#buick

Buick is busy rolling out its first EV in China, but here in the U.S., we’re getting the brand's last new gas-powered vehicle. The 2024 Envista arrives to replace the Encore as Buick’s smallest SUV, bringing attractive styling and a more engaging driving experience than the tiny and not-so-Buick-like Encore.

Buick’s EV ambitions haven’t been a secret. The automaker trademarked the iconic Electra name from its past and even teased its first EV last month, but we’re now learning that it will be a while before the vehicle lands on American soil.

General Motors has done something that I think might be a bit dumb. It also had me checking the calendar to make sure it was for real.

Buick is an old nameplate, both in terms of how long the brand has existed and its perceived target market.

OK, the latter probably isn't true anymore and probably hasn't been for a while. Certainly, the brand's actual target market appears, at least based on recent TV ad campaigns, to be young-ish and attractive folks between the ages of 30 and 50.

Flying in the face of empty dealership lots and a headache-inducing supply chain, General Motors reported this morning that the company recorded just under $10 billion in net income during the 2022 calendar year. This is good news for anyone wearing a GM hat, including hourly workers who will find enormous bonus checks in their mailboxes later this year.

Starting with the 1962 model year, GM sold cars on the new compact rear-wheel-drive X Platform (thus dooming the Corvair long before Ralph Nader had any say in the matter). In the United States, these cars were Chevrolet Chevy IIs and Novas; north of the border, they were Acadians. Eventually, the platform got bigger and the other GM car divisions jumped in for a piece of the action. Buick sold these cars from the 1973 through 1979 model years, and I've found one of those Buickized Novas in a boneyard near Reno, Nevada.

Today's throwback for your midday enjoyment is a 2012 Buick Regal GS.

Buick has big EV plans, and its dealers will be paying a big cost if they want to stay with the brand.

Earlier this year, General Motors filed several trademark applications with model names ranging from Electra E1 to E9, suggesting that Buick would revive the iconic model name for future EVs. The automaker recently debuted the Electra E5 in China, its first vehicle to ride on GM’s Ultium platform and a potential preview of the models we could see here in the future.

Some have questioned why General Motors keeps Buick around since it seems like it’s not the most popular brand on America’s roads. What that view fails to consider, however, is that Buick is one of GM’s strongest brands in China, and earlier this month, the company’s president confirmed a new crossover would be coming for the country.

Spy shooters have spotted a Buick EV SUV.

Most of the inventory at your typical Ewe Pullet-style big self-service car graveyard will be vehicles between about 15 and 25 years old, though you'll see some much newer 500s and Mirages while discarded machinery of the 1970s and 1980s remains easy enough to find. The 1930s, though— that's a different story. While you will run across prewar iron in a generations-old family junkyard, I've managed to document but a single 1930s car in a U-Wrench-type facility prior to today. Here's the second: a once-glamorous 1938 Buick in an excellent yard in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

On Wednesday, Buick formally committed itself toward an “all-electric portfolio” by 2030 — saying that it would be embarking on a brand transformation that would fundamentally change the company forever. This includes an entirely new horizontally oriented badge that doesn’t stray too far from Buick’s traditional tri-shield design.

“The Buick brand is committed to an all-electric future by the end of this decade,” stated Duncan Aldred, global vice president, Buick and GMC. “Buick’s new logo, use of the Electra naming series and a new design look for our future products will transform the brand.”

We return to the Turbo-Hydramatic once more today, and our third installment sees us at a critical point in the timeline of the automatic transmission. Fuel economy pressure from the government and performance demands of the consumer increased considerably in the intervening years since the THM’s debut in 1964. That meant the creation of lighter, more compact, and cheaper versions of the Turbo-Hydramatic compared to its flagship shifter, the THM400. GM branched out into the likes of the THM350, THM250, and the very problematic THM200.

In 1987, GM stepped away from the traditional THM naming scheme and switched to a new combination of letters and numbers. Number of gears, layout, and strength combined to turn the THM400 into the 3L80. But the hefty gearbox was already limited by then to heavier truck applications; passenger cars moved on to four forward gears after the dawn of the Eighties.

During the bling-and-horsepower-crazed 1960s, The General’s Buick Division took the full-size B-Body platform, added a hot engine and flashy trim, and called it the Wildcat. Not many well-heeled grandfathers felt interested in doing land-yacht burnouts in the VFW parking lot, it turned out, so Wildcat sales ended after 1970… but a yearning for the glory days of the Wildcat must have inspired some Buick dealers to create their own Wildcats during the 1990s. Here’s one of those rare special-edition cars, found in a Denver-area self-service yard.