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
Looks interesting but I can’t say I’ve ever seen on in the wild. Regals and Centuries I still see.
The first vehicle I purchased was a used 1992 Buick Skylark GS, 2 door, black with the beak, red stripe, 15″ alloy wheels, and a red interior. This was in 1997, I was 18 and that car was a glorious pile of crap. I only had it for about 16 months, as the thing decided a cracked head gasket was in order, and the fix was more expensive than the car was worth. I still irrationally miss that POS.
My sister had a green one. When she asked me for my opinion I told her the God’s honest truth. “Nice color!”
Those were introduced right about the time I was shopping for my third new car, and my first that was not a small hatchback of some kind.
The styling drew me in, but the rest of the product couldn’t keep me interested long enough to buy one. First, I was very surprised that it was sold as a Buick and not a Pontiac. But either way, it didn’t have the performance or handling that the exterior hinted at.
Half a day late and half a dollar short, read the Cold Start just now after getting off work. Was immediately reminded by that kid on the bicycle hitting the cinder blocks of this 1920s slow-motion film I’d seen occasionally used as stock footage on TV and in the movies since childhood and I’ve done some internet searching over the years but so far have not found any info: https://youtu.be/s54q4YGM6JE?si=SmBi9Kro58zolvWm
The film shows in slow motion someone dressed in all whites, like early 20th century tennis players, riding a bicycle, which inexplicably has a large OPEL sign on the frame, into a brick wall which collapses (possible that the bricks were simply not mortared) and the rider goes flying over the handlebars and lands somewhere unseen beyond the brick wall.
A curious video, indeed. Presumably someone on the Autopian staff or in the comments would know something about this film, especially with the Opel (yeah, Buick-adjacent!) connection…
Meh
Now this is a Buick
https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/29332/lot/261/c1974-geoff-crossley-buick-special-two-seater-sports-racing-car/
For me that photo also stands out as peak teal.
Ugh. I remember these. Fugly then. Merely ugly now.
When I think fondly of a Buick, it’s my late in-laws’ ’91 Park Avenue. It wasn’t the super-charged Ultra but the 3800 was surprisingly adequate. It rode beautifully, didn’t feel ponderous around corners and was even nicely sculpted. It sort of felt like an American Jag XJ. I think I’d actually take one over the Jag in retrospect.
I was the Buick Quality Manager for the Skylark. Nice to see that Torch appreciated the GS.
This was not a good product for GM. The N-bodies themselves were middling-to-subpar for most of their existence, across all three generations of that platform. And the early Skylark was especially polarizing.
Speaking of N-bodies, I recall a Family Matters episode in or around 1996 wherein Carl Winslow gets a brand-new car, a 1995 Oldsmobile Achieva. He spends the entire episode polishing it, reading the owner’s manual, and protecting it from potential damage inflicted by the kids, especially Urkel. Eventually the Achieva falls prey to one of Urkel’s careless ideas, because of course it does.
Buicks just never hit for me, for better or for worse. Especially the grilles. This beak is not for me.
(Oldsmobile 4ever.)
I seem to remember a lot of these going to rental car fleets, and maybe that one old lady who volunteered at the rectory and refused to let anyone talk to the Monsignor without going through her first
That kid should be glad he didn’t have a seatbelt on that bike. If he did, he would still go flying through the air, but then he would also be painfully tangled in his bike when he hit the ground.
I’m confused by this. The boat tail Riviera from the early 70s had a heck of a beak on it.
It’s inferring that automakers besides Buick also had beaks, hence the not just Buick instead of saying just not by Buick
I always felt the 7th Skylark walked so the 8th gen Riviera could run. They are interesting in a 2 door I guess as most examples seemed to be that gold or beige 4 doors with 60 to 80 year olds inside. Two door n body buyers seemed to go to grand am in higher numbers .
Calling any version with the V6 gran sport was sort of pissing all all that heritage. So many of those bandaid mobiles full of old poodle heads were gran sports. Just ruined the brand. They should have had a gs package for the 2 door with a turbo. Not quite a Riviera that was you classic old man’s couch of a sports car. But something for your average 35 to 50 year old would appreciate and maybe buy.
I see it differently.
This particular Skylark was a weird dead-end. It didn’t exactly look like anything else Buick made, and it didn’t seem like Buick was going to make any more cars that looked like that. Frankly, I’m not sure what Buick was thinking, other than that it wanted to make its version of the N-body a little more distinctive than the Oldsmobile and Pontiac versions.
Meanwhile, the 1995-1999 Riviera, shocking as it was, heralded a new design era for Buick. Buick models for roughly the subsequent 10 years followed a similar formula of ovoid grilles, organic, flowing lines and a distinctly nautical profile.
