The downfall began when GM put the "bean counters" in charge. I am a former GM employee with 21 years, when they sent my job overseas.

Put succinctly, GM killed itself by cutting corners...

The company I worked for in the 1980's made manufacturing equipment for, among other corporations, auto manufacturers. I interacted with the engineers at GM, Ford and Mercedes. The GM engineers, by and large, were not car guys. It seemed to me that they were only vaguely aware that they were making cars. All they needed was something that met the specifications. The Ford guys were way different. They usually had hot cars and motorcycles and they were really invested in making good vehicles. And at Mercedes, the engineers were strongly aware that they were building Mercedes. Internal engine parts not only had to perform perfectly, they had to look good. So there is an internal ethos in a corporation that affects product quality. It's called caring.

GM killed itself through contempt for customers and they never stopped.

GM was killed by a mountain of bad decisions not just one.

Every once in a while GM makes a mistake and gets one right.

When working at GM in the 90's I heard a manager state, "we are not in the business of making cars, we are in the business of making money. We do it by making cars using as little money as possible".

General Motors built the X-Bodied cars, and relied on the public to perform research and development. The cars were junk. Total junk.

The oil embargoes were actually 1973 and 1979, though the '79 crisis wasn't so much an embargo as it was a result of the Iranian Revolution.

You neglected to mention the Oldsmobile Diesel engine debacle.

When the Chevy citations first came out, my boss bought one and reluctantly accepted power windows, because GM was fully loading all of the early production models. He told the dealer, "I really don't want power windows, because they are unreliable." When he went to drive it off the lot, he pushed down on the driver's window button, and the glass did not budge. :)

I had a friend who had nothing but Toyotas until he joined the State Department and was told that if he wanted a car for his new assignment to Zaire (Mobutu was still alive) it would have to be a Chevy Citation. He totaled it on the last day of his assignment, probably because of its abysmal handling while he was taking evasive action from people who were shooting at him.

GM killed GM with all the crap they were producing! It wasn't just one vehicle, it was all of them ...

Rode around in several citations, celebrities and the like with several hundred thousand miles in the 90's. They were hand me downs given to my teenage friends usually by their parents. Yes they were worn out but we still gave them h3ll. They held up through years of abuse. Eventually they all exploded, all of us died, the parents claimed the life insurance monies, then we all went on to live under witness protection with new identities. True Story....

Agree with a lot of this. I always say "GM excels in the poor execution of great ideas."

I drove a used citation in high-school, had it for about 6 years it never had any major break downs, 4cyl stick.

I've had various GM's 70's - 2000's and they each had their own share of what you've discussed here. Best GM I owned was a 63 Cadillac.

I agree, the Citation (in fully restored) condition deserves to be kept in a museum. The car is historically important as it forever changed the American car industry, entirely for the worse.

Circa 1993 I lived in Indiana. There was a lady I worked with had a tan 1980 Citation. It had over 200,000 miles and she loved it. That's a one in a million I bet.

GM sealed their fate when they went all front wheel drive. I heard that Northstar engine was bad for head gaskets

As a teenager riding in a brand new Chevy Citation in 1982 thinking that hastily implemented vertical oriented radio was a bad omen for the future GM.

I write off the X-car criticism with Shakespeare, from Julius Ceasar: "The evil that men do lives after them; the good oft interred with their bones."

The Northstar engine was one of the Nails in gms(using that new logo) coffin, as well as getting rid of well loved divisions under "Government Motors".

It's sad 😭 that GM destroyed Oldsmobile.

1976 was the last good year for GM. Let’s not forget the engine lawsuits, Chevy engine in a Pontiac, Pontiac engine in a Buick, Olds motor in a Caddy. My personal favorite, the Olds 307 “ Corporate “ motor producing a whopping 148 horsepower in a 5000 lb Caprice wagon. As for what you talked about, GM never misses a opportunity to miss a opportunity

When I was 17 I convinced my father to do something he was uncomfortable with--buying a brand new "cutting edge" Citation as soon as it came out. If it wasn't for me, my dad probably would have bought a Fairmont. In the first 4 months of ownership, my dad tried to have the rear brake lock up problem fixed, but they couldn't fix that. The entire steering system including the rack and hydraulics had to be replaced. It was at the dealership for 3 weeks. The car ended up lasting 5 years and during that time it had the transmission replaced twice, the engine replaced once and the radiator sprung multiple leaks at the same time. At the 5 year mark, my sister was about to go somewhere, she started the car in the driveway and ran back into the house to get something and 30 seconds later, the car burst into flames.

My grandfather had a 1980 Pontiac Phoenix. He bought it when it first came out. He had nothing but trouble with it.

GM hit another, uh, "home run" with that V8 diesel engine too.

Now I know what I knew all along. As a 15 year old we had a "82" in "85" had a head on collision in "86". My father bought the Citation and Chevrette, I was the labour and hated the cars. Now at 51 I own a gifted "82" Citation and have a love hate relationship with it. It was free, but I curse like a sailor when I work on it regularly. It's a 2.8 v6, gets me to and from. I'm replacing everything under the hood part buy part month by month.

