I Don’t Think About Buicks Often But When I Do It’s Usually This One

When those people dressed in their short-sleeved button-down shirts and clip-on ties come to my door and ask me if I’ve heard the Good News about Buick and try to tell me of the legend of the Three Shields and the great Skyhawk, I generally shoo them away, because generally I’m not someone who thinks that much about Buicks. This isn’t a slight to the storied marque, they’re just not really a kind of car that meshes with my own particular set of perversions.

But there is one exception. A strange one that doesn’t even really make sense to me. The Skylark. But not just any Skylark; not the bulbously charming ’50s ones or the cool ones from the ’60s or even the strange Iranian-built late ’70s ones. I’m talking about the early seventh-generation ones, built between 1992 and 1995.

The ones with the big pointy beak:

I remember when these first came out, and I was genuinely surprised that a staid brand like Buick would release something so unusual and striking-looking. It was mostly that front end, with the dramatically pointed prow, though the rear of the car was fairly dramatic as well:

There was that upward rear rake, the partially skirted rear wheel arch, defined by those molding lines that encircled the car, which also provided good bump protection, even around the sides.

The daring look of the car was telegraphed by Buick’s 1990 concept car, the Bolero:

You can some of the general body lines in that concept, but this is one of those rare cases where I think the production car ended up looking more dramatic than the concept car.

This sort of dramatically pointed beak had been used in cars plenty of times before; not just by Buick, which enjoyed these beak-grilles plenty, but many 1970s cars, especially like Ford LTDs and Chrysler New Yorkers. It’d largely fallen out of favor in the 1980s, and was genuinely unexpected to see in the early 1990s.

Designed by Wayne Kady, the car was said not to have a single flat panel, a reaction to the very boxy ’80s designs. It got a fair amount of attention at the time for its styling, which was good because the second-gen N-body platform it was built on wasn’t anything especially remarkable, though it was a little longer, and more attempts were made to differentiate the various GM cars built on the platform, as GM was tired of being made fun of for their lazy badge engineering.

I think the ones with the body-colored grilles were the most interesting, too, if you were wondering.

You could get a 3.3-liter V6 in these cars, but those were making only about 160 hp and connected to either a three- or four-speed auto, so these cars were never really especially engaging to drive, but they were pretty comfortable, at least.

They also had anti-lock brakes, which was deemed important enough to warrant its own commercial that involved a big car-shaped balloon:

Also, unrelated, I found something kind of bonkers in the Skylark owner’s manual.

Even in the early ’90s, people still weren’t totally sold on seat belts it seems, so they had to convey how important they were by setting up a poor fictional child to have a nasty bike wreck:

Seriously, illustrated kid, use your damn eyes! You can see that huge cinder block right there! I guess this shows the value of seat belts, but it’s also not a bad lesson in don’t be afraid to turn so you do drive into shit.

Want to see what Motorweek thought of the car? Sure you do; you’re human:

I haven’t seen one of these in years. They later updated the styling in 1996 to something far more timid, and then I went back to my usual state of not caring about Buick. But for one short period of time, there actually was a Buick that got my attention.

Top graphic image: GM