| 777 | Date: Thursday, 28 Oct 2010, 16.43 | Message # 1 |
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User ID: 777
Joined: 18 Oct 2010
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| Are Americans ready for a 4-cylinder premium sedan? The Buick Regal is about to find out.
I’ve been testing the reborn 2011 Regal this week, including a holiday zip from Brooklyn to Boston and back again. The made-in-Germany Regal is essentially a rebadged Opel Insignia, the European Car of the Year for 2009. In other words, this is no rental-counter Buick.
And despite a mere 2.4-liter 182-horsepower engine that works a bit hard to motivate this roughly 3,600-pound sedan, the Buick is a winner. It’s loaded with curb appeal, it's as quiet and solid-feeling as most luxury sedans, and the interior looks and feels posher than its $26,995 base price would suggest. It's not quite the sporty Acura TSX-fighter that Buick bragged about, but it's still an impressive car, especially at a price that's in line with high-end Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys. And with three well-received products in a row -- the Regal, LaCrosse sedan and Enclave crossover -- Buick is putting together the kind of lineup that could justify GM keeping it around while dispatching Pontiac, Saturn and Saab instead. (Of course, it helped Buick’s cause that the brand is hugely popular in the booming Chinese market).
Like Hyundai with its new Sonata, Buick made waves when it announced that the Regal would not offer an optional V6 engine. Now reports suggest that GM may spread the 4-cylinder-only strategy to other midsize cars, including a redesigned Chevrolet Malibu due in 2012. With more than 90 percent of Malibu buyers already opting for the 4-cylinder version, that wouldn’t be much of a stretch.
Skeptics will focus on the Regal’s rather tepid 8.7-second acceleration to 60 mph. But the Regal still had no problem staying out of its own way, sailing comfortably and quietly at 80 mph and more. If there’s an issue with the 2.4-liter Ecotec engine, it’s that the engine strains a bit in its upper registers when you’re climbing steep hills or gunning for maximum power. But for people who need more juice, Buick also offers a 220-horsepower turbocharged version, and a roughly 250-horsepower Regal GS is in the works. More importantly, at a steady 65 mph cruise, the Regal sneaked past its EPA estimate of 30 mpg, showing me closer to 32 mpg.
Until now, only Audi has had any real success selling high-dollar, 4-cylinder cars to Americans. But Audi has been blessed with particularly good engines in the 1.8-liter and now 2-liter turbos that deliver silky, quiet power in models from the A4 sedan to the Q5 crossover. (Saab has its own 4-cylinder turbo tradition, but those cars have been strictly niche models for a small audience of loyalists.)
Ultimately, I’d argue that it’s better for Buick -- and GM -- to be ahead of the trends, this one included, than being perennially behind the curve. The last time gas prices skyrocketed, all of Detroit was caught with its collective pants down, and the pockets of those pants were stuffed with the keys to all of their gas-guzzling, white-elephant SUVs. The next time gas prices go wild -- and that’s only a matter of when, not if -- it’s cars like the Buick Regal that will reap sales and take advantage.
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