My aunt had a 1980 Pontiac Phoenix. The V6 was a good engine and once everything was ironed out it was a good car, she drove that thing for close to 20 years. But the X and J cars were a 1-2 punch the general didn't need, they were half baked cars that the customers got to beta test. My parents were loyal GM buyers until their '81 Cutlass Supreme diesel, never bought another one after that. Mom bought a Honda Accord and dad bought a Toyota Celica. Now 40 years later mom has a RAV4 and dad has an Avalon.

The real problem was the 55mph speed limit. Why make excellent cars when you can only do 55? American cars became as exciting as your refrigerator. Except your fridge was built better

I was the second owner of an 81 Citation. I liked the car initially but after about a year it started to have problems. The worst problem was that it would randomly shut off while driving. On attempting a restart the battery would be dead. Get a jump start and everything would correct itself until the next time it would die. I took it to several mechanics for this problem and no one could reproduce the problem and consequently never could fix it. I had the entire electrical system checked and nothing was found. I was in the navy at the time and I absolutely needed a dependable car for my family. So, we decided to begin looking for a new car. The day I traded the Citation in it died just as I was turning into the dealership. I just coasted into a parking spot, hopped out and tossed the keys to the salesman. I then hopped into my new car and went home. That Citation sat in that parking spot for the next three weeks. To this day I wonder what happened to that car.

Ford Pinto "explosions" not Random (spontaneous)..... the cause was impact damage to the rear end in regards to the placement of the fuel tank

I remember in my mom's family they would have a new car every year or so, They got a Citation. they were so proud of their new car, 6 months later they' were desperate to sell it as it was constantly being at the dealership to be fixed.

Nice job! I remember the X cars well! Roger Smith ran GM during this era and his accounting background explains a lot - why things were reused, design was redundant (all of the X cars looked the same), the engine was recycled... I remember when these came out and I was also hoping for a strong release from GM. Yes, this era was a good crystallization of what was wrong with GM through the years. Thanks for doing this!

There are probably a dozen GM models from the 80s and 90s that followed that trend of rushed release and then by the time they got it right, they immediately canceled it.

I owned a Cutlass Calais with a quad 4. The Q4 was a great engine. That car was quick as shit and got outstanding gas mileage. While I heard all about the bad head gasket, I never experienced it. I bought it with 30k miles on it and it was junked after an accident with a 100k miles on it. Great car. Great engine.

Totally agree. I had blind allegiance to Chevy. The Citation was the last American car I bought.

if you recall, the first J bodies were equipped with a 1.8 carb engine. GM had not learned it's lesson on vehicle introduction, 2 years after the issues with the X-cars

All good points, lived through that time as an all GM family, it was sometimes painful, but we were easy of them and they lasted the usual 7 ish years. But, we only have a Suburban left in the fleet and everything else is Lexus, Subaru, Chrysler, Jeep. None of us went to Cadillacs when we “should have” and agree that leads to GM’s slow death.

GM's small-car creds were permanently trashed by the Vega. X-body wouldn't have saved them.

Bro, I think you nailed it! GM like the rest of the big 3, relied too much on brand loyalty and didn't keep up with the times. You bring up several great points that I have observed over three decades. The interior is dead on! So many times read Motortrend and Car and Driver reviews, GM cars would lose points on interior. From design, materials and fit and finish, they were always 2 steps behind the imports. Engines, transmission and suspension were another issue. A lot of their front wheel drive cars didn't receive 4 speed automatics, until the mid 90s. Four cylinder engines were making 30 - 40 hp less than their import counterparts! Suspension were too soft and unpredictable, until the 90's. And real talk, their is too many models over lapping. These young people now have caught on to the shell games, that fooled their grandparents and parents! This is the reason why we lost Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Saturn. Same platforms with different emblems and taillights. It's amazing how are I look back at GM 80s line up and see the same quad headlights and egg crate grill across the entire large car line up! From Chevrolet to Cadillac, same platform and corporate engine. Just upgraded interiors across the line, that were still subpar!

My coworker had an X11. I remember that the sheet metal broke around the rear hatch striker latch. He had to take it to a weld shop to have the cracks welded up. He later sold the X11 to a coworker. I remember riding to lunch in it and noticed a pair of vice grips clamped on in place of the window crank handle that broke and fell off.

I had a 1980 Buick Skylark. I bought it used in 1981. I so wished I missed that experience. 4 Blown fusible links, 4 blown alternators, bad steering rack, blown air conditioner. I had bought an extended warranty on it, I was so fortunate for that. I bought this car to replaced a totaled AMC Spirit. The AMC had a door that leaked and needed constant adjustment to close right, a cruise control module that fell out on my foot, and it would not start in the rain. I somehow managed to get out of the Skylark for a 1983 Thunderbird. That car lost its torque converter at 3 years of age but was otherwise a good car.

