4 Reasons Buick Came Back from the Brink
A little personal history: In a previous professional life, I worked for Buick. At the time, roughly 2004-2007, General Motors (GM) had quit making money and was looking to kill brands. Oldsmobile had already gone down. Then GM's product czar Bob Lutz called Buick and Pontiac "damaged brands." We were pretty sure Buick wasn't long for the world, given that its average owner age was 65. Best-case scenario? GM would keep the brand alive in China, where it was thriving.
Fast-forward to 2011 and Buick is doing great. Pontiac, meanwhile, has gone to that Great Parking Garage in the Sky. What happened? Well, here's what:
- Some good cars finally showed up. In 2005, Buick was selling four sedans, a rebadged GMV SUV, a reskinned Pontiac Aztek (yes, that widely loathed, weird-looking vehicle, given new life as "Rendezvous"), and a kind of strange truck-fronted minivan. Many cars, each less inspiring than the next. Even Tiger Woods couldn't move the metal. Then Buick began to slim down the lineup, to the point where it's now selling basically three vehicles: the popular Enclave crossover, the well-reviewed Regal sport sedan, and the mid-size LaCrosse sedan. Of these, the Enclave was the game-changer. It wooed customers away from Lexuses and BMWs and set the stage for Buick's product resurgence. But more importantly, it got people in their 40s back into the brand.
- The media stopped thinking of Buick as an old person's car. Here's a little taste, from Motor Trend:
More than the chic new LaCrosse or the glittery Enclave, the 2011 Buick Regal takes all your preconceptions about GM's old-fogey brand and drives them straight into the nearest dumpster. The $26,995 Regal CXL is sleek, stylish and comprehensively equipped, with suavely European road manners. The $29,495 Regal Turbo is a wonderfully subversive sport sedan whose punchy, 220-horsepower blown Ecotec four and supple, yet buttoned-down, chassis puts Acura's homely TSX on notice, and seriously makes you wonder whether an Audi A4 is really worth the money.
Given that "damaged" Buicks were only supposed to appeal to retirees who valued a nice, soft, sluggish ride with a nice, big trunk into which, I don't know, and entire golf cart could be stashed, this kind of sea-change in media attention was a big deal.Yep, it's that good.
- It's huge in China. Buick lived because making it a China-only brand just wasn't tenable. Cutting loose the brand that gave birth to GM more than 100 years ago might have sounded like a great strategy, but the problem was that the worst thing GM could have done for the brand's integrity would have been to kill it in the U.S. Buick's cachet in the Middle Kingdom would have disappeared overnight.
- Messy marketing didn't result in disaster. GM didn't do a very good job redefining Buick through TV spots. This 2009 Buick LaCrosse ad was roundly panned and misunderstood. But it didn't undermine the Trishield's rapidly improving image. Which just goes to show you -- sometimes all the advertising in the world can't undermine a solid product lineup.