I’m not really sure what’s going on when it comes to Switzerland and cars, but there’s something happening there. Something weird. And, for the most part, I applaud this earnestly and enthusiastically. For example, if you can find a better six-wheel drive falconry car than a Swiss Sbarro Windhawk then by all means, buy it, with all your bigshot falconer money. But you won’t, because the Swiss built the best one there is. But the Swiss also seemed to have another strange automotive fixation, namely taking mainstream American cars and re-making them into peculiar sorta-luxury versions that, as far as I can tell, no human ever asked for, ever. That’s the kind of Swiss car I want to talk about today, and it’s called the Felber Pasha.
W.H. Felber Automobiles SA started in the 1960s as a dealer for fancy cars like Rolls-Royces and Ferraris, but got into the customized car business in the 1970s. Like the other famous Swiss weird-ass car maker, Monteverdi, Felber took other mass-produced cars and modified them, using cars as varied as Ferraris and Lancias and International Scouts and Pontiac Firebirds and the one I want to focus on now, the Buick Skylark.
Yes, the Skylark! But before you get your hopes up, not any of the cool Skylarks: this was the X-body front-wheel drive Skylark, the fifth-gen one from 1980 to 1985 — cars that you haven’t seen on the road in decades because, let’s be honest here, no one really gives a shit about preserving them. Because they, charitably, kinda sucked.
Here, let’s let the magic of Magic Johnson and some jockey remind you about this era of ‘Lark:
I’m sorry, that’s not just some jockey; that’s Willie Shoemaker, one of the greatest jockeys ever, but I suspect more people know about Magic Johnson. That’s just another example of the media’s anti-horse bias, but this article isn’t the place for that. Let’s get some more time with the X-body Skylark via this dealer training video:
I think the takeaway here is that the Skylark was, above all things, a pretty boring car. I remember these quite well from when I was growing up; my family even test drove one back in 1980 and I think found it pretty soporific. They weren’t particularly great at anything: boring looks, comfortable ride but not exactly engaging to drive, just okay fuel economy — really nothing to write home about.
I’m disparaging the otherwise nearly-forgotten X-body Skylark to such a degree because I think understanding the base car used for the Felber Pasha is important to understanding what this car was. And what this car was is just baffling.
What we have here is essentially a stock Skylark with some body modifications, especially to the front end. The entire front fascia is gone, replaced with a full-width black grille and with another grille placed centrally atop that, a shield-shaped grille that seems to have been Felber’s big visual trademark. The grille also came with a central hood lump that seems to have just been stuck atop the original hood, because I’m pretty sure Felber wasn’t stamping new body panels.
The headlights I think are especially odd, but I think I know what the re-designers were going for here. They’re Euro-style rectangular units, larger than the rectangular sealed beams the original Skylark face used, but what makes these especially odd are the strange trivet-like tripod things that sit over the headlights. I think what the designers were trying to do here is reference headlight designs from classic cars, specifically the Lucas P700 headlight, which featured a tripod-like metal structure inside that was used to hold a reflector to shine more light on the road:
This feels like what Felber was going for, as the whole car is a sort of half-assed slapping-upon of details more associated with classic cars onto the bland rectilinearity of a 1980s GM design, and the result is as ungainly as you might expect.
Around the back, we’re greeted with similar feats of phoning it in:
All that looks to be changed is some sort of extra stamped metal panel applied to the trunk lid, with some little louvers stamped into it that allowed air either into or to escape from, what, the inch or so of space between the stuck-on bit and the original trunk? Or was this just a clever way to let water get in there?
Literature about the Pasha suggests that there were a lot of luxury upgrades, but the pictures I’ve seen just don’t look all that different than any other Skylark of the era, really. You got a different steering wheel and I think a center console with an additional audio head unit, like an equalizer or something, and, well, that’s about all I can tell?
They made 35 Pashas, and this is one of those cases where I feel like the production numbers vastly overestimated the target market for these cars, which was composed of who, exactly? Who were these cars for? Who was out there hoping for an ever-so-slightly more luxurious Buick Skylark that drove the exact same but weighed just a bit more and had a much more weird-looking front end?
Were there such people? Were there people who would have bought a Skylark, but it was too cheap and the front didn’t resemble an owl enough for them? And were these people Swiss?
