severely lacked refinement and sounded like a washing-machine when started up.
I had a LOT of warranty-problems with this car (as did most X-Body owners), but probably the worst one was just after the 12,000 mile mark (warranties were only one year / 12,000 miles in those days). I was shifting from second to third and heard a loud bang under the hood....and the transmission seemingly stuck in that gear. I somehow managed to get it to the Chevy dealership without a tow (don't ask me how....I don't remember all the details myself). Well, turned out there was catastrophic damage to the clutch...a whole new clutch assembly was needed. Because it was so close to the warranty-expiration date, and not a minor issue but a severe drivetrain-failure which made the car undriveable, Chevy agreed to go 50/50 with me on a new clutch. Again, I want to state that this was clearly a fault in the car, not on me.....I was NOT a hard driver, nor abusive of a clutch myself. I had driven manuals for years before, with no problems.
In short, with the possible exceptions of the Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega, I can't think of another American car that not only fooled so many people (including me) but also did so much to turn American customers away from the Big Three and into the arms of Japanese brands. It probably would have happened even sooner had there not been the restrictions on Japanese Imports, at that time, which limited the supply and set the stage for dealer price-gouging. As mentioned earlier, the first year the Citation was on the market, more than 900,000 were sold...within five years, they couldn't give them away, and the whole X-Body line was dropped.
Car and Driver magazine's Patrick Bedard (who I'm sure some of you older car enthusiasts will remember) later admitted that the magazine was fooled....they gave the X-Bodies they first tested stellar reviews, not knowing that these were not production models, but vehicles that had been specially-built, honed, and inspected/hand-massaged to be as close to perfect as possible. GM also later admitted that they had done a hoax on the auto-magazines at the time.
I kept this POS for a little over two years, and then finally said enough was enough. My late mother had wanted my old Plymouth Horizon, even without A/C, so I had sold her the car at a low price (she had done so much for me as a Mother, I should have just given it to her). But, I wasn't about to keep THIS car in my immediate family...and she would have had problems driving a car with a decent manual transmission, much less one like this, with the quirky transmission and stumble-prone carburetor. So, I put an ad in the local paper (this was the days before the Internet and mass-on-line ads), and got a call, a couple of days later, from a guy not too far away in suburban Maryland. I have always believed in being scrupulously honest in auto-dealings (even if I myself get screwed by someone else)...so I told him EXACTLY what I had gone through with this car (no more, no less), and asked him if he still wanted it. He said yes, so I agreed to meet him at his house (yes, I know that can be risky, but I took a chance)...we agreed on a price, he gave me a good check which didn't bounce, and that was it. My Mom was a Notary-Public in Virginia at the time, but couldn't legally sign off a title-transfer in Maryland, so I don't remember how he took care of that. I think he drove me home, and that was that.....the car was his, and I was (once more) back in the new-car market. Being still naive, I still hadn't completely learned my lesson, though, and once again, went back with Chrysler...
I didn't finally say Good-Bye to the Big Three and go Japanese until a couple of years later, in 1984.
And, as Always, Happy Car-Memories.
(Unfortunately, this was not one of the happier ones)
MM
DRIVING IS BELIEVING
(Couldn't find a close or exact shot of the interior/front seat....mine was a rare car done in standard knitted green-vinyl seats, a Sport-Gauge package, and a standard/non-Sport steering wheel)
IN A NUTSHELL: Brilliant idea / conception for the time, but, engineering and reliability-wise, one of the worst new cars I ever owned.
Ah, yes....the notorious X-Body compacts from GM. I was in my late 20s, in a carpool at the time, and had already had experience with an unreliable Plymouth Horizon for a couple of years (which I'll cover in another write-up), and, on paper, this looked like the perfect car for my needs. I was working and had a secure Federal job, but had only been on the job about five years or so, and didn't have a huge amount of cash to spend on a new car.
The FWD X-Body compacts, like the somewhat larger RWD compacts that had proceeded them, came with the Chevy, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac nameplates. I was attracted to them when I first saw them, despite some early warning-sings in the test-drives. Not only that, but there were already warning-signs of gross engineering and assembly-line defects in these cars even before I got my Citation. One of my car-pool partners also liked them, and ordered the Pontiac Phoenix version, with a copper paint-color and tan interior. He didn't have it home two days when, with the windows fully-up, a rainstorm leaked inside and soaked the carpet. His V6 and automatic, though, ran somewhat smoother than the drivetrain that I (naively) ordered, which I'll get to in a minute.
