Did a little research after reading the kappa thread. Skylark would seem to befit a Buick kappa car.....It has a long distinguished history withing Buick. It first appeared as a limited production car in 1953 to commemorate Buick's 50th anniversary. Well, here it is 50 years later.....Check out some of the history at www.musclecarclub.com Link Below......

http://www.musclecarclub.com/musclec...-history.shtml

 

It was a sedan when it disappeared in '98 and was sold primarily to rental fleets.

 

Yeah, that's true.....you'd have to disregard the 80's and 90's models.

 

And unfortunately, those will be the most remembered by 90% of the buying public.

 

looking at all the model ranges from the 60s and 70s one thing stands out, each year is different design. for better or worse, but always different. is it that steel was easier/cheaper to mold than whatever plastic they use today? or was it just the "planned obselecence" doctrine? either way, the obviously found money/time to get this done each year. today every carmaker is complaining about how they have to consolidate platforms just to stay profitable. what the hell happened?

 

How about the name "Wildcat"? Buick's thrown that name around on several concepts before, why not give it to a production car?

 

It used to be a production car's name too, back in the 60s. My guess is it wouldn't fit with the image Buick is trying to project these days. But yes, it is a good name .

I think Skylark has value too. Almost no one owned any of the pointy-nosed disasters from the early 90s (thank god) so I don't think that would harm the image too much.

 

Skylark would be a fine name for a performance car. Yea, the last two decades have not been kind to it, but I think that if the car was serious enough, the N-body days would be quickly forgotten.

 

Cars of the 70s didn't really change that often, just the front end and tail lights changed. The nosepiece on alot of those cars were fiberglass and easily changed along with the plastic taillights. Nova went throughout the 70s without a major sheetmetal revision, GM's midsized cars got new sheetmetal in '72, but their innards were virtually unchanged from '68!!

In the late 70s, carmakers were forced to change their cars due to new CAFE standards.

Off the top of my head, the only all new chassis created in the 70s were: Vega's in '71, GM's full size in '77, GM's mid size in '78, GM's compacts in '79, Ford's Pinto in '70, Ford's Mustang II (it's chassis was markedly different from the Pinto it was based on) Ford's "Fox" in '78, Ford's Full size in '79, Chrysler's F-body in '76 (Volare/Aspen), and Chrysler's Volkswagen engineered Omni/Horizon cars. Generally, sheetmetal was changed only once every 4 years or so.

Since then, it seems instead of doing new grills or taillights every year or 2, or a new nose occasionally, there is a tendency to run designs into the ground till a whole new car comes along. The only car left that seems to get regular changes anymore is the Mustang.

 

I don't think that the Skylark is something that should come back, let alone a performance type car. And lets face it, Lutz got rid of the Century and the Reagl, what makes you think the Skylark has a chance to return

 

On the part of some of the less-successful companies, yes. Note that Honda and Toyota are very good about evolving their designs using the much-ballyhooed 4-year design cycle. There's typically few major changes from generation to generation, but yet they never get behind either. A stunning concept, for sure

As far as things go today, things are packaged so tightly and there's just so much regulatory crap that it'd be very difficult to shake up styling on a yearly basis. Even the most simply re-nose or re-tail job could cost tens or hundreds of millions by the time it's tooled, validated, and certified.