I’m absolutely baffled by the Felber Pasha. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a car with so little reason for existing as this one. I guess nobody at Felber had to approve pitches? You could just get some idea and run with it, no questions asked? Because this is not a car that could have withstood even that shortest and most basic of questions: why?
I do, however, consider one of these a Glorious Garbage representative, because even though the car is quite definitely garbage, the rareness and madness and just wild improbability of its very existence grants it some degree of glory. I mean, I know I’d wet my pants with glee if I ever saw one in person.
The Original Scout Had Some Really Half-Assed Special Editions: Glorious Garbage
Porsche Once Tried To Celebrate Its Racing Victories With Their Slowest Car. It Shared An Engine With The AMC Gremlin: Glorious Garbage
I Can’t Decide If This Jaguar V6 Made By Blanking Off Two Cylinders From A V8 Is Genius Or Just Lazy
Jason may I point out that car companies that modify other car companies products have limited discretion? Frankly most companies just see what they can install from parts bins and that is limited to cutting bigger holes as you can’t fill in holes.
However my big take on this, after you stole my rant on Willie Shoemaker, was if you are going to have a jockey and a basketball player do a commercial together show how the shorter person can be the driver and reach the pedals while the tallest person is not stuck with his knees in his mouth. Maybe a 40/60 bench seat or separate seats
It’s like a Temu version of one of those 70’s Stutz Bearcats.
I remember talking my roommate out of buying a 1982 two-door Skylark. I was with him at a local dealership. He had his eye on a basic Nissan Sentra for $4K. Also on the lot for the same money was that Skylark with 39,000 miles in near show-room condition. I was kind of amazed by its very existence and suddenly he started talking about buying it instead of the Sentra. I pointed out that the Sentra would likely go 50,000 miles before needing anything where as the Skylark might only go 5,000 before needing work, or at least before until a trim piece fell off.
The grille has major Allegro Vanden Plas vibes, but the overall impression is a worse version of the Monteverdi Sierra. The Sierra may have been a Dodge Aspen, but at least it had some Italian styling and a V8. This has all the vices of a Skylark plus a Temu grade pimpmobile kit.
That said, if I had that sort of money in 1982 Switzerland I could drive Ford Granada or a Citroën CX if a W123 or 5 Series was too normal
That sales video for the Skylark was genuinely fascinating. Things that surprised me, looking at more modern cars were the massive gulf between the city and highway MPGs and the mention of the aluminum intake for better low temp startup performance. Makes total sense to reduce thermal mass to get the engine up to temperature quickly, particularly for people who’ve spent most of their driving lives with carburetors. But it’s just not a thing that you’d bother to inform a salesman about today, if he’s trying to move slightly upmarket family cars.
The highway numbers were insanely optimistic. Version 1 of the EPA mileage test was basically a steady 40 mph since that was the limit of 70s dyno tech. Version 2 started with 1985 models and applied a mathematical formula to that result. Version 3 started with the 2008s and the test is much tougher and run with the AC on.
The aluminum intake is the one cost-cut that the GM bean counters missed so the marketing team grabbed it and ran. I mean, what else would they talk about?
I shared drive duties returning home from college using a Buick Skylark of this vintage and what I remember most about it was the non-functioning defroster, the lack of headroom for even the front passengers, and how dramatically the fuel economy would drop if one drove any faster than the New York highway limit of 55.
Styling was obviously not their forte. This thing seems to fit into the Barnum adage of “a sucker born every minute” and they managed to hook a hot 30 seconds of them.
A bone stock one with no exterior candy looks pretty good actually.
Having commuted in one for a couple of years, it looked passable, but was an underpowered, uncomfortable, poorly assembled rattle can on wheels. Cold in winter and hot in summer not worth 15% of the asking price.
This thing under discussion is beyond laughable as far as ‘styling’ goes and under the ‘lipstick’ is still a malaise era economy car.
I’ve never wet my pants with glee.
Well, not whilst on land.
Have you ever soiled them with glee?
Shit no, bro.
I like to wet my pants in anger. Really gets the point across.
Thanks! I hate it.
When I travelled in Madrid (and Spain in general) in the 80s, I saw X-body cars on the road. One might have been a fluke, brought over by a visiting American. But I lost count somewhere around five, which seemed more like a crappy car conspiracy. What was it about some of GM’s most banal cars that seemingly appealed to European tastes? Just, why??
