#buick

Hyundai and Buick are feeling the heat in China, and the industry might rethink past practices of freewheeling Twitter snark. Hyundai and a Buick dealer made remarks about the quality of their products after a 2-month-old baby was abducted along with the RAV4 it was in. Chinese commenters did not like it at all.

The popular wisdom among folks in the auto-biz of my generation (1970s) is that Buick only exists because of China. Why didn’t GM kill Buick in America and keep it in China? The answer is obvious: you can’t sell your brand on its “Americanness” if it isn’t also sold in America to Americans. Buick then is a brand hunting for a mission. It’s also a brand hunting for fresh customers that don’t remember the Century and Skylark, two abominations firmly burnt into my mind. In attempt to solve these problems Buick has ditched their badge-engineering mantra and is rolling out new products targeted at folks from the 80s and 90s. Forced induction and a manual transmission aren’t new to Buick, but the possibility of a desirable small sedan from the triple-shield is earth shattering. Have they managed it? GM tossed us a set of keys to find out.

As a journalist, if you ask an OEM rep about any given car’s redesign or next generation, you’ll undoubtedly be met with a terse “we don’t comment on future product plans”. But if you’re an analyst? Different story.

Sajeev,

I have a 2001 Buick Regal LS. I bought it in 2007 with 14,000 miles on (yes, from a grandmother). It has 72,000 miles on it as of this morning. It’s not a great car and has required plenty of maintenance (for example, I’ve had to replace the brakes completely 3 times already). However, I have a few questions about long term items:

It’s time to make a confession to the good folks at TTAC.

The mileage game is rigged.

How so? Well, approximately two-thirds of the vehicles that reach the 300k+ mark at an auction I attend will usually belong in one of four categories.

GM’s announcement that it would move Camaro production out of Oshawa has left one of GM’s best plants in a lurch, and the CAW says that the plant’s very survival is at stake.

According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, GM North America President Mark Reuss has suggested that Buick might be revising its “tri-shield” logo, which dates to the 1950s. The current all chrome version has been in use for the past decade or so.

One thing about the East Bay is that you see a lot of donks there. Last time I visited the area in which I had all my earliest formative automotive experiences, I spotted this ’69 Buick sedan sporting 22″ wire wheels in a local yard.

The Opel/Vauxhall Cascada got a surprisingly warm reception on TTAC, considering that it’s a ragtop with humble origins based on the Delta II platform (thank you, readers, for correcting my mistake).

Are you planning a vacation to Portugal, Spain, Italy or a similarly depressed Eurozone country in the next year or so, you’ll have another choice for topless motoring on your way to the topless beaches.

The introduction of the Buick Verano Turbo is right around the corner, and that could spell doom for the Buick Regal, which has seen sales plunge by 37 percent this year.

TTAC Commentator Morea writes:

Sajeev, hope it’s not too dumb, but it really is a question I have! I wish to someday own a car with a straight eight engine.

Since we can’t have nice things all the time, like images of the production Jaguar F-Type, I present to you what may be the ugliest car I’ve ever seen – surpassing the multitude of Ssangyong Rodius (Rodii?) I saw on my Birthright trip.

GM is backing out of plans to share the Opel Insignia platform with its partner PSA, says Der Spiegel. It was planned that PSA will build a mid-sized Peugeot and Citroen with next gen Insignia underpinnings. The cars would have been made at Opel’s Rüsselsheim factory. Together with the Opel model, the cars would have filled the available capacity. Scratch that plan. It wasn’t killed because it was a bad idea. It was killed because Buick and especially GM China complained, says the magazine.