I'm about car tolerance. I joined the Chevy Citation club.

[dodgeariesguy]

10 points for the club member who knows what former Edsel name Chrysler now owns!!

I believe you are refering to the Edsel Pacer so Chrysler owns AMC which produced the AMC Pacer. Is this what you were looking for?

[taxiguy]

I see K-cars quite often but I never see X-cars around anymore. It's a little unfair to call them junk, since all smaller GMs are pretty much junk, especially the ones of that time period (Cavalier, Chevette, etc...) In fact all small American cars of the time (and still today for some) are basically junk, even K-cars to some extent, which isn't to say I don't like them, but they are not the best quality and most reliable things out there. So it's not really fair to single out the X-cars, even if they did get recalled more often. The only truly reliable small cars of the time period were the Japanese, as we all know very well. So X vs. K arguments are a little silly if you think about it, since both pale in comparison to the bulletproof 1980s Corolla, Camry, Civic, and Accord. But that's a whole nother story.

It seems the only thing none of them were immune to was horrible crippling body rust

[1of10K]

The 10 points go to dodge1970 for the Pacer!

The entire 4 model X car group did sell over a 1 million cars collectively between themselves in their first year (1980) with the Citation alone selling almost 810,000 of them. Both K models sold about 286,000 together thier first year ('81). The interesting part is that all these years later, the survival rate for X and K is about the same.

All cars get recalled, but because of the X car sales volume, just think of the tens of thousands of X cars that were flooding the dealerships with their recall notices. I worked at a Buick dealer in New Mexico in late 1981 and the only thing in our shop were X cars and those wonderful GM Diesel cars.

[82Lebaronconv]

Well, even though the Chevy Citation is not one of my favorite cars, it is nice to hear that there is now a club and that some people are trying to preserve them. I remember when these cars were new and there was a lot of excitement over them. Hard to believe now, but is was "the first Chevy of the 80's" to quote their old sales slogan.

My sister bought one of the first Citations in July, 1979 (they had been introduced in April). It was a dark metallic green two door hatchback with a green vinyl interior; a really stripped down model with the base four cylinder and standard shift. Because my dad worked for GM, she was able to buy it at a big discount and a year later, traded it in on a better optioned 1981 Citation (two tone blue with the deluxe cloth interior) for more money than she had paid for it. Demand was incredibly strong for these cars in 1980 and 1981 and there were actually waiting lists to get one. Despite all of the bad publicity, she never really had any major problems with these cars (she drove the '81 to nearly 150,000 miles), so I never thought they were as bad as many people claimed. I also had pretty good luck with the 1981 Skylark "X" car I bought for my 25th birthday that year.

Some years later, I talked my then girlfriend into buying a used 1980 Citation after her 1977 Mustang II died. This one was probably the nicest and best optioned Citation I ever saw. It was the rare Club Sedan model (with the notched roof and a trunk instead of the usual hatchback), dark blue with a full padded vinyl top, the larger V-6 engine, auto transmission and air conditioning. Unfortunately, she lost it due to an engine fire less than a year later. Needless to say, this didn't do much to enhance our relationship!

[Butch]

I think it's VERY fair to say these cars are junk. I was born and raised in Detriot. I remember reading about the GM engineers telling GM DON'T use the brake sys that was used on that POS. That brake sys resulted in a few deaths. The bean counters really payed for NOT listening to their own engineers. I'd destroy each and every one of them.

[1of10K]

A relative bought a new '80 2-dr Citation, dark maroon hatchback from a dealer in Texas. Before 2 weeks had gone by, the car was back in the shop for major wiring and brake problems. It stayed in the shop for almost a month, as everyone tried to figure out what to do about the issues. She finally got it back, but when she noticed that the paint was peeling off this new car, she sold it back to the dealer, and actually got most of her money back.

[1986Kar]

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