Apparently I wasn’t the only one who didn’t think the 1985 Century was particularly photo worthy. Not only have I no pictures of mine but the only internet picture I found of something similar is the one at right. Mine was new so had wheel covers and all its chrome bits but it may have looked much like the picture at some point in its life.

The Century was Buick’s member of the A-Body family which included the Chevrolet Celebrity, the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, and the Pontiac 6000. I was drawn to the family by a company owned Celebrity that the service manager drove and praised. I found my car in a newspaper ad where I think it was the low-end come-on among pricier and more desirable LeSabres, Regals, and Rivieras. It had the inline 4-cylinder which was not, I’ve read, very popular. Neither was it, I soon learned, very peppy. It was hooked to a three-speed automatic. The car had power locks but not power windows. Nor did it initially have a right hand mirror.

The absent mirror is easy to remember because it was the last piece of the deal. I had come to really depend on mirrors on both sides and ended negotiations with, “I’ll take it if you include a passenger side mirror.” The factory installed mirror on the left side was flat black and in a day or so I had a matching one on the right of my new purchase.

Although it wasn’t very powerful, smooth, or quiet the 2.2 liter engine did an adequate job and delivered pretty good mileage. Actually, “adequate” is a pretty good description of the whole car. It once carried two adults and four kids, one a teenager, to and from Myrtle Beach. It wasn’t roomy or particularly comfortable. It was adequate.

The American auto industry was not known for its quality in the mid-1980s. The Century’s materials may have been slightly better than those used in the company’s Celebrity but the build quality was about the same. A couple pieces of interior trim were already falling off when I traded the car at about a year old.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 24 — 1983 Renault Alliance
My Next Wheels: Chapter 26 — 1986 Acura Legend 

There was a time when I was truly smitten with this car. Others were too. It was Motor Trend‘s “Car of the Year” and it was included in Car and Driver‘s “10 Best”. Many were the automotive writers who praised the first offering from AMC under Renault ownership. That experts praised the little car certainly influenced my opinion but I recall that I sincerely hought it was physically attractive. Yeah, that’s the kind of smitten I’m talking about.

Much of the praise that the gurus heaped on the car had to do with its economical operation and good value pricing. Recent changes in my job, living arrangements, and family size brought on the need for an efficient people hauler so maybe I just fooled myself into liking the looks to make the super practicality palatable. Whatever the full thought process was, I was quite proud of myself when I bought a shiny new dark gray four-door four-speed.

For many the shine wore off quite quickly. Mechanical problems were fairly common and rust often appeared quicker than it should. In 2009 Car and Driver actually apologized for putting the car in their “10 Best” list twenty-six years earlier. I don’t know that Motor Trend or any of the other publications that had climbed on the Alliance band wagon delivered their own apologies but neither do I know of any that actively defended their 1983 behavior.

My own problems were minor. The coil sometimes arced in wet weather until I upped the insulation by applying an ugly wad of electrical tape and a starter connection vibrated loose — twice!.

I guess I really didn’t have the car long enough to get hit with rust or any more serious mechanical issues. In their apology, Car and Driver point out that one of the first acts of Chrysler after taking over AMC in 1987 was “the mercy-killing of the Alliance”. My personal Alliance had been the target of its own mercy killing two years earlier. For the first time ever I was at the wheel of a car when it was totaled and it wasn’t even slightly my fault.

I was the last in a line of cars stopped at a light in heavy rain when I was rear-ended by a teenager driving with his mother on a learners permit. The Alliance was advertised as having reclining seats although what they really did was lean back as a unit like a rocking chair. When the other car hit, my seat completely “reclined” so that I was momentarily nearly flat on my back. Then my car was pushed into the one in front of me and I sprang upright and cracked a rib against the floor shift. I’m not sure of specifics but I understood the the boy and his mother had minor injuries of about the same severity and that there were no injuries at all in the car in front of me. I was obviously quite lucky that my injuries weren’t worse and I maybe I could even be considered lucky for being spared the pain of watching my Car of the Year rust away.

My Previous Wheels: Chapter 23 — 1972 BMW R75
My Next Wheels: Chapter 25 — 1985 Buick Century