Citation for suckiness

[Faust]

If you guys have followed my builds, you know that my tastes run to the unusual. I love loser cars; they’re what I grew up with and I can remember them sucking even when new. I have found myself to be quite blessed when it comes to finding kits of these things, too!

For example, I don’t think there’s much more of an automotive failure than the Chevy Citation. Well, okay, maybe Ladas and Yugos, but for American cars, the Citation is about as bad as it can get. Heck, even exploding Pintos don’t seem to suck as badly! (Or do they?) Regardless, I have been lucky enough to get a Cavalier and a Chevette, but I was missing something from the GM Trinity of Failure: A Citation!

That has now been corrected, and I’ve got an Out of the Box review for you of the Revell 1/24 Citation kit. It’s not a bad kit, but for some reason they did it as a lowrider! What the… “Thankfully”, it can also be build stock!

Check out the awesomeness here!

http://adamrehorn.wordpress.com/model-kits/out-of-box-reviews/revel-124-chevy-citation-xlowrider-oob

[hgbben]

I've always wanted to build this. I've been fascinated with the Citation X-11 since I was a kid.

[jbwelda]

Bwahahahaha...love those wheels and especially the track. Citation...my mom had one and even by her low automotive standards she thought it sucked. like hard. at least the model doesn't have to run, just look good. that's gonna be a challenge too.

have fun

jb

[kalbert]

The Internet is littered with blog posts and magazine articles about how crummy they were. Its all the rage to dump on them. In reality they are no more or less crummy than any other car of the era, or any other car who's design and engineering was revolutionary and set the tone for the next 35 years. All GM front wheel drive vehicles to this day can trace their evolution back to this gamble. The good ideas are still there, the bad ideas were lessons learned and evolved. None would have come to fruition without starting somewhere, and they all started with the X. The 80 and 81 were the problematic years, but after the 82 redesign were much more reliable. The A body is identical to the 82+ X. Unfortunately Citation had a tarnished name and was in a confusing place between the new, nearly identical Celebrity and new, smaller Cavalier. Haters like to hate, but Citation wasn't the failure history would have you believe.

[Maindrian Pace]

Back in '81, the rather well-to-do family across the alley from my folk's house had a son turning 17, and it was time to get him a new car. He was a great guy, did very well in school, no bad habits, so I must say, he deserved it. He could have picked any new car within reason, and his pick was a new Citation X-11 hatch back, white with red stripes and rally steel wheels. I thought he was nuts, he could have had a Camaro or Mustang or Z car, but those didn't interest him. He waxed and detailed it almost every weekend and it was always spotless. It eventually grew on me, in a way. He drove the Citation throughout college, then traded it for a BMW 318i.

-MJS

[Draggon]

Davezinn did a nice job of de-suckifying this one.

[kalbert]

Not a huge fan of the front bits, but otherwise its sweet!

[jbwelda]

that one somehow didn't resemble my mom's much.

jb

[Ron Hamilton]

The car was not that bad. There were a lot worse cars on the market at that time.

[JunkPile]

Chevette, Escort

[Young iron]

I like these cars. They were witnesses of their Era.

That kit at least includes factory-correct decals. Whether you wanna build a X-11 or just a Club Coupe (like me), the wrongest part will be the hood. Any resin flat one ?

[Rob Hall]

No matter how mediocre or forgettable a particular car was, they will always have a few fans, long after the majority of the automotive world has moved on and forgotten it.

[Chuck Most]

Weird... my mom had a 1984 Citation II, and it was the only GM car I remember from childhood that wasn't constantly breaking down or acting up. Ironically, even after that, it was the last GM car she's owned to date- she traded it in on an '87 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe and has stuck with Ford products ever since. We had a neighbor with an Olds Omega (a couple of years older than the Citation but the same basic car) and he was still driving it into the late '90's.

The kit is pretty good by '80's Monogram standards, no matter how mediocre the actual car may have been. Look at it this way- MPC did a series of Chevy Cavaliers... and those were quite a bit more depressing in 1:1 than the Citation.