So, not only riding in his car, but in several test-drives of my own of the various different versions, I began to like these cars more and more...they seemed the perfect size for me, as the Horizon I previously had was smaller than I liked, and its non-overdrive FWD automatic transmission oversped the engine too much at highway speeds for my tastes.
There was an enormous amount of hype with these cars in the auto-press, and the Citation set a first-year sales-record for a new American car, yes, besting even the famous Mustang Craze of 1964-65. And that's the Citation alone, not counting the sales of the Olds Omega, Pontiac Phoenix, and Buick Skylark as well.
Yes, one could fault me at that time for being naive (part if it was still my relatively young age), too ready to spend money on new and unproven vehicle-designs, and, during the test-drives, being able to see some of these car's faults but (again, naively) thinking that, somehow, I would avoid being a first-year or Guinea-Pig Victim. Well, it just didn't work out that way.....as the rest of this write-up will show.
So, I ordered a base-level 1980 Citation, white with a green interior, at a nearby Chevy shop (which no longer exists), from a salesman who my late father had known previously from other work...he was now selling cars. Considering that these cars were going for full-list or more (they had more orders than they could fill), he gave me a discount (I don't remember exactly now much) because he knew my Dad. So, I gave them a deposit, got in line, and that was that. Considering the extreme demand for these cars, and the log ones for them, I got mine in a reasonable amount of time...I think it was around six weeks. But so many of these cars were being built and sped through the assembly lines that there was simply no time for quality control.
I'm the type of person, especially with hindsight, that learns from experience, and, right off the bat, when I ordered this car, I'll admit I made some errors. The first one was in ordering the four-speed manual instead of the 3-speed automatic. This transmission and clutch was pure crap. The cable clutch-linkage was awkward, jumpy, and often had to be slipped up the wazoo to get anything even resembling a smooth start. The overdrive four-speed, in order to get a long-cruising overdrive with only four gears, had ratios in it as wide as the Pacific Ocean, which meant revving the engine up in one gear only to have the RPM fall way off in the next....or see a big jump in RPM while downshifting. The weak synchronizers and cable-linkage allowed crunching in the upper two gears unless you moved the lever slowly....and I was never much good at double-clutching or heel-and-toe shifts to by-pass the synchros. Grabbing reverse gear would often crunch unless you first nicked first-gear lightly with the lever before going into reverse....a trick that a Chevy Technician showed me (one of the numerous technicians I had to deal with while owning this car). Not only that, but you almost never had the same feel from the lever from one minute to the next....there would be first resistance in the feel, and then, a minute later, a sense that there was nothing at all connected to it. Even with months and years of experience using it, this gearbox never had the easy-feel/use of, say a Honda Civic FWD unit.
Another error was in not ordering air-conditioning, as anyone who has lived through a D.C. summer knows. I felt it would save money, but it was uncomfortable, especially for some of my carpoolers.
Another error (though I couldn't realize it at the time) was in not waiting until 1982, when the X-Bodies got one of GM's first throttle-body fuel-injection systems. The two-barrel carburetor, with electric choke-control, was one of the worst I've ever seen...even worse than the Chrysler Lean-Burn set-ups (which I also had had experience with). In conjunction with the poorly-designed manual transmission, it made this car a pain in the a** to drive, and, sometimes even borderline hazardous in heavy traffic. The engine, when cold, would start up fine (unless the butterfly-valve stuck, which meant holding it open while cranking)...but then the electric spring, because of emission-reasons, would shut the choke off within a block or two when starting out, long before the engine was warm enough for the leaner mixture. You would then get BIG flat-spots and hesitation with the gas pedal until you got to normal temperature. And then, the engine-temperature would just keep climbing past the 195-degree thermostant-setting, because the electric cooling-fan would not come on until 230 degrees...another attempt to lessen emissions by burning them up in the exhaust. In fact, I had to replace the thermostat more than once, even at low mileage....it was a simple enough job on that engine that I could do it myself.
Another error was in ordering the heavy-duty suspension, which I thought would probably be needed because I was on the heavy side, and so were a couple of my carpool-mates when they were in the car. It made the car unacceptably stiff and noisy over bumps.
One thing, though, that I did right, when I ordered this car, was in specifying the Sport-Gauge package, which gave you gauges for almost everything instead of idiot-lights, and also included a small tachometer. It helped me notice the problems in the cooling system and temperature-regulation.
