âThis was the car that started the decline,â Alan Spiegel said, turning his beige Chevrolet Citation into the parking lot of the Bridge View Tavern, a restaurant that, he promised, served the best burgers in Westchester County.  The Citation and its General Motors siblings, Mr. Spiegel suggested, epitomized the ills of American car manufacturing in the 1980s â and the modelâs ultimate failure opened a path for the success of Japanese brands that are todayâs top sellers.  Mr. Spiegelâs culinary judgment would prove spot on. His theory about the role this particular model played in the history of the auto industry required a bit more explanation, however, starting with a review of events that took place in this neighborhood.  From the foot of Beekman Avenue in Sleepy Hollow, a suburb 25 miles north of New York City, the view stretches across a sprawling empty lot on the east bank of the Hudson River, immediately north of the Tappan Zee Bridge. The 99-acre site was once occupied by the General Motors North Tarrytown Assembly plant.  The factory, which built Chevrolets and other G.M. vehicles for 81 years, closed in 1996 and was razed by 2000. Its crumbling concrete foundation remains an eyesore in an otherwise picturesque setting.  Mr. Spiegel, 53, briefly reflected on the effect of the plantâs closing on the local businesses and residents. And then he offered that a substantial amount of the blame for its demise â along with G.M.âs painful march toward Chapter 11 reorganization in 2009 â belonged to cars like the two-door hatchback he drives.  Mr. Spiegelâs Citation, a sport-oriented version called the X-11, was not built in North Tarrytown, but in Oklahoma City. The plant location mattered little, though; the cars proved so troublesome that G.M. stopped making them after six years.  That was also true of its corporate brethren, the Buick Skylark, Oldsmobile Omega and Pontiac Phoenix, known collectively as the X-cars based on G.M.âs internal designation. The companyâs fledgling front-wheel-drive compacts, introduced for 1980, all suffered myriad problems in their mechanical design and assembly quality. They were recalled repeatedly and incurred customersâ ire.  Mr. Spiegel, who was living on Long Island when the cars were introduced, said he was captivated by the Citation X-11 nonetheless. He had considered buying a two-year-old model in 1983 from a dealer in Sayville, N.Y. The asking price was $6,000 for a well-optioned car that had a window sticker of about $9,000 when new.  âI had $4,000,â he said, explaining that the car was out of reach. âMaybe that was a good thing.â  Instead, Mr. Spiegel bought a 1979 Ford Mustang. His marriage a few years later, and then the birth of twins, Adam and Samantha, in 1993, took sporty coupes off his radar for years, pushing him toward family cars like the Volvo station wagons that he prefers to buy used, and an older Lexus that his wife, Stacy, drives. When family finances have allowed, he has enjoyed owning a few just-for-fun cars, including a 1968 Cadillac convertible and a 1970 Chevy Camaro, neither one in show condition.  Finding a drawing of the X-11 he made while a student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn â he earned his degree in industrial design there in 1982 â rekindled Mr. Spiegelâs interest. His decades-long affection for the car finally blossomed into a relationship when a friend, Cary Sparer, helped him find an â81 X-11 for sale last year on Craigslist near Altoona, Pa.  After some negotiation, Mr. Spiegel bought the car, unseen, for $1,200. He saw his Citation for the first time when it was delivered to his home on a flatbed.  âI figured if it was junk, Iâd just get rid of it,â he said. âI was willing to take the chance.â  The car appeared to be in good condition, with just a few small rust spots. The odometer showed 30,000 miles, yet Mr. Spiegel was dubious.  âIt could have been 30,000 or 130,000,â he said. âItâs hard to tell with these cars, because they aged badly and quickly.â  The carâs V-6 engine, it turned out, needed to be rebuilt. That cost $2,000.
The X-cars that General Motors produced in the 1980s helped lead to the companyâs troubles, but to a Scarsdale man, that history just adds to the patina of his 1981 Chevrolet Citation.