General Motors did hit the market with the right product at the right time and that was the GM 77 program, which was downsizing the full size cars and the Chevy Caprice was the success story of that program and it's platform was used until 1996. The following A/G bodies were released in 1978 and also had a long life and successful platform. If it's rear drive and V8 powered...it's typically a good product. When GM tries to innovate, that is where they get into trouble. It's the customer that is acting as the product tester and GM will refine the design..get it close to perfect and then cancel it...Pontiac Fiero is a key example. The X-Car was timed...just in time for the 1979 gas crisis, but questionable engineering choices and poor quality doomed it. The rest of the product line was impacted by cookie cutter styling and uninspired designs, especially with the A bodies and the 1985 C Bodies i.e. the Olds 98 and Buick Park Avenue.

As a bachelor I owned a 1973 Pontiac Grand Am. A real boat but I loved it. Got married in 1976 to a girl who owned a Karmann Ghia. In 77 we sold the Grand Am and bought one of the "new" Honda Accords. It was an absolute rust bucket.

In 1980, my parents bought the hype and got one. My first impression as a teenager was that it immediately like an old car. The steering wheel didn't seem to be connected to the wheels and it took effort and constant attention to keep it on the road. I can't believe that even hand built ones felt anything like a BMW as Motortrend claimed. The interior was cheap and felt like you should clean it by driving through the car wash with the windows down. It broke down a lot, most memorably in downtown Philadelphia just before rush hour. It was just me, my Mom, and a friend who was visiting. She cried while we waited for the tow truck, and when he got there, it inexplicably started up again and we drove off. After several recalls for years, it finally got right and was reliable enough for my parents to keep for 17 years as their beater car. I would drive it when I visited and it always smelled like their lawnmower. It was like new parents thinking their baby will grow up to be a heart surgeon, only for the kid to become a delinquent, in trouble all the time and breaking every thing in sight. Later, the parents are relieved when he gets married, has kids, and happily works as a crane operator at a scrap yard for 35 years.

I had the Pontiac X body. The car was designed for a rotary engine that was never produced. The replacement just didn't fit right the oil filter ended up between the firewall and the engine making access horrible. One day while driving my new body the power steering hoses popped out of their seats at the steering gear! When I had electric problems I found (I had full shop manuals ) that behind the dashboard, instead of a wire harness there was a flexible sheet of plastic with traces on it. One of the traces evaporated! The "flex circuit board was expensive and replacing it (like everything else on the car) required a great deal of time. I used my electrician training (thank you dad) to install 12gauge solid wire without soldering. It did have some fun characteristics: -while driving down the freeway I had a blow out in a rear tire and it ran very well on 3 tires. -when it rained at night I would put on my full face helmet and do 4 wheel drifts through the s turns in a nearby neighborhood.

Okay, I was at the dealer level. Could not fathom what was going on. Finally a corporate person answered me by saying that GM had a lot of really great people, and it also had a lot of really bad people - and that the good people could not do anything about the bad people. Lots of legacy parasite employees. There were awful labor agreements from past boom years that guaranteed pay to employees from shut down plants that literally had those employees showing up and watching TV all day long until they had put in enough “time” to retire with benefits. Much much more was happening at all levels.

the Cadillac NorthStar engines suffered from a steel head-bolt into an aluminum block. I know because I paid to have one fixed. It was a fun car, when it wasn’t in the shop.

I owned a successor to this thing a Olds Cutlass Cieara witch had the 2.5 Tech 4 engine . And at 52.000 miles it pissed its coolant all over the the road . And I was convinced it blew the head gasket , got it home [ I had three kids in the car and bought three gallons of anti freeze at a gas station ] . after pulling the head the next day I discovered two of them had broken off . and went to my local NAPA to get bolts and they had had 40 of the stock bolts and 95 of the ARP bolts . They told me that the 1986 bolts had a heat treating problem and they sold lots of them . I bought those .Had the head redone [ $ 97.00 ] at local shop . Put the engine back together and it ran better than new . Promptly traded it in on a used Dodge Dynasty which ran great for years and have never bought a GM car since .

I was one of the unfortunate souls to purchase a 1980 citation. CV joints constantly going bad, the windshield cracked, the fuel pump leak onto the manifold, and finally the automatic transmission burned up. I left it on the interstate with 63000 miles

"We need to beat the imports" Dude, you have Vauxhall and Opel in your stable, don't re-invent the wheel, take something from them and adapt it to the US Market! Yes they took the Chevette, but they should have taken the Astra in the early 80's, and not stuck with the RWD Chevette. And there were larger cars in those stables that could have been used.

CEO Roger Smith got bonuses while retired for doing a great job.

We had 4 6 cylinder automatic Citations. 80, 2 85's, and an 84. Suspect build quality for sure. But they all went well over 140,000 miles. 2.8 was a very good engine also used in S-10's and a ton of other cars. All cars are a blend of a bunch of other cars within a single manufacturer.