In addition to the problems that came because of the way I ordered the car, I had to put up wth a lot of other problems as well. The non-clearcoat white paint on the car's roof was so thin that one could see the dark swirls of the paint-primer under it. The wheels and tires, and possibly the front driveshafts, constantly shimmied and vibrated the steering wheel at highway speeds....endless attempts at rebalancing, remounting, and shaving the tires would help a little here and there, but only for a few days. Out-of-round wheels didn't help either. The awkward, vertically-mounted AM radio sounded tinnier than a soup-can, and the plastic dash-parts around it would rattle and buzz. The seats, made of knitted green vinyl, felt like a padded park bench. I liked the steering wheel, though.....it was one of the first uses of a padded-vinyl rim instead of hard-plastic. The brakes (and many other things on this car) were later the subject of a Government recall....I'm not usually hard on my brakes, but a couple of times when I had to make a hard stop, the rear brakes would lock up way before the front, and send the rear of the car sideways even on dry pavement...you needed quick-correction with the steering. Fortunately, the way I usually drive, I had that problem only once or twice. That brake problem occurred because some Bozo in the planning department, against the advice of engineers, decided to leave out a $2 brake-proportioning valve from production versions. "The 2.5L "Iron Duke" four of Pontiac-vintage was reasonably durable internally and had a lot of torque for a big four its size, but, like other older GM fours, severely lacked refinement and sounded like a washing-machine when started up.
I had a LOT of warranty-problems with this car (as did most X-Body owners), but probably the worst one was just after the 12,000 mile mark (warranties were only one year / 12,000 miles in those days). I was shifting from second to third and heard a loud bang under the hood....and the transmission seemingly stuck in that gear. I somehow managed to get it to the Chevy dealership without a tow (don't ask me how....I don't remember all the details myself). Well, turned out there was catastrophic damage to the clutch...a whole new clutch assembly was needed. Because it was so close to the warranty-expiration date, and not a minor issue but a severe drivetrain-failure which made the car undriveable, Chevy agreed to go 50/50 with me on a new clutch. Again, I want to state that this was clearly a fault in the car, not on me.....I was NOT a hard driver, nor abusive of a clutch myself. I had driven manuals for years before, with no problems.
In short, with the possible exceptions of the Ford Pinto and Chevy Vega, I can't think of another American car that not only fooled so many people (including me) but also did so much to turn American customers away from the Big Three and into the arms of Japanese brands. It probably would have happened even sooner had there not been the restrictions on Japanese Imports, at that time, which limited the supply and set the stage for dealer price-gouging. As mentioned earlier, the first year the Citation was on the market, more than 900,000 were sold...within five years, they couldn't give them away, and the whole X-Body line was dropped.
Car and Driver magazine's Patrick Bedard (who I'm sure some of you older car enthusiasts will remember) later admitted that the magazine was fooled....they gave the X-Bodies they first tested stellar reviews, not knowing that these were not production models, but vehicles that had been specially-built, honed, and inspected/hand-massaged to be as close to perfect as possible. GM also later admitted that they had done a hoax on the auto-magazines at the time.
I kept this POS for a little over two years, and then finally said enough was enough. My late mother had wanted my old Plymouth Horizon, even without A/C, so I had sold her the car at a low price (she had done so much for me as a Mother, I should have just given it to her). But, I wasn't about to keep THIS car in my immediate family...and she would have had problems driving a car with a decent manual transmission, much less one like this, with the quirky transmission and stumble-prone carburetor. So, I put an ad in the local paper (this was the days before the Internet and mass-on-line ads), and got a call, a couple of days later, from a guy not too far away in suburban Maryland. I have always believed in being scrupulously honest in auto-dealings (even if I myself get screwed by someone else)...so I told him EXACTLY what I had gone through with this car (no more, no less), and asked him if he still wanted it. He said yes, so I agreed to meet him at his house (yes, I know that can be risky, but I took a chance)...we agreed on a price, he gave me a good check which didn't bounce, and that was it. My Mom was a Notary-Public in Virginia at the time, but couldn't legally sign off a title-transfer in Maryland, so I don't remember how he took care of that. I think he drove me home, and that was that.....the car was his, and I was (once more) back in the new-car market. Being still naive, I still hadn't completely learned my lesson, though, and once again, went back with Chrysler...
And, as Always, Happy Car-Memories.
MM
DRIVING IS BELIEVING