[PeeBee]

None of the cars being discussed here ever held my interest, but I must say that as much as I considered Chevettes to be nothing more than dull appliances, I did know a couple of guys back in the day who beat the hell outta these cars while wracking up zillions of miles on them. One guy I remember in particular was a rich kid who could have had any car he wanted (his other car was an early Porsche 356A coupe), but he couldn't see any reason to spend a fortune on car that was just being driven back and forth to work everyday.

PB.

[kalbert]

I like these cars. They were witnesses of their Era.

That kit at least includes factory-correct decals. Whether you wanna build a X-11 or just a Club Coupe (like me), the wrongest part will be the hood. Any resin flat one ?

The lowrider kit comes with both the X-11 cowl hood and a flat hood with a weird fake turbo bump to one side. The intake can be filled to make a stock flat one pretty easily.

I also like that it has decals for both the '80 and '81+ X-11, and appropriate wheels for both.

The most unfortunate part is the turbo V6. Outside of the turbo its pretty decent. There was a Citation 660 that was turbo, but it was a show car (and a hatch back).

On my todo list is a proper air cleaner, both the short and tall.

[10thumbs]

That Revell 81 Chevy Citation as a 3in1? That is the probably the worst pic of a model I've ever seen. It just sucks.

But it is Level 2.

I hope they don't make a Level 3.

Michael

[sfhess]

I always wondered why they made the kit a replica of the notchback instead of the hatchback. Just weird.

[MrObsessive]

I remember back in the late '70's when the automotive press was all abuzz about this car (actually the whole "X-Body" line), and I was really hoping for something exciting given the X-body designation that was given. IIRC, the car was intro'd sometime in early 1979, and I was quite disappointed in the whole lineup!

Mundane styling, wheezy performance, and really nothing to get too excited over at all. The X-11 Citation while not IMO too bad of a car, was no worse than the rest of the junk that the auto industry was pumping out in those days. I just look at that period as the really dark days of Detroit, which wouldn't really see any bright spots till the late '80's into the '90's.

As far as the model's concerned, for some weird reason I do like it------in fact I like the notchback better than the hatchback as it just plain looks better to me. Who knows, I may just go out and buy a kit because of this thread!

EDIT: Adam, I just read your review and was bursting out laughing!! Great writeup of this sad yet memorable car!

Edited October 24, 2014 by MrObsessive

[Mark]

As much of a GM hater as I am, I wouldn't call the Cavalier a failure. GM sold a mess of them, and in my area (where cars rust into oblivion) I still see plenty of them, even though the newest ones are now twelve years old. It might have been Car & Driver that remarked that they "run poorly, longer than a lot of other cars run at all".

My mom got fourteen years out of a Chevette...bought new towards the end of '81, replaced by a Dodge Neon in '95. The Chevette stranded her three times in a row...three strikes, you're out. Each time it was stupid little stuff, but the floor was starting to go away, so it wasn't worth throwing money at it by then. She was happy with it overall, and got pretty good service out of it. There were things that irritated me (oil filter directly over a crossmember, no cam bearings in the head-just metal on metal)...typical GM penny-pinching.

Another guy I knew bought a Chevette Scooter (the one with cardboard door panels, and no rear seat) when they first came out. He put about 160,000 miles on it, and sold it to another guy I knew. When she packed up and left him, she'd put another 100,000 on it by then, and took the car with her.

The midsize and fullsize GM cars with the V6 engines were the real failures. Around here, the frames rotted behind the rear wheels where the tires threw slop on them every winter. The V6 engines were overtaxed and not up to the job. The guy who bought the Scooter brand new, later bought a Bonneville "G" (midsize) with the Buick V6...puked the engine with fewer than 50,000 miles. The rebuild didn't last any longer. He had a V8 put in after that, as did a lot of other people...

[Faust]

Man, I'm glad to see that the Citation elicited such a wide range of responses.

Just like when I dissed on the Pacer, or any of the other loser machines that I build, I take great pleasure in kicking cars when they're down. However, I think it's my job to help balance the "rose coloured" views that age gives us! I'm sure not every Citation sucked hard, but a lot of them did. A colleague of mine bought one from his Uncle up in North Bay area when he was younger. The car was only 2 years old, and seemed to run fine. On his way home to Brantford, though, it kept overheating. The mechanics checked it, and it was fine. Driving it around thereafter, it would constantly overheat. It had only run fine because it's so cold up in North Bay! They never did solve that problem...