My dad bought a 1981 Chevy Citation new -- 2.5 liter engine with a five-speed manual transaxle. The car drove great through snow and slush, and we get plenty of this in Wisconsin. However, on icy or wet roads, the Citation was a death trap. It didn't take much for the wheels to lock and the car would slide around out of control. While this was happening the engine would snub out and take out the power steering. This made the car difficult to steer until you restarted the engine. Oh and my father took the car back to the dealer for many a defect for the first few months after he bought it. Had anti-lock brakes been available, or better yet standard, the Citation would have been a much better car. Oh, my father loved that car. He kept it until July 1999.

Ealy Northstar engines had a huge problem. The bolts holding the heads to the block were way undersized. You can guess what happens when a few thousand miles are racked up.

My GF had a 2.5 4-speed Citation. The back seat was the best part!

Got a citation with 160,000 miles on it. It was a staff car for a large company my sister's husband worked for that they parked in a straight row. The maintenance was impeccable and it was a daily driver, 44 miles one way, until I hit a deer one winter night. 600.00 dollars and met its end at 280,000 miles.

Good discussion, my parents had a 1983 Pontiac Phoenix and it was constantly in the dealership for failures in the brakes and transmission.

GM was the first company to run to the world market. That was their problem.

Great video ! I remember these cars way back in the day. These were not well put together like the Chevrolet Nova's. My parents owned full-sized RWD Chevrolet's and Pontiacs back in the 70s and 80s .CHEERS

I remember my Buick was so poorly assembled, that the gaps in the trunk lid allowed water to seep into the trunk. I had never seen a new car with this problem. My problem also was overheating because the cooling fan would quit and the car would over heat.

I remember very clearly my Dad taking the family down to look at the X-Body cars as he felt it would be a pass to get one for his next car; and even as a kid it was a horrifyingly awful car. The display model had the radio not installed right; the frame had broken because the radio was not "in the dash" and sprung out. The sales people kept pushing it in; it did not look aligned (how did it get out like that) and they said "don't touch it" and they did not like "us kids" in it. It also smelled REALLY bad too - glue or tar. My Dad just said he was going to ask the company let him hold onto the car he had for an extra 6 months. You are right - my Dad ended up in a the Caravelle - then 2 Dynasties - Intrepid ...

In Auto Service class, we learned the rear-brake issue on the FWD X-body was due to GM cutting corners, by using a drum-brake that was far too large for the application, just because they had a lot of them in stock. Slowly, they attempted resolving the issue by continuously installing smaller & smaller wheel cylinders, year-by-year, until they found one that didn't cause lock-up. Needless to say by then, the car was being dropped from production. :(

Buick Le Sabre were pretty darn good cars, from mid 90’s to early 2000’s. Styling was boring , yet they were a good ride. Good on fuel, comfort, durable. It turned out they were assembled in Canada.

11:20 I bought one of the first Chevy Beretta and it was nothing but problems so I bought a new one the second year. I took my mom out to lunch one day and pulled into her driveway when she opened the door to get out the door literally fell off the hinge. The door was so heavy that it was designed improperly with not structurally sound hinges to carry the weight of the long coupe door. I had to get out of the car and run around to her side and hold the door up in order for her to get out and carefully get the door back in place so I could drive it to the dealership. Of course there was a recall and supplemental brackets had to be attached to both doors. Can you imagine? You open your car door and it literally falls off the hinge. Both cars had lots of problems. I also remember you had to refill the windshield solvent quite frequently because the hose wasn’t placed all the way to the bottom of the container. It was short. This meant you never really ever used the full container of solution and you had to constantly refill it especially on days when you were using more of it. I recall the engine control module had issues as well. It was kind of a cool car when it came out but it was a dud when it came to engineering and quality.

My Uncle emigrated from Cuba in the late 1960s and got a job working at a Cadillac dealership here in South Florida ( Bayview Cadillac) Working as a upholstery guy Whose sole job was to repair the defects on the brand new cadillacs and buicks as they came off the truck from the factory. The UAW had a motto "just get it on the truck and let the dealers fix it". He retired and died a very wealthy man. He would tell us stories about the brand new cadillacs with drooping head liners still on the truck, Carpets that were Cut too short, Vinyl roofs which were barely attached, Door panels that literally wear the wrong color to the rest of the interior, Brand New cars where the windows leaked so badly that The interiors started to mildew while they were still sitting on the showroom floor, It's so many other things. He only did the carpet and upholstery so if there was a problem like leaky windows or power equipment that didn't work he had to wait for The service department to fix The mechanical issues before he could touch the upholstery. I'm 41 But have loved cars since I was a little kid and by the time I was old enough to drive these X body cars were long gone. I remember once riding in a Chevy citation to which I thought was a giant Chevette And S for the other X body cars I only remember them because hear my much older teenage siblings used to refer to them as "baby Jew canoes" Because all the old Jewish farts used to drive oldsmobile omegas And Buick Somersets Which were just smaller versions of the bigger "Jew canoes" like the cutlass Sierra and Buick century. Looking at the Chevy citation I could see why its replacement the Chevy Corsica/Beretta seemed like such a major leap forward For as mediocre as they really were. Growing up my mom always bought A new American car Every couple years and would get rid of it once it had its 1st problem until finally in the late 1980s she bought a Camry and Has only bought Camrys since.

