The Citation may be best remembered as the car that replaced the Chevrolet Nova. It was the company’s first foray into front-wheel drive cars as the X-body platform was reworked for that change. Unlike the Nova, you seldom see one of these automobiles today, yet more than 1.6 million were built across six model years. This faded example looks worn, but it is said to operate properly. Hailing from Denver, Colorado, this Chevy is available as “cheap wheels” here on craigslist. A nod goes to Mike F. for this Malaise Era tip.
General Motors went all-in on the Citation by sharing it with all the other divisions except Cadillac. So, there was also a Buick Skylark, Oldsmobile Omega, and Pontiac Phoenix version of the Citation. Three body styles were offered, including the 3-door hatchback like this one. The standard engine was the “Iron Duke” inline-4 that originated at Pontiac, and it may have been the best thing about the car. Although Motor Trend bestowed Car of the Year honors on the Citation in 1980, quality control and recalls would plague the vehicle during its single-generation run.
I owned one of these cars, a 5-door hatchback, for a weekend. I was unhappy with my 1980 Pontiac Sunbird, so I traded it in on a used 1980 Citation. After I washed it and found water had leaked all over the floorboards, I rushed back to the dealer to get my old car back. We’re told this ’80 coupe has been given a tune-up and has a new head gasket at 94,000 miles, so it should perform as a daily driver.
Rust does not seem to be an issue on this survivor, but the greyish-blue paint is badly faded, and there are a couple of small dents here and there. The interior is also worn, especially the driver’s seat. But if you need cheap transportation and don’t require perfection, this Chevy could do the job. It has a manual transmission, while I’m guessing most Citations came with an automatic. The seller says the title has been rebuilt, so is that a red flag? It doesn’t look to have been in a major accident. Perhaps it was once stolen and then recovered.
You left out that it has a 4 cylinder engine,and that
they’re asking $3000 for it.
Every once-in-a-while I see a perfect Light Blue
Citation 4 door driving around in our area.Always gets
my attention.
The Iron Duke 4 is mentioned.
$3K for this or $3.9K for the 81 Imperial? Not a difficult decision to make. Drove a slightly used Citation back in the day. Never wanted to be in one again. Cheap insides, cheap outsides.
The paint is faded? From the pix, my first thought was that it had been repainted with a few spray cans.
I recall thinking the X11 trim looked cool on these, as a kid, but I don’t remember anyone saying good things about Citations.
Danno was the x11 the suspension/handling pkg. I thought I read on here that people who drove the X11 citations w stick shift, and V6 were actually quite happy with the cars, and they performed very well for the time.
Ahh, right, a performance upgrade. Thanks for jogging my memory.
Even though it’s not expensive, it’s hard to see $3,000 being a deal. It has several visible dents, the paint is shot, and it needs interior work, at a minimum. Someone is likely to be looking at it as cheap transportation, not a quasi enthusiast car that will draw attention at a coffee and cars.
Steve R
I had a loaded, V6/4-speed Citation X-11 hatchback in college. It was entertaining to drive (for the time), had room for five people, and more cargo space than some station wagons. Too bad it was rushed into production and ruined by quality control problems.
This one has one of the more unusual options: mechanical remote control swing-out side windows. There’s a lever above the b-pillar on each side that’s rotated to open or close the rear side windows. Cars with this option have a triangular black-out panel at the rear edge of the window.
You might want drive it first. Some of these develop pretty funky and spooky steering feel due to the way the rack is mounted. My buddy have one in college and it was terrifying to drive. You couldn’t feel the road. But I drove others , which were just fine.
Unfortunately, these days, good luck finding a mechanic who has even heard of a Chevy Citation, much less one who knows how to diagnose and work on it! Many parts are no longer produced and very hard to find. A buddy of mine bought an ’81 X11 not all that long ago , and he couldn’t even find an air filter for it except on eBay. It’s been over 40 years since the last one rolled off the line and they didn’t last particularly long after that on the whole.
I think this is one of those cars where you would have to really understand it and do it as a labor of love.
Price is way out of whack. Right now there’s an ’82 for $3800 on eBay, 55000 miles, 4cyl, automatic, much nicer condition and plenty of engine bay and underside photos to demonstrate condition.
Garbage!
