X is for Xcrement: 1983 Chevrolet Citation X-11
Having plumbed the depths of the K-Car and now nearing the end of
the alphabet its only appropriate that we head straight for the nadir
of the auto industry. The 1980’s X cars from GM. X is for xactly what the doctor didn’t order, which is what the X-Body cars of the
1980’s were from GM. The steam rising from that pile of xcrement was the
Citation X-11. Find this one-family owned 1983 Chevrolet Citation X-11
waiting for you, staged beside a waterway, owned by some guy who has
at least a four car garage and a lift and loves classics, like his X-11, which he’s offering to you for what has to be a record setting high price of $6,395.
While Chrysler was reinventing itself via the K-Car platform and
producing a chassis that would cross a huge number of models, GM was
busy shutting down plants in unionized areas and moving to right-to-work
states where they began building cars in places where cars had never
been built before, like Oklahoma City. This worked well for Oklahoma
because, after all, OU Football legends had to have some place to appear
to work so that their extravagances would appear to be self-financed.
Former OU college football star Brian Bosworth, who was known for his
classy on the field antics like spitting on his tackled victims, was also
known to have been proud of putting ball bearings in the doors of some
of the cars that he helped assemble hoping that they would leave the
Oklahoma City production line where they built the X-Body cars and rattle
around and provide miles and miles of fun for their new owner.
But this
is no iron duke powered slushbox, this is the creme de la creme, this
one has 3 pedals and a 3.0 litre V6. This one shouldn’t need to be
de-Bosworthed of any stray ball bearings in the door as a VIN check
indicates that this car was built in Tarrytown, NY. Well there goes
some great side story!
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This post is part of Daily Turismo’s 2nd Birthday Celebration — DT’s ABCs.
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The Citation has to be one of the most forgettable cars of all time. I had actually forgotten that I had owned one. Maybe it was just a bad dream from a cheap whiskey hangover. The best thing that could happen to the new owner is that he/she forgets where they parked it !
Is that a cold air grabber snorkel coming from the back of the air cleaner?
I owned one Citation and put 35,000 miles on each of two Company Citations. None of the cars ever let me down. The FWD, new to me except for my Dad's SAAB, seemed like a miracle during our snowy VT winters. I replaced my owned Citation with a Celebrity Wagon, which I believe was basically on the Citation Platform. I also had two Company Celebrity Sedans. None of these vehicle had the quality and bells and whistles on our (overdone?) modern vehicles but they all served me well with now down time ever.
The Citation is one car I'll never forget. This because it was one of very few cars that stranded me in a dangerous situation- off of I-94 in 90 degree heat in the middle of Chicago. The GM X models were probably the number one reason Honda achieved such a strong foothold in the USA. At a time when GM was pumping these things out with some very questionable quality, Honda was in the middle of a program to strongly boost the quality of their cars along with starting to build Accords in the USA, a plan that worked perfectly for Honda and still to this day GM, Ford, and Chrysler have never really been able to do damage recovery from.
The later X11 like this one got a fiberglass hood, a few more HP, bigger wheels, and some work on front cradle stiffening courtesy of John Heinricy's efforts at making it a credible SCCA Showroom Stock racer.
Citations were terrible cars, but this X-11 shown here is a real museum piece! I love seeing older, unloved cars still in near-factory condition. It deserves to be preserved like this for future generations (maybe as a lesson, "Don't do this again"? LOL).