The truck line carried GM through the 80’s with the square body . It is one of the best looking trucks ever built. And keep in mind that at one time GM suppled the power plants for a large percentage of the diesel trucks in this country. The x body may have start the downfall but other things contributed to the decline . For me the J body cars were the worst. That car alone made me buy a Honda.

Very good presentation! Well researched and informative.

The X-Body cars were produced in North Tarrytown, NY. Our 1980 Citation when we picked it up from the dealer, the manual transmission was stuck. It took 3 months to get a new one.

Thanks for the K-car shout-out. We loved our 1988 Aries K wagon and 1989 Dodge Spirit. They were completely gutless, but very economical to own. The wagon was super-practical, and the Spirit looked and rode like a much more expensive car.

Rushed engineering is as strong as it ever been. Now, testing is being done by the consumers. That's why it is wise to wait a few years after a new model reached the market so that one can evaluate the reliability from complaints.

I had the “Sport “ version of the Citation, lol It was my first car, X-11 with the 2.8 HO v6 engine. My mother put the down payment on it and I drove it for years, finally sold it to a friend. The 80s rocked

I bought my 1984 Citation in 1993 with 40,000 miles on it. It had been babied and looked like new. I drove it another 100,000 miles and sold it to a friend in 2006. It is still on the road. I saw it this past Saturday. It was nothing fancy but was very reliable. It would do 35 and sometimes 40 MPG. It was a good value for me. I can't complain. I guess I was the exception.

My grandparents traded their 1973 Cadillac Eldorado, an absurd behemoth of a car, for a Buick X-body coupe. They initially loved the car because it was so much easier to drive and park than the Caddy, but it was a short honeymoon because they started having problems with it pretty quickly. I think GM had the ability to do a lot better, but the company was taken over by cost accountants who insisted on doing everything as cheaply as possible.

I loved my ‘85 Citation V6 auto. 2 tone blue. I only paid $1000 for it and had no issues.

I believe that GMs downfall started long before the x-body cars. I think GMs downfall began when they started to badge engineering the various makes. It used to be that when you bought a Cadillac, you got a Cadillac. Then in the seventies, they started the whole mix and match situation where you had Chevy engines in Caddys, Olds motors in Pontiac’s, etc. The cars also started to be nothing more than expensive, dressed up Chevrolets. In the eighties and nineties, the cars even looked cheap. You mentioned the Pontiac Aztec; people did think the Aztec was ugly, not for the styling, but rather because it looked like a pile of crap with all the cheap plastic cladding all over it. They released a redesigned version in the last couple model years that did away with the cheap plastic body cladding and it was much better received by customers. Unfortunately the damage was done. Even today, GM builds garbage cars, and it’s not the fault of the unions, ( GM had more union involvement when it built some of the best, most innovative vehicles in the world) eit’s the fault of GM management trying to cut costs wherever they can. Things like plastic parts in their transmissions that are guaranteed to fail after a few thousand miles. HVAC systems that seem to fail just as soon as the warranty expires and cost a small fortune to repair. The LS V8s suffer from bearing failures and drop exhaust valve seats that destroy the engines. I know that the LS has a huge following because you can make cheap power with them, but these people know the engine is going to fail, and count on the fact that there are junkyards full of them so when they do throw a connecting rod through the side of the block, they can just go to the local pick a part and get another one. If GM were the last car company on the planet, and my only alternative mode of transportation was a horse and buggy, I’d choose the horse and buggy because at least I know it would be vastly more reliable than a GM car or truck. GM failed because they are more concerned with producing a product at the lowest cost possible, so they can boost their stock value and the return to investors and maintain the multi-million dollar executive pay. Building a quality product is a secondary concern. Now I understand that the goal of a business is to make money, but that should be the byproduct of building and selling a quality product. Ford places more importance on the product they produce. Do they sometimes get it wrong? Absolutely. But they correct the problems as best they can. You mentioned the Pinto issue from the early seventies. This wasn’t a problem with ALL Pintos, just the first couple model years; the problem had been resolved by Ford placing a steel plate between the bumper and fuel tank. Sure, the way Ford dealt with the problem by just paying people off was terrible, the problem was corrected. Imports, Toyota in particular, are always updating and improving their cars, even as they are going down the assembly line. That’s what makes them so good. GM will just spit out the same old junk for decades, add some things here and there to modernize it, but it’s the same crap. And if something fails, they just kill it instead of improving it. This is why GM fails, and why they suck.

