By ALEX LAW
Original article at:
http://www.autoweek.com/cat_content...._code=01887841
FIVE MINUTES ON THE road in a V8-powered 2004 Rainier sport/utility vehicle will make it abundantly clear what the future of GM’s Buick division looks like, or sounds like, or actually doesn’t sound like.
General Motors product czar Bob Lutz and the corporation’s management team have decided that Buick—closing in on its 100th anniversary in the car-making business on May 19—will become GM’s Lexus-like division. Cadillac is well into a plan to remake itself in the image of BMW and Mercedes-Benz, so the refined Teutonic performance front is covered. But Buick, suggests Lutz, could become the domestic equivalent of Toyota’s luxury brand—at least from a noise, vibration and harshness perspective.
This will become obvious, says Lutz, with the Rainier (above), due in September as Buick’s first model from the line of SUVs that now includes Chevrolet TrailBlazer, GMC Envoy and the soon-to-depart Oldsmobile Bravada. It was indeed a drive in a specially prepared TrailBlazer that convinced Lutz and GM CEO and chairman-designate Rick Wagoner that ultraquiet and ultrasmooth is the way for Buick to go.
Lutz says he told the SUV engineering team to stuff every bit of soundproofing and NVH-deadening they could into a test TrailBlazer, which he and Wagoner took for a drive. Both men were impressed with the results, Lutz says, so the decision to go Lexus-like was born.
Toyota points out that there’s a lot more to the success of its Lexus brand than an unearthly quiet at speed. There is the exceptional fit-and-finish, along with fine interior accoutrements and a legendary quality record. Lutz acknowledges those points, and says he is aiming Buick in the same direction. For the moment, however, Lutz is encouraged by Buick’s advances on NVH, since he believes that will be a key ingredient to the marque’s success. The other things have different teams staying up late, he notes, with their advances to be measured at a later time.
Though everyone at Buick and GM’s product development teams is concerned with the future of the old “doctor’s car” marque, which built cars that were “powerful, substantial, distinctive and mature” through the 1990s, no one is in crisis mode.
Many of the brand’s aging car lines are selling well, along with the more youth-oriented Rendezvous crossover SUV. A more powerful and upscale version of the Rendezvous, the Ultra, debuts at the New York Auto Show featuring GM’s new 3.6-liter dohc V6.
Buick also has the most famous and successful sports personality in the world on its side—golfer Tiger Woods. Woods will stay exclusive to Buick, Lutz affirms, and the brand will become even more related to golf, with Cadillac stepping back.
Lutz hopes to make a generational leap with Buick, taking it back to the children of the baby boomers who generally ignored the brand because their parents admired it. Buick will continue to sell its LeSabres and Park Avenues quietly to boomer parents, while pitching Woods and the Rendezvous to anyone under the age of 40.
And setting its sights on the growing market of those aspiring to sit in the lap of Lexus-like luxury.
