I’m not saying this car is a total loser. If you like absolute silence and computer-assisted comfort while you drive, this car might work for you. For those of us who like to feel as if we’re still on planet Earth, don’t bother.

Sadly, they sold it when the kids came around, but got an Accord Coupe to keep the legacy of their 2dr Buicks alive. (hey, they did what they could given market conditions)

Best wishes to you and the Wildcat: keep the Ghosts of Buick’s past alive, please?

Sajeev, I still have a ‘64 Wildcat convertible and there’s nothing “metaphoric” about the movement of that car – just supernatural. It’s effortless to the point of defying physics. One of the things that irritates me about new cars (and one of the reasons I gravitated toward GM) is the need for five and six speed transmissions. To me, the smoothest shift is no shift. The Wildcat only needs one gear – 3rd. Yes you can kick it down to second if you want to shift some unsuspecting passenger from the front seat to the back seat, but you certainly don’t need it for passing or climbing hills. Buicks shouldn’t NEED to downshift, ever.

But now we get a coarse 3800 or a torque steering sb chevy. Great choice.

I knew it would be problematic at best to find a good, stylish, “full size” sport coupe (or sedan) for undar 30K, but I didn’t think it was going to be impossible!

Grand Marquis here I come – reluctantly.

Walking toward my pale blue example, I still like the design from the outside. One of GM’s better efforts of recent years, and more appealing than many other sedans.

But then my business associate and I sat inside. While we were waiting for the car to defrost, my associate said without any prompting ‘Who the hell thought acres of cheap, grey plastic was a good idea?’ It is everywhere and it is dreadful! And that vast blast centre stack of almost equally grim black plastic. Couldn’t it be smaller? Or could they at least not make the HVAC and radio bits bigger to take up some that real estate?

Later, I leapt out to scrape madly at the rear window. (Business travel in blizzards, it’s the best.) The dollar store, Avis-supplied snowbrush was, and I am not embellishing here, made out of the same quality of plastic and had exactly the same texture. If it had been grey, not green, I would have thought it came with the car.

How GM can spoil a design like this with this retrograde interior is beyond me.

P.S.: Love the line, “Pop the finely chiseled decklid and there’s room for both golf bag and golfer.”

That engine you are looking for is in the CXS trim. 7.1 0 to 60 MPH is more than acceptable for a comfortable family sedan. The FE3 suspension definately improves the road manners. I hated the exterior so much I bought one.

It is light years ahead of my Hyundai in comfort. Did I spend more money on it? You bet. If you drive in a well equipped CXS you will definately like the vehicle.

I do not think GM should be selling dumbed down decontented cars within it’s near luxury brand. Leave that to Chevrolet.

I am 35 years old and have owned four import cars (of course two were actually domestics because they were German cars I owned in Germany). I also owned two domestics prior to this purchase.

The CX trim should be dumped altogether.

I will be happy to own this vehicle for six or seven years. Hopefully RWD will become part of GMs sedan vocabulary again for less than $35,000.00 by then.

But then I drove it. And it drove like a Buick. Felt just like the ‘86 Century I knew and loathed. Felt just like an Impala LS or Taurus, and not as good as a Grand Prix. Amazingly, incredibly ordinary. I guess this is what Buick customers want.

Me, I ended up parting with the extra $6K for a CTS.

If GM was really serious about saving this brand, it would have found a way to make a CTS-like car with a Buick badge. Imagine how well Buick might have done with a CTS-like coupe as the next-generation Riviera.

What Buick must do is figure out what makes them unique, what purpose they fill in peoples life. They need too understand their own raison d’aitre.

And here’s my two cents: Buick is almost on their way to brand recognition-oblivion. Their only real purpose in life right now would be to become “the” preferred GM-brand to provide stealth-luxury for people. And to acheive that they need a good portfolio of stealth-luxury cars.

Ditch the entire line except for the LaCrosse, Lucerne and the new Enclave. What the world doesn’t need is more badge-engineered generic and bland and even mellow sedans and trucks like the current line-up. It is not enough to let them die of old age, they need to be discontinued to-day. The brand has to be born again from the ground up. They need to concentrate on the stuff they can provide that no other GM-brand can provide anywhere else. And they need a new beautiful full-size coupe. A two-door hardtop like the new Mercedes CL, based on the Lucerne and heavy Buick heritage wouldn’t be too hard. Especially dressed in black.