I was a Chevy Warranty clerk at the time. The Citation had one recall after another, making it one of the most recalled cars in history. The dealerships made a ton of money off of GM over this one, and that miserable gas to diesel 5.7 litre conversion mess they were putting into Impalas and Caprices. Blown head gaskets and blown out bottoms. We ended up just replacing those motors. Tsk, tsk, tsk.... I love my Subaru!

Thank you for you explanations. I have owned only one American car in my life because they used to be too big for European roads, used too much expensive gas. This one car was the Olds Omega Brougham V6. I was proud to own such a good looking automobile. I must admit that I did not have any technical problem with it over the 10 years I kept it. Of course, the driving conditions here are different those in America: shorter distances, slower average speed, more fuel conscious driving habits, etc. The only source of disappointment was the small fuel tank and rust! As I said, I kept this vehicle for 10 years, drove it short of 200,000km. I finished its life as a tow car for gliders!

Good luck finding a Citation. You don’t see many because their paint fell off! I had a 1981 and within a year paint was falling off. And all of the other ones I saw had the same problem. I complained and complained about it. I even offered to remain a customer if they would paint it at cost, and they refused! I wrote to the factory and complained. Then the local division sent me a rude letter telling me there was nothing wrong with my car and “Don’t you ever write Detroit again. We make the decision if you gets a new paint job and we decided there is nothing wrong with your car.” I cost GM at least 22 new car sales since then on top of me never buying another one. Never again!!! By the way, one of the GM X-body cars had a normal horizontal radio. I can’t remember which one right now.

A Citation was my first car. I hated it. The transmission broke and the rear window flew off on the freeway. Now, decades later, I'm feeling nostalgic for that ugly little car.

I was born in 1969. My first car was a 1976 Buick Electra Landau with a 455. ( I bought it from my grandad who worked for GM as a draftsman.) I was 17. My next car was a Pontiac Pheonix.(Chevy Citation in disguise). I loved the Buick...but my soul embraced the Pontiac. I could count on it starting in Vermont winters. I could not worry that the water pump may overheat and crack. It was a nice car...a relaxing car. Oh yeah,the steering scared my brother enough he stopped asking me to borrow it...I consider that a plus.😉

I was at that time a vehicle mechanic in the Air Force in the late 1970's and I avoided GM vehicles from what I saw in the shop at work. At that time the Air Force bought American cars and trucks for use around the base and the Fords and Chrysler prodiucts were in only for normal maintenance while the GM's had all sorts of random breakdowns. I bought a 1978 Dodge Omni and a buddy bought a Citation that was in the Chevy dealers getting warranty work at least once a month. After 6 months my buddy took a bath on the car and got a Toyota Corolla. In the meantime my Dodge Omni all I did was take and do normal oil changes and drove it for the next 15 years and 200,000 with just normal oil changes and replacement of wear parts. I then drove Chrysler products until about 2015 and then god forbid the mistake of the PT Cruiser that my wife bought and we ended up doing a lemon law replacement for it. We then went with god forbid a Chevy Trax in 2015 and Equinox diesel in 2018. Both the Chevrolets are good running reliable cheap to buy and run.

I had a 80 2 door with a 4 speed. It ran forever only major repair was a clutch. Must have been a good day at the factory.

Ok. I drove a 82 2door hatch. It was my first car. I turned 16 Aug of 1996. So me and my Father started looking for my first car starting in May. We thought maybe an old police car from an auction first. Then my dads friends Aunts husband died and low and behold. A Citation for 350 bucks. Hasn't ran in 4 years. Sat in a garage in a suburb in Chicago. God I hated it. Light blue hatchback. I was so embarrassed. I wanted a Caprice with a 350. Anyway. Me and my dad went to go see it on a Saturday. Didnt start. 4 flats. No gas. Boxes all over it. Took a few hours. We got it running. Took it to a family friends shop. Basic maintenance. Like 100 bucks. And 2 new tires and 2 used tires. Even threw in a free brake job. He had the pads sitting on a shelf for 10 years lol. Days. Weeks. Months went by. And you know what. She grew on me. Yeah guys laughed. But I had my own wheels. Didnt have to ask to borrow the family car. Our friends shop did oil changes for me. It was like 10 bucks in 1996. Drove that car all year. Then again in 1997. A whole year. 2 Chicago winters. Didnt die. Started up on the coldest mornings. Never broke down. And i beat it. It has a 2.8 V6. So it was somewhat quick. Never left me stranded. Yes. Ugly. But God it was a tough chick. So guys can talk shit all they want. I drove one as a teenager for 2 years. Zero issues other then being ugly lol

Working at a GM dealership service department was job security. Those junks always needed fixing. Really bad when the recall replacement parts failed quickly too.

As a recent contractor at GM, all I can say is if you buy one of their vehicles good luck! Worked at the Flint truck, Spo, Pontiac stamping, Flint metal center and let me say if you weren’t stoned when you arrived, you will get a contact high walking into the plant. And lazy does not even begin to explain what I have seen. Workers literally sleeping with their shoes off and feet propped up on a desk right on the production floor! Snoring !!

