General Motors Pontiac Motor Division glued "Phoenix" to two Chevrolet based compact cars from 1977 through 1984. The front-wheel drive, 1980-1984 Chevrolet Citation X-body based Phoenix is arguably more famous, more like infamous, than the original Phoenix which was an unabashed badge-engineered Chevrolet Nova. Doesn't mean it was a bad car by any means. Actually, these "little" suckers like our Facebook Marketplace '78 Phoenix LJ find here were pretty good transportation conveyances.
They could handle as well if not better than just about anything else General Motors offered at the time and that's a big ding on the leaf springs of Camaros and Firebirds and yeah, even the Flintstone-crude independent rear suspensions on Corvettes of the time; trust me on that one. Snappy if not "luxurious" interiors were remarkably space efficient despite the cars being rear-wheel drive. Buckets and a console on this one too. Wow, for $6,700, this is a lot of car for the money.
At more than 203-inches long and riding on a 111-inch wheelbase, hard to believe these were considered compacts but compared to the leviathans of the day, they technically were. What's more, when GM downsized their intermediate line for 1978, for 1978 and 1979, these cars along with their Buick Skylark, Oldsmobile Omega and of course Chevrolet Nova kin were significantly larger. Better looking too if you ask me.
Good looking enough for a kid like me desperate for a car in the summer of 1983? Gosh, I don't know. I came fairly close I guess to purchasing a 1978 Buick V-6 powered Phoenix but after I had a mechanic check it out top-to-bottom, I decided not to. If I recall correctly, there were a series of jig-jagged welds on the rear chassis and body shell that were evident the trunk had been severely plowed into.
Just as well as I wasn't thrilled it had a V-6 and not a Chevrolet 305-, or 350-cubic inch V-8. Somewhat curiously, these cars, the Nova-based Ventura it replaced as well, never got Pontiac's own 301-cubic inch V-8 engine. However, Pontiac offered their "Iron Duke", 151-cubic inch, inline-four-cylinder engine, essentially a 301 split in two, on these. Pontiac sales brochures touted gas mileage estimates with the Duke and 3-speed manual as high as 34-miles per gallon highway. Your mileage may vary, see dealer for details.
Most certainly had that "little" Phoenix been equipped like this with a V-8 engine, buckets and a console, 19-year-old me might have overlooked the carnage it had apparently been through. As it was, though, I think I was looking for any excuse not to buy it. Sounds kind of kooky, but in the days before the internet, car shopping was akin to torture and I may have been tempted just to end the process by settling for that thing. Not that car shopping isn't torturous these days, but it is significantly simpler what with the resources like Facebook Marketplace, Cars.com, Autotrader, etc.
What I did end up purchasing that long ago summer of '83 was a 1975 Chrysler Cordoba from the family of a friend. Not nearly as good a car, but it checked more boxes on my list prerogatives I had back then. Whoever said youth is wasted on the young surely knew what they were talking about.
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