I Really Wouldn't Rather Have a Buick

Buick is officially a monster-wagon brand now.

The Opel-made Buick Regal Sportback sedan (above) and its sister model, the Regal TourX wagon, will no longer be available after the 2020 model year.  Opel, now owned by Peugeot, is phasing it out, and thanks to the popularity of monster wagons, Buick will concentrate on just those and get out of the sedan business.  Which is a shame, even if you think Buicks are boring cars.  Buick has admittedly made some boring sedans, like the big old LeSabre of the early seventies and the Century of virtually every year, but it also offered interesting sedans like the Electra T-Type and, well, the Regal Sportback . . . and the later LeSabres and LaCrosses had elements of elegance and style that outweigh their lack of sportiness.  Understatement and subtlety were always the theme of Buick style and design, and traditional Buick sedans - and station wagons, like my uncle's LeSabre Estate - executed that theme flawlessly.  By contrast, the Enclave and the Envision monster wagons are as subtle as a pie in the face.

And anyone who thought that the monster-wagon "craze" was coming to an end has egg on theirs.

I give up.  It's become more obvious that automakers in general and Detroit automakers in particular have no interest in making or selling real cars in the U.S.  They instead push these big ugly boxes with cool advertising and get silly Americans to buy them because of the bigger profit margins on them. 

Even worse is that Americans show no signs of going back to simpler, more sensible vehicles. Volkswagen recently conducted a survey and found that 96 percent of American car-buyers ranked monster wagons as the best vehicles in value for money and 87 percent said that don't plan to own a vehicle other than a monster wagon in the future.  Also, alas, most Americans families say that monster wagons are replacing the living room as the place where they spend the most time talking to each other.  The front parlor has been replaced by the rear seat.

And I'm trying to convince Volkswagen to keep its base Golf in its U.S. lineup when the eighth generation arrives.  At least that's an easier task than a Buick dealer has in convincing me to by an Enclave.

I used to like Buicks because I thought they were handsome, comfortable cars, and in fact I like today's Buick Regal Sportback even more for the same reasons, plus it's a driver's car, the sort of car my uncle and my grandfather (my grandfather owned a Skylark) could never have anticipated.  But Buick always did have a lame side, and its switchover to an all-monster-wagon lineup has amplified its lameness exponentially.  And when 2021 comes, Buick will be one of the growing number of car brands I pass by completely at the auto show.