My parents had Datsuns and Toyota’s. My first car was a 88 Grand Am. Wonderful car, crappy engine. Loved it. 😀

At 6:21 That is a nice clean image of a Chevy Citation before it rotted out

I remember as a 15 year old when they came out in spring of 1979 as early 1980 models. My dad and I went over to the local Chevy dealer in Fort Worth off of South Loop 820, to look at them. Dad picked a fairly basic 4 cylinder model with a manual 4 speed overdrive to try out. It seemed to be a decent car. Weeks later, Mom came with us, and we tried out a V6 Citation sedan, also with the manual transmission. I'm sure Dad was glad he never bought one. We did have a 74 Nova bought new that we got rid of after less than two years, because it was a lot of trouble. It was the Six, and it was prone to stalling without warning.

As a young person looking for a new car in 1981, I saw the cheap crap that the Big 3 was releasing. After some research, I purchased the 1982 Mazda 626 sedan because it looked good and fit my budget. With the exception of purchasing a 1970 Dodge Challenger in 1993, it wasn't until 2009 that I purchased a new American car. That was the Dodge Challenger. Yes, the dark age of the American car industry made me completely ignore them for all of that time.

My '18 Buick Regal is the first GM car I've had in a while that actually feels like GM is finally taking things seriously.

I have a 1982 Chevy Citation, and it runs great. No problems, or issues.

My brother purchased a 1979 Pontiac Lemans because his 1980 Buick Sky Lark he ordered was delayed in production. When the Buick finally arrived, he traded his Lemans in on it. The Skylark automatic transmission, would not shift into 3rd gear, the problem, they said was the transmission clutch could not in gauge because the fluid channels were not drilled from the factory. The Pontiac was a gem, the Sky Lark was a piece of !

I started a new job at a business that was just opening and one of the girls I worked with drove a brand new 82 or 83 Cavalier hatchback for the first week we were open. It was top of the line, red , had the nice wheels and was a really sharp looking car. After that first week I noticed she was either being dropped off by her husband or driving an older Suburban for several months. I finally asked her one day what happened to the Cavalier and why wasn't she driving it to work anymore. Well she said that it was at the dealer trying to have a starting and running issue fixed. For six months the dealer had it in their shop and could not figure it out. Turns out that that she had bought the car brand new and had actually only driven it for about a month or so and the rest of the time the dealer had it. For the two years she had it she got to drive it about three months off and on. She finally traded it off for a Ford Mustang.