I nearly got killed in a rented one that did a 180 on a wet highway when I tried to brake which was likely caused by the rear set locking up.
As for the ‘Iron Duke’ GM seems to think that by giving a tough sounding name it makes the product. Yes, compared to the Vega’s engine this was an improvement but that does not make it a great motor.
I had an ’82 Citation 4 door hatch with a V6, which was filtered down to me when I was in college. I’ll be contrarian and say it was a great car. It was fast and an amazing amount of room in the back if you folded the back seat down. I could fit a 2 x 15″ bass speaker cabinet in the back, no small feat. I don’t remember having any problems with it at all, until we had a bad head gasket. My dad didn’t feel like fixing the car (this was circa 1989), so that was the end of it…
My father bought one of these when they came out, a 4 dr. with V6. It was according to him the worst vehicle he ever owned. Between recalls and breakdowns it spent more time in the dealership service department than on the road. Even with the V6 it was very underwhelming. Then in the four years he owned it, the silver paint pealed and it rusted so quickly you could sit on the porch and hear pieces fall off. Not one of GM’s better efforts. No wonder you don’t see them today.
I haven’t seen one in a long time. It’s just as ugly as I remember.
My dad had one. I put a lot of miles on his.
Easily a contender for the worst vehicle of all time and certainly the worst GM product of it’s era.
This was the “all knobs and trim fall off” stage of American car design, where accountants were telling engineers how to build really shtty cars and foist them on the public, because, well, the public is stupid will have to buy what they make. Not.
The engine was useful in a tractor, maybe.
These horrendous things are the reason that Toyota and Honda and BMW made huge inroads in the US market, because they sold quality products that lasted 200k miles.
I turns out that the public was not really that stupid, and that cost a lot of people their jobs.
You are exactly right about GM selling junk back then. They thought if they built it everybody would love it. HOWEVER people got tired of being sold junk and went to see the Toyota dealer.
Think of all the junk GM built over the years. Same for Ford and Chrysler.
Cadillac had a meeting. At this meeting the assembly plant manager for Seville and Eldorado told they had an advertising budget for 25 million dollars or maybe more but it was a lot. A Cadillac service rep raised his hand and asked if they were going to fix the water leak problems on those cars. The plant manager told him that it would cost $250,000.00 to fix the problem and that money was not in the budget. That rep almost got fired over asking that question. Can you imagine GM spending millions for ads but not 250K to fix a very serious problem?
Sadly, yes I can. Millions for propaganda, but not one cent for quality! My apologies to Senator Robert Goodloe Harper of Maryland, LOL! Proof that the beancounters who ran GM into the ground at the time had their penny-pinching heads planted firmly up their behinds! I’m talking about you, Roger B. Smith!
BTW, Senator Harper was the Senator who made the famous quote: “Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!”. He was referring to the Barbary Pirates attempt to extort money from American merchant ships for safe passage. President Monroe sent the US Marines to “…the shores of Tripoli” to stop the extortion and was successful, ending the threat to American merchant shipping.
Such a letdown when these came out. Had been hoping the resources of mighty GM could do better. I guess most of the buyers where even more letdown.
I had two Citations. In 1980 my employer provided me with a new one for a company car and in 82 I ordered an X-11 to race in the SCCA Showroom Stock B class. The X-11’s were dominating SSB at the time, but I never got to race mine except for a few times on parking lots. By the time it was delivered I’d been offered a chance to crew on a Trans Am race team. That, a full time job and a new wife all got in the way of my plans. I did autocross the X-11 occasionally with a fair amount of success, but it never made it onto an actual race track.
In my opinion the Citations always got a bad rap, especially the X-11. The first year version was just some decals, but the 81-82 version was a complete package. The 135 hp FI engine, ram air hood, rear spoiler, Eagle GT 60 series tires, wheels, exhaust, rear axle, shocks, springs, engine cradle, clutch and other parts of the X-11 were all unique to the X-11. They handled and accelerated great, pulling close to .9G’s on a skid pad and running the quarter mile in the mid 16 second range. Mid 16’s isn’t all that impressive today but in 1981 it was about the same as a new Corvette, a second quicker than the Turbo Trans Am and 3 seconds quicker than an 81 Mustang.
