1969 Buick Skylark - Strong Enough for a Man but Made for a Woman

Few things take me back...back...back...like old cars do. This 1969 Buick Skylark takes me back to kindergarten in the fall of 1969. The family up the block from us back on Long Island had one of these and it was one of the vehicles in power rotation in the neighborhood kiddie car pool.

 

I remember having a little crush on Laurie whose mother drove what I determined to be the pinnacle of automotive femininity. Funny how I don't see it quite that way now but I remember at the time thinking the car's design was much like "Secret", that antiperspirant targeted at women; "Strong Enough for a Man but Made for a Woman". 

GM's reboot of their 1964 intermediate "A-bodies" for 1968 was decidedly uneven. Personally, I thought the Pontiac's the best looking of the lot followed by Chevrolet in a distant second-place. Then the overstuffed Oldsmobile's and lastly these "out-there" Skylark's with their tapered hind quarters. Cadillac, of course, didn't get one. Only in retrospect can we intelligently say that they might have been a mistake for the "Standard of the World" as Mercedes was already making inroads with much, much smaller and far more expensive cars. The Cadillac "bigger is better" axiom in full stride in the late '60's. They weren't any better than a Chevy at the time but by golly they was sure bigger. 

I remember thinking that if only they'd get rid of this funky rear end, this might just be a car that a five or six year old car crazy little nipper could get his Hush-Puppies around. 

Ask and ye shall receive as this debate-ably odd rear end treatment last only two model years. All of the "A's" received some updating for 1970, the Skylark more than any other as Buick nixed this design for something far more conventional. If lacking in distinction. 

Hard to tell sometimes if a 1970-1972 Buick Skylark is a Chevelle or not. And  vice versa. 

Laurie and her family moved to Arizona when she was was in the second grade. We keep in the vaguest of contact through Facebook. That peripheral contact with people I used to know, especially from when I was very young, one of the few things I like about social media.