1973 Buick Apollo - Short Attention Span

Apollo was the name of seventeen missions launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) between 1961 and 1972 which included seven successful lunar landings. Apollo was a fitting name for those missions as Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology and was the god of oracles, healing, archery, music and arts, sunlight, knowledge, herds and flocks and protector of the young.

"Apollo" was also the name of a series of two and four-door Chevrolet Nova's sold by General Motor's Buick division in the early to mid 1970's. Our subject here is a 1973.

Naming anything "Apollo" by the fall of 1972, not-to-mention something as unabashedly ordinary as a  Chevrolet Nova based small Buick, was met with a fair amount of indifference if not ambivalence given that Apollo-17, launched on December 7, 1972, was the final Apollo moon landing mission.  In just three very short years since the first lunar landing in 1969 America had grown indifferent towards the money suck that was the space program. We won the space race and we weren't making plans to go to Mars and beyond so let's move on. American's short attention spans are nothing new.

You don't need to be a "car-expert" to see what this car is although you probably need to be of a certain vintage. GM started "badge-engineering" when they slapped a once hallowed Pontiac nameplate on a Nova for model year 1971. Story goes that Pontiac was clamoring for a compact car to offset the deluge of imports coming ashore and GM obliged by simply changing some trim on a Nova and calling in "Ventura". Oldsmobile and Buick got Nova's of their own for 1973. Save for some trim pieces the only difference between the cars was their divisional V-8 engines. Buick advertising going so far as to recommend the "Buick V-8" over the standard Chevrolet six-cylinder engine Apollo came with; Buick having to buy the Chevrolet engines from Chevrolet and all.

If that makes no sense to you you're not alone. Then again, old school GM.

Cadillac got a Nova of their own but few people noticed since they did such a swell job of rebodying their 1975 "Seville".

I found this 1973 Buick Apollo on Facebook Marketplace the other night and what got me about it was not only does it have an asking price of $9,000, as ridiculous as I think that asking price is, based on other Apollo's for sale around the country, the owner may have this car priced below market value. Seriously. Seller claims less than nine-thousand miles on the clock so that might be driving the price somewhat but we all know that mileage on old cars doesn't really mean anything.

The asking price for this car bodes well for folks like my wife and I who have a "classic car" but that kind of money for a Chevrolet Nova knock-off is about as crazy as that twenty-grand that guy in California is asking for his grand mother's rusted out 1971 Dodge Demon. I mean, if non-descript, disposable old appliances like this is going for that kind of money, what's the market going to be like for more mainstream and desirable "muscle" and classic cars?

Subjective? No doubt. One person's collectible is another person's trash and vice-versa but nine large for this? Wow. It's not that these "X-body" cars didn't have anything going for them. They were robust little vehicles, actually, at some two-hundred inches long they'd be considered full-size cars today, they handled and braked better than any Electra, LeSabre or Centurion, had just as much usable interior space, were much better on gas even with the optional (but recommended) V-8 and with the hatchback option that our, is this brown (?) or orange (??) subject does not have, were pretty practical. That's the hatchback fan in me right there; I never understood why they didn't take off in this country.

That I've always thought that badge-engineering was bunk and that this car is not worthy of being called "Apollo" is my problem but apparently not my problem alone. Buick renamed the Apollo coupes "Skylark" for 1975. The sedans remained "Apollo" for '75 but they too became Skylark's for 1976.