Road & Track really trying to put a bold face on one of GMs lesser cars. Awful things. Maybe they were what was needed at the time, (Remember that the K-car saved Chrysler) but I bet there isn't a big collector following for them now, even if it will outslalom a Ferrari....
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The 'X' cars and 'A' cars had steering gears that wore out prematurely and the driver would lose steering assist randomly. Very disconcerting, even dangerous when it happened in the middle of a right turn and the car drifted left into oncoming traffic. It was never subject to a recall, I suspect because it was worst in cold weather and probably didn't occur at all in the Southern tier states. I replaced a bunch of steering rack and pinions but oddly never on my sister's X-11 which I suspect had a different gear spec for the stiffer suspension.
I was so damn proud because now we had not one but TWO cars that were on the cover of Road & Track...A Mercury Zephyr and a Chevy Citation (sadly not an X-11). I think a Citation was the first car I ever replaced an "e-prom" in; a procedure that involved removing the chip from the ECM, packaging it up and sending it to Tarrytown Assembly for reprogramming (the dealer I worked for was near a New Departure plant so we did a lot of "engineering" work on employee lease cars).
"Big collector following": Ugh, surely not. But there's a demographic bloc that does seem to cherish big dumb American cars of no great character, at least to the point of lifting them all around to accommodate 17" rims and installing audio systems whose bass speakers cause all the threaded fasteners to back out, rivet holes to ovalize, spot welds to fracture, and the pavement underfoot to jiggle. These cars don't seem to merit custom paintwork, but their factory finish is kept spotless.
It's like one generation got the potentially cool cars, the next one got the cool-if-you-squint cars, and the guys I'm thinking of decided there was one last layer to scrape off the bottom of the styling barrel. And if coolness is an arbitrary quality determined by consensus, then these homely, hyperordinary sows' ears could be cool too: Wish hard enough, and it'll come true, if only for a few people.
--longwinded rats
one last layer to scrape off
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