By the time this abomination was conceived, neo-classic styling was largely on its way out in America. Somebody spent time, effort, and money to bring it back and slap it all onto a (blandly) modern pseudo-European-ized GM design. It’s regressive in the worst possible way.
Perhaps this car’s sole reason for existence is to prove that Europeans can have less taste than we Yanks credit them for?
Someone needs to wake Adrian up and shove these photos in front of him so we can get his most raw, unfiltered estimation of this steaming pile…
If you lost count around 5 may I suggest switching to your other hand? If you have lost a hand in some manner or just born with one hand I apologize. I am doing my best not to offend the people who get offended in place of the people not offended but who they feel should be offended. S/
All four of X-body cars were officially sold in Europe through selected Opel sales centres. Here’s the video of Citation test by German automotive magazine (notice the taillamps with amber turn signal indicators on the outer edge). Here’s the photo of Oldsmobile Omega with export taillights. I have photos of Pontiac Phoenix, but I can’t upload them here.
GM bet that they could sell a few, so they were regularly available through select Opel dealers and some US car specialists. The “compact” size made them a sort of reasonable option, and they were very cheap compared to a Euro car in the executive class. Of course, it was not exactly comparable to a Granada or a Commodore, but on paper it kinda made some sense.
Those are clearly flux capacitors over the headlights.
Tri-blade rotating headlamp wipers.
This is the only acceptable explanation.
Football players. Drug dealers. All kinds of European shady businessmen. Some Liberace-wannabe. DJs all over the Mediterranean. And their girls. The kind of people who drive blinged out Mercedes Benzes today.
Weren’t the X-bodies the ones where engineers and corporate were so mediocre that they decided that rear windows did not go down? If yes, did they go down in these expensive turds?
Oh, also pornstars.
Okay this brings up and important sexist area. Did anyone realize men in porn only make 10% of what women in porn make? I used to be sexist and thought yeah the woman deserves more but I have been properly indoctrinated and men should get paid the same.
I didn’t know that. I do believe that women put so much more on the line (health, relationships, family, risks) than men in such kind of business. So yeah, it may be fair that they get 90% of the profit that actually goes to the actors that put their bodies in it.
That was the late-70s A-body — to make sure they could claim rear elbow room was increased over the previous generation and also save weight. In fact, the rear windows on X-cars did roll down.
Thanks, Geoff. That’s a little less bad.
I’m pretty sure it was only the A/G-bodies (think 1978 Malibu) that didn’t get roll-down windows in the back. Later examples got little vent windows that opened, as did some of the coupes.
The X-bodies had roll-down windows but they became fixed in place if you got the electric windows because those would break after 2 months of ownership.
Duuuude they did the whole “make the whole front end a grille as a facelift to make it look cooler” thing a whole half century before modern cars like the Elantra N and various BMWs! Clearly this was just way ahead of its time.
When I was in high school my friend’s dad waited 6 months for a Skylark with the V6 and manual transmission. The thing was a 4 speed not 5 and clunky shifting. Why?
Ah the skylark that a tempo was a notable up grade from.
And a family friend who wasn’t a car person (previous car a Renault 12) called the Tempo “a dumpster on tires”.
Looks like someone found the JC Witney catalog!
It’s absolutely perfect as a ride for a cartoonish villain in an 80s low budget film or tv show. Just ready made perfect. Love it!
Perfect for the villain who was forced into budget cuts.
I think your pants are safe.
The X bodies, so disappointing. In concept, I weirdly liked the hatchback Citation in a form-follows-function way. I have a soft spot for the slightly bigger 5-door hatch form factor.
The Skylark? ’80s GM in its purest uncut form.
I thought the Citation was interesting looking as well. But, I had a co-worker who had one and said it was awful. She ended up getting divorced and traded the Chevy in on a 300ZX Twin Turbo. I don’t know what she got for trading in her husband.
yeah, if GM had properly executed on the X-body, it might well have held off the Japanese for another generation. On paper, it had every detail completely right as far as what consumers were looking for in the late ’70s/early ’80s, the first model year alone sold almost 1.6 million X-body cars for the 1980 model year (over 811,000 Chevrolet Citations alone) – which would be equivalent to over 59% GM’s entire domestic sales volume in 2024 (though that volume was only about 24% back in 1980) – customers were ready and willing to give it a fair chance. But, GM shit the bed on engineering validation and quality control, and the Citation ended up sending more customers into Toyota and Honda showrooms than any advertising campaign Toyota or Honda ever ran themselves.