I have owned several X cars. I definitely agree that these were the right car at the right time, and also GM had to get these right at a critical point in time, which they really didn't. My experience has been ok and I actually like them very much. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that I have owned mostly Buick Skylarks. which are much nicer cars than the Citation, which was very basic. I also never owned a 1980 model. The first one I had was an 81. While the 81 did have a few problems during it's life, it's been a decent vehicle. I was driving it daily until it had about 220,000 miles on it. I heard about a lot of the problems people had with their X cars many years ago, and I couldn't really understand why people thought they were so bad. I never had problems with handling, braking, or torque steer or anything like that. I don't remember our car ever going back to the dealership for a recall, so maybe the 1981 models did not have any recalls that I can remember. I did a lot of researching through old magazine articles to understand what other people were experiencing. I remember the whole X car rear brake lockup situation - something I never experienced personally - but which I do think that situation alone damaged these cars' reputation severely. What I have heard about this situation was GM originally planned to install a pull up style parking brake in between the front seats. Late in the car's development cycle, they wanted 6 passenger seating, so they moved the parking brake to the floor and redesigned it has a step-on pedal type parking brake. However when they did this, they found that (for reasons I don't understand) the parking brake did not hold effectively. So, the installed brake shoes with a greater coefficient of friction in the rear. This caused the situations were people slammed the brakes on in emergency stops and the rear brakes locked up. For those of you who are old enough to remember driving non-antilock brake cars, or even any older car, you know that if you slam the brakes on on any car, the rear wheels often lock up because the weight of the car is shifted to the front and the rear end lightens up. And, usually one side locks up before the other side, which means the rear end of the car tends to swing out. It's a scary experience - something I have experienced not on an X car but on an older 1970s rear wheel drive car. So, I don't know what that happened on the X cars was something completely unusual for any car of that time period but evidently it was happening more often. GM did try to correct the problem by installing a different proportioning valve that reduced the possibility of rear wheel lockup, as well as different brake shoes. The rear brake lockup situation happened on the 1980 model year cars, mainly early on in the production year. The problem was, as was stated in the video, they were selling so well that hundreds of thousands of cars were affected by the recall. Part of the reason sales dropped off though was this reputation damage, but also in 1982, GM came out with the similarly sized A cars, and the smaller J cars - so people had other options to choose from. There were various other issues with the cars that I have heard about. The engine mount at the top of the engine would go bad and produce a thumping noise on acceleration. There were problems with the power steering racks, which were made of aluminum to save weight, but they became scored internally over time leading to problems with loss of power assist when the weather was very cold and the car as first started. There were also some transmission issues early on. It does seem incredible to me that a company as large as GM, which at the time had a good reputation, was largely respected, had previously come out with highly regarded products, and generally had brought many good innovations to the marketplace, could have made so many small mistakes that irritated consumers and automotive critics. The only reason I can understand why this happened was because in the spring of 1979 (not 1978 as stated in the video) there was a second oil crisis brought on by the overthrow of the Shah in Iran leading OPEC to set up another embargo with the U.S. This event led GM to rushing the cars out into the marketplace. As they were 1980 models, they would normally have been introduced in September of 1979, but because of the second oil crisis in the spring of 1979, they were released early, in April of 1979. People were scrambling to get their hands on them, perhaps before all of the bugs had been worked out. My personal opinion is as each model year passed, the X cars got better and better. The oldest one I owned was a mid-1981 model year Buick, and I thought the car was fine. I in fact still have it. I just liked the car so I kept it all these years, even though it doesn't get much use now. I think what happened with these cars is really unfortunate. The basic design is fine. They're really not that bad, but the recalls they had early on created doubts in people's minds. The rear brake lockup saga was highly publicized in the news in 1982 and 1983. The issue was, "did GM know about the problem and release the cars anyway?" as was the situation with Ford and the Pinto in 1978. If you ask me, the issue with Ford and the Pinto was MUCH WORSE than the situation with the X cars. Gas tank explosions from rear collisions, knowing about them in advance, not spending a few bucks to install a shield that could have prevented it, knowing people would die and/or suffer from severe burns from this, but calculating out that it was cheaper to pay for lawsuits than to recall the cars?? What Ford did was far worse than what GM did. But somehow Ford did not suffer as much as GM. After the X car situation, it seemed like people were more skeptical of GM products, and the auto critics seemed to become much more critical of GM. Even cars that they made that were really good were heavily criticized. Saturns were mentioned in this video. I really don't recall much in the way of problems with those cars. I remember a Consumer Reports article where they rated the Saturn SL vs Toyota Corolla as equal - maybe in 1994 or so. They said they were totally on par with each other and were equal - but they wound up rating the Toyota higher because the Saturn's engine was noisier. I was like, does it matter? How big of a deal is that? Then you hear things about Toyota Camry V6 engines from the early 2000s and they have oil gelling issues which ruin the engines, but Toyota did their own internal recall on that. Or the whole mysterious acceleration issues on Camrys form around 2003 - something which my neighbor personally experienced and almost drove off the edge of a parking deck because of it - but Toyota suffered no reputation damage from issues like that. I do think GM deserves criticism for things they did a long time ago, but they're not doing those things now and haven't for many years. I do think the X car issues started the trend towards people doubting GM. I think it's time people got over the mistakes the American car companies made 40 years ago. It's 2020 at this point.

I had an 83 Citation....it was a great car. Reliable. Mine had 6cylinder and manual transmission.

I bought a 1980 Citation 2dr V6 4-speed (blue) used in 1984. Overall it was a "good enough" car. The design flaw in my opinion was torque steer. If you aimed it straight and punched it, it wanted to angle off to the right. My brother later got a family hand-me down from some distant relative of a four door I4 Citation. It did not suffer so much from that problem, because it didn't have a lot of torque or acceleration in the first place. My youngest brother got a used K-Car. He got the worst, a blow head gasket and a warped head that exceeded the value of the car to repair. The various problems I had over the years weren't anything out of the ordinary for any car of that era. The interior was entirely too plastic-y and the tops of the door cards began to crumble after a decade in the sun. The cables in the shifter linkage would stretch or fail and/or become detached and a crooked shop would want to replace the trans but an honest shop would adjust/reattach with locktite. Radiator eventually failed and unlike the old radiators, could not be repaired because there's just not enough material in them. Failed left rear wheel bearing, but you couldn't just replace the bearing, you had to replace the entire assembly (and needed an impact rated Torx T-50 drive to do it). My favorite garage calls those "sealed for life" bearings "sealed for death". Fuel pump failure ... easy to fix but hard to get to not leak. I think I had to do the job three times before I got it right. Headliner began to fail and I held it up with thumbtacks. Eventually traded it in on a Celebrity Eurosport. The Eurosport only lasted until I got rear-ended the third time and my bodyman said he could straighten it again but it would never again be strong. My brother's car had the tack welds under the hood fail so that it would flex up at highway speeds. That was disconcerting enough that we put hood pins on it.

I had an ‘83 Citation with V6 as a company car (it was leased, the leasing dealer was 300 miles away, local dealer did repairs). As it was being delivered to me, the power steering failed. Dealer repaired it. At 3500 miles the dashboard cracked. Replaced by dealer. At 5000 miles the transmission went out. Repaired by dealer. I turned it in at 15000 miles. I liked the car as far as comfort, utility and drivability, but heck...just too many things mechanically failing.