I am surprised that they made it a Notchback as well. The hatch is the one I remember seeing more of, but I really hated the lines. I much prefer a true notchback to a hatchback, although I like Fastbacks. Figure that out, eh?

I think it's awesome that the X car was Motor Trend (I believe) Car of the Year when it came out. Hmmm... eating a bit of crow, maybe? The article goes on about how awesome it is, but this was all written before any time had passed, and the weaknesses had manifested themselves.

Sure, there were a lot of groundbreaking things in the Citation, but nothing radically new that Europeans and Japanese hadn't been doing for a while when it came out. GM might have wanted to steal some good ideas, but they did a bad job executing them! That's what happens when you get behind on production and demand is higher than you think. I believe that's what happened (in part) to the Citation; they had to cut corners to get numbers. A classic auto industry dilemma, and one that almost always ends badly!

I have that Cavalier, you guys are talking about. It's not so bad, well, except for the tires. What with my Chevette, Cavalier, Citation and '84 Fiero 2m4, I've got a whole stable of forgettable but well-remembered GMs!

Glad you guys are enjoying the article; I don't know when I'll get around to building this, but it will likely be a red '82+, or a maroon '82+. I don't want to mess with those side scoops. They look awesome on the front of that ricer one above, though!

[Ace-Garageguy]

I always though ti was an OK little car, insipid and uninspired, but OK.

That said, I'd hoped for a lot more. I recall GM announcing that they'd spent 3 BILLION dollars on developing the thing, and that they'd bought and dissected a bunch Fiat 128s (and other Euro FWDs) to figure out how to build front-wheel-drive cars.

Somehow they managed to distill out all the character and interest of the studied cars, and build the blandest, most nothing tail-dragger ever. And the Caddy Cimarron version...give me a break.

[jbwelda]

>Fiat 128s

uh oh, I think I see the problem.

weren't those caddy Cimmarons a hoot though. funny little Cadillac thing, see it a galong deh.

and yeah I remember my Moms Citation dragging its butt too.

jb

Edited October 25, 2014 by jbwelda

[Chuck Most]

Just for the record...

The Cadillac Cimarron was not based on the Citation. It was based on the Cavalier. The Citation was an X-Body, while the Chevy Cavalier and Cadillac Cimarron were J-Bodies. The X platform was dead by mid-decade, but the J-platform trolled right along until 2005.

Quite a few mechanical bits were the same, but the X body shared more with the midsized A-Body cars... Chevy Celebrity, Pontiac 6000, Olds Cutlass Ciera, Buick Century. I always wondered why they didn't use the A-Body as the basis for the Cimarron- would have made just slightly more sense than slapping a wreath and crest badge on a Cavalier. Weird thing is the A-body never seemed to have the same nasty reputation as the X-Body cars, despite being more or less identical, component-wise.

[lordairgtar]

My dad had one of the Citations after he sold off his Buick Apollo (which I thought was an awesome car with its Buick 350) The Citation lasted and served him well until he got grandfather's 84 Regal. Now, about that weird tire set up...I remember that fad, it lasted all of 6 months around here. I think it was big in Chicago (I lived in Milwaukee 89 miles to the north). This set up was responsible for more broken axles and front suspension bits going bad. I almost bought a nice 70s Opel Manta until I found out that car had that set up in its lifetime. Nope, not gonna deal with suspension issues from some owners lack of automotive taste. That said, I would still buy this kit and build it stock.

[Mark]

I think it's awesome that the X car was Motor Trend (I believe) Car of the Year when it came out. Hmmm... eating a bit of crow, maybe? The article goes on about how awesome it is, but this was all written before any time had passed, and the weaknesses had manifested themselves.

Motor Trend's "awards" seemed to be connected more closely to the amount of advertising sold to a particular manufacturer, as opposed to the perceived merits of the vehicle itself...