CarBrandLogos archive · Buick · 1953
A hand-finished anniversary convertible whose name ended up on a rental-fleet compact.
Discover the storyPhoto: Bejara70 · CC0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Buick Skylark, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
The first Skylark was an occasion. Buick turned fifty in 1953 and marked it with a limited convertible based on the Roadmaster, developed under Harley Earl, with the windscreen chopped, the beltline dipped dramatically through the doors, and the wheel arches cut fully open. Bodies were hand-finished, the price was near Cadillac territory, and around eighteen hundred were built across 1953 and 1954 before the exercise ended.
1953 Buick Skylark - blue - fvr · Rex Gray · CC BY 2.0
02
The name was revived in 1961 on something entirely different: a compact, initially as a trim level of the Special, then as a model in its own right. That line produced the genuinely good stuff of the mid-1960s, including the intermediate Skylark Gran Sport, which put Buick's big-inch V8 into a mid-size body and gave the division a credible muscle car. Layouts stayed front-engine, rear-drive through 1979.
1972 Buick Skylark Custom 4-door Hardtop Sedan, front right · Mr.choppers · CC BY-SA 3.0
03
From 1980 the Skylark went transverse front-wheel drive and spent its last two decades on General Motors' X-body and N-body compacts, sold in volume to buyers and rental fleets who wanted something inoffensive. The badge was retired in 1998, its final job about as far from a hand-built anniversary convertible as a nameplate can travel.
1969 Buick Skylark Sedan · Ryan Hildebrand · CC BY-SA 4.0
Technical specification
Contemporaries from the 1950s
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