For all of you (ourselves included) who have lusted after the Opel Insignia, it looks like we’ll finally have the chance to see what the fuss is all about. As part of General Motors’ strategy to build up the Buick brand beyond its LaCrosse, Enclave, and (aging) Lucerne models, the 2011 Regal will be arriving on our shores next year, available only with four-cylinder engines and front-wheel drive.
For all of you (ourselves included) who have lusted after the Opel Insignia, it looks like we’ll finally have the chance to see what the fuss is all about. As part of General Motors’ strategy to build up the Buick brand beyond its LaCrosse, Enclave, and (aging) Lucerne models, the 2011 Regal will be arriving on our shores next year, available only with four-cylinder engines and front-wheel drive.
I have noted in my previous blogs on GM 4.0 that GM’s remaining core problem is with branding, now that its’ former biggest problems – unit costs and scale costs – are being dealt with through bankruptcy. By branding, I don’t mean marketing B.S., I mean the entire set of perceptions and beliefs that consumers hold about your company or its divisions. Branding addresses the expectations customers have about things they can’t see on a spec sheet or a test drive. It also covers their understanding about how others will perceive what they drive. That stuff is very important.
On several occasions during this bleak period for General Motors, we’ve pointed out that GM has the engineering talent to go toe-to-toe with other high-volume car manufacturers (we already know they can do trucks). Exhibit A is the Cadillac CTS. Now we have Exhibit B: the Buick LaCrosse.
Oddly enough, some of the most perplexing questions I get asked by normal people as editor of an automotive publication involve Buick. Most of them are along the lines of “Why did GM keep Buick?” and “What the heck is a Buick anyway?” Not a great place to be, if you’re GM. GM knows it has an issue here in the U.S. (Buick, remember, is a hot brand in China) and it is attacking the problem. Buick recently announced the new 2010 Buick LaCrosse, a car that gives us a chance to think about how GM is and should be thinking of the future of the brand.