I also think the Riviera formula was probably right for the time, given where GM was at. In the 90s, GM was suffering from projects that were overbudget, behind schedule, underbuilt, and overall unimpressive. And I couldn’t picture GM making a credible sporty version of the Riviera and actually having it be a good car. They were far better off staying in the lane of making a conservative, softly sprung large premium coupe and executing well on that (even if such a car had a dwindling customer base). And they did. It was a great car for what it was, and the new FWD G-body platform was impressive stuff for the time. It even had the optional brisk Supercharged engine (made standard for 1998-1999). The only thing that sucked about the Riviera, in my mind, was that they half-assed the interior in order to keep it in budget. It would’ve been cool if it would have gotten the same attention and quality lavished upon it as its G-body platform mate, the Oldsmobile Aurora.
I can see why you would see it that way does stick out quite a bit. I think they leaned in the bird name sky lark with the beak. Similar to what does was doing with the thunder bird. 8th gen Riviera was right and is right. They sort of fudged the difference between a regal and a skylark. I always felt their interior are quite nice and match the cars purpose it’s basically a couch that moves briskly. It’s just more to that old man style the last of the blue, green, and possibly burgundy interiors.
A Buick answer to a turbo coupe could have been great for a younger demo that has less money to spend on a 2 door. Skylark was already there but I bet more buyer cross shopped Pontiac then Buick.
That, too. If they were going to chase the segment of the small, youthful forced-induction coupe, it needed to be Chevrolet or Pontiac or Saturn.
And they did do that later on, with the Delta coupes (ION Redline Quad Coupe, Cobalt SS Coupe).
But having it be a Buick would not have been the move and probably would have alienated more buyers than it garnered.
Or they simply would have shifted to their current target demo earlier. Plus the GN was just a few years to a decade before and that had mass appeal.
Really I think it would been the more refined version the colbolt and ion were targeting that 16 to 30 market. The Buick would have been more to the 30 to 55? Market. Much like the turbo coupe was.
I don’t think GM would have been capable of building a convincingly refined Delta-platform car at that time, and it probably would have backfired spectacularly for Buick.
Delta based Buick would have been plastic fantastic with all sorts of weird problems. Not sure it would have been all that different from what they were putting out and what they would put out though.
With N body they could have made a response to the turbo coupe and the various Japanese turbo cars. They had a turbo 2.4 they tested and never produced. It could do 200hp to the na 150.
I always liked the fronts of these (I did the T-Bird Turbo Coupe beak as well), but cannot stomach the half spats and droopy trunk – particularly their respective interaction with the soaring character line.
It’s like the designers shot their wad on the front third, and then just phoned it in for the rest.
Damn, pure nostalgia. Especially the click-through video of the painting ‘inspired’ by the Buick. We had a copy of ‘Tremors’ taped off of whatever network that was showing it at the time that included this ad. I watched that movie so many times in my youth, which means I got to see and still be surprised by that being a ‘new’ Skylark on every watch.
My mother drove a 1980 X-body Skylark for damn near 20 years, very much including the period that that tape rarely left the VCR. She got it in the divorce. I recall the paint starting to peel at about year 6. It never wanted to start in the winter and by year 12 you needed starting fluid to get it to start if the temperature went above 75. It ended up with rust holes through the doors, bumpers, and A-pillar. We lived in Denver. They don’t salt the roads there.
It was in the shop a fairly shocking amount of time. I think a good percentage of the child support went to supporting GM’s lazy engineering and my mother’s insistence, despite all evidence to the contrary, that it was a good car and worth whatever work it seemed to constantly need.
That beaky Skylark seemed like a definite upgrade. It sounds like it probably was but… barely.
When I think of a Buick, I think G-bodies.
Not just the GNX and Grand Nationals, but also the T-Type and the regular-ass Regals.
Also the RWD Rivieras.
FWD? Not so much.
Love the tri-color scheme at the top. Had a neighbor that looked like the kind of fat older guy you’d see on a wanted poster for being a pedo who had a maroon one and put a dent in the center of my rear bumper. He, of course, denied it, even though he parked behind me all the time and that stupid pointed beak was at the exact height and position to leave the damage that would have been very unlikely to receive from pretty much any other car commonly encountered, so no, I don’t care for these Buicks. The Olds version wasn’t bad looking, though.
I remember reading about these in Car & Driver when they launched. I think it was John Phillips that described them as having “fish buoyancy.” That weird phrase stuck with me.
The Oldsmobile version of the N Body with the high output Quad 4.
That was The Shit. The total Shit. And nothing but the shit.
That front end face, in the topshot especially and throughout — that has the some of the most immediate and strongest pareidolia for me of any car. It looks like someone who had just been smiling, saw something somewhat disturbing, and is transitioning to mild shock and dissatisfaction.
*scrolls back up to look*
OMG YES!!!
The 1990 concept front end looks straight out of the movie Cars with its derpy open mouth smile under the bumper
These are so… dowdy. They look like something Mrs. Doubtfire would drive.
One of the most grotesque things GM ever did
A story about Buicks and it’s not about THE REATTA?! Come on, folks.