Once again thanks to cookies, which knows my taste in cars better than any person I know, this pretty old thing popped up on msn.com on me yesterday and of course I immediately clicked on it. Looking for what, exactly I don't know, but with GM's announcement this week that Buick would be all "crossover" by 2021, it spurred the hopeless Buick loving nostalgiaist in me.
For sale down in Akron, Ohio at some BMW dealership of all things, thanks for water marking every photo, guys, the asking price is an eye brow raising $16,500. Wowza. Yeah, it's original and unrestored but her mileage is unremarkable at 79,400 (and impossible to verify) and she's entry level and all but options free. Thank goodness her Buick "350-2" was the standard motor back then otherwise this car would borderline suck. Wonder if the Buick rims even came with it when it rolled out of Lansing some forty-seven years ago. Wasn't that long ago that kind of money could get you something really, awesome. Not that this Skylark is not awesome - it's just that it's a painfully ordinary, albeit well preserved, grocery fetcher.
From a trim level back in the fifties to a version of the infamous GM X-body (Corvair, Tempest, F-85) in the early sixties to mid size models in the mid sixties and early seventies and back to compact and sub compacts from the mid seventies through the nineties, "Buick Skylark" has meant different things over the years. To car fans of a certain vintage and GM wonks (like me) in particular, if you said to them, "I found an old Buick Skylark for sale that I'd think you'd like", we'd pray to the old car gods that one of these 1970-1972 Skylark's is what they found. "Holy crap bombs it is a 1970-1972... but they're asking how much for it?!?"
This 1972 Skylark is one, ahem, relatively rare bird. Originally, like all GM intermediates, Buick's 1972 mid size line was to be the 1973 "Colannade" models but due to a prolonged strike at GM, the '72's got pushed to 1973. Just as well since Buick didn't use the Skylark name for 1973 and 1974 opting to call their new mid size models "Century". Starting in 1975 Buick festooned "Skylark" to a Chevrolet Nova based compact coupe they had been calling "Apollo" since 1973. The four door version still carried the "Apollo" moniker in 1975. For 1976, Apollo was gone. Why Buick dropped Skylark for "Apollo" in the first place is anyone's guess. Err, because of the space program?
As much as I liked the 1973 Century coupes, they couldn't hold a candle to these '70-'72 Skylarks two doors hardtops. Even in this color combination that even The Church Lady wouldn't be caught dead driving. That's saying a lot because being part of GM's reboot of their mid size line for 1968, Bill Mitchell and his team uncharacteristically botched the Skylark up. I wasn't too fond of the Olds offerings either but there was nothing quite like the out there styling of the '68-'69 Skylark's. I recall being a child walking to school on my own, yes, alone, and having to look away from a neighbor's '68 Skylark because I found it so ugly. Hey, times were tough.
All that changed in 1970 when someone on the 14th floor on West Grand Boulevard over in Detroit convinced Mitchell and company to revise the rear end treatment on the Skylark. Maybe they knew all along it needed to be changed; we'll never know for sure. All I know is the changes that were made resulted in arguably one of the best looking designs GM has ever made. Even my wife is fond of these cars and she's anything but a fan of anything "Buick". Here's a link to it if you're so inclined. At the asking price it's going to be around for a while. Good luck.
Look for more old Buick stuff from me before the end of the year. Merry Christmas.
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