Curbside Classic: 1. Chevrolet Citation - GM's Deadliest Sin Ever. The greatest crime in ancient Greece was hubris. And the perpetrator that carried out the sins as a result of their hubris inevitably faced great shame and retribution, most often fatal.

So for the sake of this CC, we’re going to drop the Citation’s X- Car moniker, and call them the H- Cars. And just in case you’re not convinced that the Citation truly was GM’s greatest sin rather than the Vega (coincidentally numbered GM’s DS #2), let me cite you the incontrovertible evidence: Of course numbers don’t tell the whole story, but I challenge you to find another newly introduced car that did so well in its first year and whose sales collapsed so spectacularly thereafter. And that 8. 11k in 1. Citation was so popular, supply couldn’t keep up with demand. Folks waited months for their deadly sins to be delivered, and Chevy might well have been able to sell a million in 1. But they were so poorly built, the drop- off was almost instantaneous.

By its fourth year, the Citation had dropped some 9. And in 1. 98. 5, it was all over.

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Having jumped ahead to the final outcome of GM’s hubris- mobile, let’s step back a bit and consider the setting for this tragedy. For the third time at the beginning of a new decade, GM was determined to take on the import competition. In 1. 96. 0, it was the VW Beetle, and GM countered with the conceptionally similar (rear engine) but bigger Corvair. It failed at its intended mission for a number of reasons, but there were no egregious issues with its quality or durability (for the standards of the time). But GM cut corners, and had make a series of improvements to its suspension to save face, including a substantially redesigned second generation, even though the Corvair was by then already doomed.

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In 1. 97. 0, it was Toyota and Datsun, as well as a few fading European imports that GM countered with the Vega. Despite them all being highly conventional rwd cars, Chevrolet bungled the Vega’s engine and rust- resistance. And although build quality was certainly not up to the Japanese competition’s level, it was not atrocious, in terms of what was yet to come. For 1. 98. 0, GM had the revolutionary Honda Accord in its visor, as well as the goal of redefining the compact American car in an all- new fwd package. The Citation and its H- Body brethren from Pontiac, Olds and Buick (we’ll get to them in more detail in another CC) were the closing number of GM’s overly- ambitious downsizing drama in three acts, which had begun three years earlier.

Make no mistake: this mammoth undertaking that would result in the 1. Caprice and the rest of the full- sized line up, the 1. Malibu and the other midsized cars, and the 1. Citation and friends was no less than the biggest single corporate industrial re- investment ever up to that time. GM was betting its whole future here, and we all know how it turned out: the eighties were GM’s worst decade ever in terms of market share loss, and the Citation not only kicked it off, it also set the template for almost all of its sins from then on.

GM’s biggest act of hubris was in even thinking it could execute such an undertaking, given its history. And clearly, the results got worse with each act. The fact that the Citation would be GM’s first ever- front wheel drive mass- market car didn’t help. As well as GM’s perpetual obsession with the next quarter’s profit. The mega- billions GM committed to its downsizing was taking its toll on the bottom line, and the Citation was behind schedule.

Switching production facilities and suppliers over to a completely new generation of cars was taking its toll. Typical for GM, the Citation looked best on paper, or to the automotive writers who were suckered when they drive the most un- production- like “ringers” ever hand assembled and wrote breathless reports on the Citation’s spectacular “better than a BMW” abilities. Unfortunately, GM’s greatest industrial re- investment didn’t include a new four cylinder engine. The noisy, crude and rude “Iron Duke” 2. L OHV four was adapted for its new east- west orientation, and shook 9. But GM was a bit more ambitious with the optional engine: the immortal 6.

V6, still being built in China, and only just recently departed from the US GM line- up. In its first incarnation here, it had 2. L and 1. 15 hp (1. And in 1. 98. 1, the sporty X- 1.

Citation was graced with a bumped- up HO version, which churned out 1. Just the ticket to fully display the Citation’s truly prodigious torque steer and other entertaining characteristics, some of them quite genuine, especially in later model years. Since quietness was always disproportionately high on the list of criteria for GM cars, and because neither of the Citation’s engines were intrinsically quiet and smooth, extreme measures were taken to isolate them from the passenger compartment.

The front subframe that carried the drive train and front suspension was attached to the body with very soft rubber mounts. This led to a remarkable sensation during acceleration. It felt as if your favorite H- mobile was composed of two separate components (which it sort of was), or to take the analogy further, it felt like the body was a semi- trailer hooked to the back of a semi- truck. Floor it, and the truck started heading one direction (left, if I remember correctly) while the trailer both followed as well as tried to keep the truck from running off the roadway. Amusing, sort of. I had the chance to do it several times a day, in my Skylark company car.

And I got quite good at it: kind of like crabbing an airplane. I did used to wonder if one day my car’s front sub frame would just fully detach and head off into to the median by itself; it sure seemed to want to very badly. One might eventually get used to that, and if you had a good running V6, these cars could feel pretty lively given their light weight. But what goes fast must slow down, eventually, especially in LA traffic.

And that’s where the fun disappeared, in a cloud of burning rubber. GM made almost the same penny- ante mistake with Citation as with the Corvair. Then, they left off a $1. Now it was a $1. 4 (?) rear brake proportioning valve. Drivers complained, NHTSA sued GM, which GM ended up winning in 1. My Skylark with wider tires and wheels wasn’t too bad that way, but I once drove a four cylinder Citation that was highly prone.

Let’s just say that my old Peugeot 4. Realistic Summer Sports Simulator Apk Free Download. Citation didn’t, with 6. That was just for starters (and stoppers).

In between, a seemingly endless rash of maladies made these cars recall kings and queens. Download Vlc Media Player Nokia E63 Battery. Transmission hoses that leaked and cause fires. Various driveability issues: fuel injection was deemed too expensive; meanwhile the two- barrel carb on the V6 was the most complicated and expensive fuel mixing device Rube Goldberg was ever commissioned to design. Sundry pieces of trim were prone to suddenly disassociating themselves from the rest of the car, in shame perhaps.

Starting on day one. General build quality varied greatly, somewhere between miserable and mediocre. Cost cutting resulted in skin cutting from rough edges.

Within one model year, the word was out and the jig was up: the Citation was a lemon. In a truly cynical move, GM found the pennies to add a “II” suffix to the Citation in 1. Enough fools fell for the Citation II to bump sales by 5k units that year, before they realized that it was just a Citation Too. What really must have burned GM with the Citation’s flame out was that Toyota was dealing with the exact same challenge: to convert its rwd Carina/Corona lines to fwd. The all- new Camry appeared in 1. Citation was crashing. Ironically, the Camry had a distinctly Citation- ish look to it too, especially the hatchback.

But looks can be deceiving. First year Camrys are considered as utterly solid and fool- proof as this year’s, if not more so. I can think of no better example of the contrasting state of affairs that predicted their makers’ respective trajectories in 1. GM’s Death Warrant Exhibit A.