X-press way to Your Garage

Whenever the auto-show season begins, someone invariably comes out with a "best-of" of cars that looked great, turned a lot of heads, and somehow never made it to your driveway -- or any garage in your Zip Code.

And then there's the worst-of tally, usually of cheap cars that appeared en masse in every suburban parking lot for five years, and then disappeared in some kind of Rolling Rapture. Unlike some limited-edition German autobahn cruiser, it was the kind of vehicle owned by someone you knew.

In my case, that person was me. Pick any bad-beater list, and I've owned at least two. A 1972 Ford Pinto. A 1989 Volkswagen Fox. Even one of the all-time schlagers ... a 1978, four-door, automatic Chevrolet Chevette.

There's another perennial entry, though, that gets panned as a major Detroit mistake. With this one I beg to differ, mainly because I alos owned one and found it something more than a bucket of bolts.

Ladies and gentlemen, return with me to the early 1980s, when General Motors offered its view of the future ... with the X car.

Here, with one car, a U.S. manufacturer offered innovations such as front-wheel drive and better gas mileage -- not to mention a snazzy rod-based manual transmission with Teflon-coated parts. People bought 'em up, whether in Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac or Chevrolet iterations.

Unfortunately, all those swell new parts came together without a real idea of the sum, which led to several problems with weird steering under acceleration. (GM apparently did a quick fix for the models sent to car magazines, which didn't help the car's later reputation.) Owners of manual-transmission models, meanwhile,found out quickly that Teflon and hot engine fluids didn't play well together.

That, however, wasn't a problem with me. I bought, brand-new, a 1981 Chevy Citation five-door hatchback with a 2.6L V-6 engine and automatic transmission. I think it fell under one recall for a reason I can't remember.

I also can say, without hesitation, that it was one of the best cars I've owned. 


Frankly, there are a number of car writers reporting more on experience than reputation. Tag a car as crap, and it's a self-sustaining identity.

One of the major problems with worst-car lists is that someone writing about a 30-year-car and likely didn't drive one, let alone own it.  These less-than-classic cars aren't found at expo or museums. It's just the reputation that keeps building, especially when automotive writers have a fast one pulled on them by a car company.

My Citation was no wonder car. I can tell you it was the roomier car I ever owned, with incredible cargo space with the back seat flipped down. The V-6 delivered plenty of power without guzzling gas, and the front-wheel drive performed great through a number of Colorado and Montana winters.

I pulled six years of good service out of the car before trading it in for a 4-wheel-drive pickup that gave me nothing but trouble before expiring on the same day I paid off its loan. The Citation the one car I regret selling, and it deserves a few words of praise.

It was also the car I owned when I got married 28 years ago. It's the one that had the soap-written wishes n the huge back window, and the tin cans tied to the rear axle. A few years after I sold it -- and nine years after the wedding -- I thought I spied the old Citation in a Denver parking lot.

I crouched down under the rear bumper and, on the rear axle, were the straggly ends of the string used for the tin cans. The car still looked ready to go whatever distance you cared to try. I hope it kept going for a long, long time.