Oh, and I’m fully aware that TTAC is written for us…although I’ll readily admit my car knowledge is severely lacking – but the title of the site is TRUTH. And the truth is that, as Airglow said above, people don’t even know how many speeds their tranny has. Hell, go to a mall and ask mommy shopper if she has any idea when her van hits second gear.

I’m enjoying playing devil’s advocate a little too much in this discussion. And what a great discussion this is…

Now, TTAC is a site which is written to a knowledgable audience in more ways than one. I’d guess that most of the people here are in the 90th percentile when it comes to computers, too. Of course the review is going to focus on aspects that matter to us. But a brand which is supposed to be a cut above the rest of the market needs to rely on positive buzz from the elite.

Those early Civics weren’t exactly the most reliable cars on the road, and it took a while for Honda to figure out how to build Accords that wouldn’t rust.

Honda and Toyota did not gain popularity overnight with the mythical force of PR espousing misleading and dazzling reliability numbers. The Accord arrived in 76 as a slightly more-than-a-rollerskate size that the Civic slotted into. It had no power, was ugly, was tiny. Was it not Motor Trend that started realizing years later that these little boogers were not breaking? Like Hyundai is doing now, yota and honda created their repuatation from the ground up.

Now in the 90’s, a lot of Honda buying was for popularity. toyota had slightly more reliable vehicles, but charged an arm and a nut for that quality. When they revamped their pricing structure, the Camry became #1.

Buick is the most reliable American brand. I would have no qualms about buying one. But I am not their market. What is in GM’s many divisions that I like, do not share the quality that Buick has. Why is that? GM assumes that no one cares about it? Just tell everyine it is a quality product, and that makes it so, they will buy it. GM is light years better than it was a decade ago. But as it is run in to the ground here; they need stellar, innovative products that push the edge of that automotive field, not producing a good car that is 4 years behind the current models.

Am I still typing? The point, which was lost, is, if people don’t care about the tech lagging in GM, or their supposed reliability, then why are people not buying them unless they are 3-8 thousand dollars cheaper than the competition? Reputation is everything in this field. The company that assumes they can get anything by their customers will not lead very long. If someone is a GM only person, they can get away with that. Anyone who actually test drives, or does research on a car will notice the differences. Peace.

Now we all know there are lower and higher levels of anti-Detroit thought, or something. :-)

Your well thought-out rebuttal of the simplistic “Detroit sucks” attitude is correct: most people just want a car that will take them to work and back. The thinnest of marginal slices in quality and performance are what ethusiasts like ourselves get excited about. But I still believe that even though people want basic transportation, they shouldn’t have to put up with it.

My parents just bought a big screen tv. I helped them choose a particular model because of its performance. They couldn’t tell you more about the tv than its size, but they did see which tv looked better and went along with my choice. Similarly, if you had two fast food drive-thrus, and one has a reputation for tastier food, why would you settle for the less tasty choice? Buick may make a good car, but why settle for a good car when you can get a great car? The market is so full of competitive cars that drivers should sample everything before signing on the dotted line. And no buyer, no matter how rich/poor, enthusiastic/disinterested, should have to buy a product thinking, “well at least it’s better than my last one.” How sad is it that Detroit has to bank on its patrons’ collective disinterest in foreign cars?

“Chances are that a Buick buyer has never driven a BMW, and won???t have a chance to, and even if they did, it doesn???t mean they???d instantly be impressed.”

-The fact that people who don’t know much about cars are jealous of BMW/MB drivers says a lot about how far Buick has to go. Unless of course the competition for Buick in 2006 is Buick in 1994.

Most of my fellow car nuts seem to believe the average car buyer knows (or even cares) about valve actuation and gear count in their AT. They don’t.

I’ve driven several rental Lacrosse’s, I prefer them over 4 cylinder Camry’s and 6 cylinder Sonata’s.

The LaX is not slow, looks good, is quiet, reliable and gets good mileage. What more do most people want in a vehicle?

I will take even marginal fake wood grain over boring gray plastic any day. Bland gray plastic dashboards along with analog speedometers are two curses the automotive press has stuck the car buying public with due to their universal ridicule of fake wood grain and digital speedometers in the 80’s.

Word. I want to be clear though, I wasn’t critiquing the review – I like the review. And you’re right, they are being out-buick’d.

Oh…the hood ornament. great call.

I want a Buick that moves me–metaphorically speaking–like a ‘64 Wildcat.