My 1980 Citation X11 always had a bad torque problem so I made the top engine mount solid and it made quite a difference in the shifter
Also it had a nice growl –the muffler back in 1984 cost 110.00 bucks but it was worth it.
I remember when they first came out. And do not remember ever seeing one since.
The driving-school car I learned to drive in back in the early ’80s was a Skylark, the Buick version of this platform.
I had a used Citation that I drove back and forth to work in. 2.8 V6, 4 speed. It was brown, as in brown inside, outside everywhere! One of the biggest pieces of junk I ever owned!
When I was a sales weasel they were known as Mutations
good luck finding parts.
In 1980 I worked at a department store in Edina, MN. They were giving one of these away as a promotion. They had one parked at the mall entrance. It was grey, and in the way. That’s all I have to say!
My sister had one of these four several years. Silver blue but otherwise looked identical to this one. The front rack made it scary to drive, the rear brakes locked up if you looked at them sideways and the interior plastics were literally crumbling. She loved that car though I think probably because it was the first thing she had after the Datsun 210 that damn near folded in half…
I remember that these were Motor Trend’s “Car of the Year” in 1980, complete with a picture of an X-11 Citation on the cover. Not one of MT’s better picks, because in addition to all of the flaws previously mentioned, these were recalled because the twist-beam rear axle had a nasty habit of separating from the car at speed! Video of the rear tires rolling down the road with the axle still attached as the rear end drops to the ground and the pavement strips the paint off of the lower rear quarter panels were shown on the evening news when the recall was announced! Fun to watch, less fun if you happen to be driving one when that happens.
Hey Russ Dixon…regarding “Perhaps it was once stolen and then recovered.” Who in their right mind would have attempted to steal a Chevy Citation? LOL. Maybe if the thief had a paper bag over their head to avoid embarrassment!
Judging from the comments here this might be the most unloved vehicle featured in BF for quite some time. In all honesty this was a time when the bean counters dictated at GM. So much for expectations. Who can forget the Vega and the Chevette? My personal experience was with the Chevette; probably the most dismal conveyance I’ve ever experienced. The fact that this Citation is still road worthy is nothing short of miraculous. I can’t remember the last time I saw any of these late seventies early eighties GM creations on the road. GLWTS and I really mean it.
In the early 80s my employer leased Slowtations for our company service cars. The 4 door hatch had amazing load space and the other good thing about it was turning it in for a newly leased Topaz.
GM was trying something new with the paint. Some colors went bad fast. My dad bought a 1980 4-dr in medium blue. (Oshawa car) The paint came off in sheets in the first year. It got a conventional paint job under warranty, but dad was never really happy with the whole deal.
The EPA had a lot to do with bad paint.
True, as far as it goes. The new at the time water-based paints that the EPA mandated to reduce the emissions of so-called Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) from the acrylic lacquer paints used previously were part of the problem, at least initially, until the automakers gained experience with the new formulations and the paint manufacturers improved their formulations. Modern water-based paints are now just as good, if not better than the lacquer used previously, it just took some time to climb the learning curve with the water-based paints. It always takes some time to work the bugs out of new technology. You never know how the new tech will work until it gets into the customers hands. Given the time, the Engineers will get it right, as long as management gives them the time to do so. My biggest problem with GM has always been that the bean counters (accountants and managers) never give the Engineers enough time to do their job, and they cancel the new tech either before, or worse, just after the Engineers get the bugs worked out of the new tech! Doh!
Life’s lessons when Citations are classic cars. Chevy’s Edsel
These were fine cars except for the computers, the drive axels, the CV joints, CV joint boots, the rack & pinion, and the body.
I think any mechanic that worked on these when they were new swore off on ever owning a car with a computer as well as front wheel drive cars.
Today the FWD cars ride better than the RWD cars and the front drive parts last forever.
I had an X11 2.8 v6 stick –drove it for 11 years and it was a lot of fun on the back roads–it had 10 H.P. more than a stock v6. It was a total and I hung a nose on it . I enjoyed the car. It helped me teach my kids how to drive a stick.
As we used to say on the used car lot.. that’s a scary situation right there
My buddy’s parents had two of them. His dad’s had a 4 spd and was fun but he went to a pick up in a year or less. His mom had hers for years and never had any issues that I heard of. She replaced it with a fancy Cavalier convertable