The Citation’s sales figures alone are an adequate demonstration of what was going on
1980: 811,540 cars
1981: 413,379
1982: 165,647
1983: 92,184
1984: 97,205 (after extensive re-engineering and a rebranding as the “Citation II”)
1985: 62,722 (after it became obvious that the Citation II was a Citation, too)
The Phoenix, Omega, and Skylark all had similar trajectories. Almost as if Roger Smith was secretly a double agent for the Japanese all along
What is even wilder to me is that this occurred directly after the very similar Vega flame-out and right alongside the different-but-same diesel debacle. And yet GM *still* had the cash to burn on a wide variety of weird side projects
It was just part of the post-1973 downsizing. Full-size B/D- bodies were downsized for 1977, mid-size A (later renamed G) bodies in 1978, then the compact X bodies were downsized and switched to FWD for 1980, then the smallest cars moved to the new FWD J platform for 1982 (which directly replaced the RWD H platform used by the Vega/Monza/Astre/Sunbird/Starfire/Skyhawk). The oil embargos in 1973 and 1979, federal fuel economy mandates, and growing customer preference for smaller, lighter, more efficient Japanese models meant GM had to downsized, and front engine FWD makes for better packaging in smaller cars. The problem was the X platform was rushed, it’s intro should have been delayed to the 1981 model year, but GM pushed it out before it was ready.
The X platform was reworked and rebranded into the new FWD A-body platform for 1982 (at which point the old RWD A body was renamed the G body) and proved quite reliable and durable, remaining in production through 1996, with the Celebrity/6000/Cutlass Ciera/Cutlass Cruiser/Century
Similar thing happened with the abysmal Cadillac HT4100 V8, engineers said it needed more development time, rushed into production anyway, got a deservedly horrible reputation, but was then reworked and enlarged into the 4.5 and 4.9 V8s that proved perfectly fine
“…the Citation II was a Citation, too” is my vote for COTD!
Clearly the 20 people who bought the Plymouth Valiant-based Monteverdi Sierra were about due to trade their car in, it was too early for the K-Car to have received turbo power, the X-body really was the next logical choice. Frankly, having grown their market by 75% is a rousing success.
This is the automotive definition of polishing a turd.
The X-body cars were GM’s greatest nadir, one of many in their history.
Polishing? More like putting one of those little drink umbrellas, or a novelty birthday candle, on a turd.
It gives off fake-luxury-car in a cheap comedy movie vibes. Like a smaller version of the Family Truckster.
Or maybe a turd in a little drink.
The pre-Cimarron
I was eight paragraphs in before I realized this is not about someone currently torturing 45 year old Skylarks.
Most of Felber’s stuff is pretty bonkers.
https://en.wheelsage.org/felber/cars
The Firebird-based Excellence looks pretty sweet, though.
So, the car is sliding into that woman who’s pinned against the A-pillar, right?
She’s doing her best to hide as much of it as possible before she can come up with a plausible excuse for its presence, like a bad comedy.
I remember seeing that Ferrari beach car in several Ferrari books.
If loving the Felber Oasis is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Our family of 4 drove from east coast to west coast, twice, in the early 80s in one of those bastards. Roughly 3 weeks each trip. CT->San Francisco->Seattle->Great Falls, MT->CT
Brutal! I used to drive one home from college, 550 miles each way. My uncle owned one in Manhattan. He paid many multiples more cash to garage it than the car was ever worth.
To try and find something nice to say, the paint finish seems pretty decent, better than GM’s quality at the time, anyway. Looks like both horizontal AND vertical surfaces are glossy, and little to no apparent orange peel
Torch, you are one supremely strange being.
I like that. It reminds me of me.
That “Felber” logo on the trunk is giving strong Midwest dealer badge vibes.
Felber Buick-Pontiac-GMC, where the deals are always baffling!
Is that across the street from Felber’s #1 AMCland/Jeepland/Renaultland? Next to Felber Bargain Corral Used Car Supercenter
I cannot abide stickers (or magnets) on my car’s finish. The first thing I did after I brought my current car home is use a hair dryer to remove the carmax sticker from the trunk.
I agree. I don’t want to advertise for your dealership. I thought about making it a condition of the purchase when we bought our Jeep, but the dealer only did license plate frames, instead of stickers.