Reviewed: 2011 Buick Regal CXL Turbo Sedan

Eighteen months ago, when we had the opportunity to drive the new Buick Lacrosse, it completely blew us away. It completely reset expectations for what a Buick could be.  It truly was the redefinition of a brand.

The follow-up to the Lacrosse for Buick is the new Regal, though it is actually the Opel Insignia redone for North America.  Having been bred in Germany expectations for this car were quite high, perhaps too high.  Much of the enthusiast press had already tagged this car as a performance sedan to go after the BMW Three series, especially in turbo form.  While this car may share similar dimensions with said BMW, make no mistake this car is no Three series competitor. Rather, the Buick Regal is a more than competent sedan, that while not an enthusiast car, certainly won’t embarrass itself when called upon to up the pace. 

As Buick is being reborn and rebranded from GM’s bankruptcy, there has been a question among the press, as to whom Buick is targeting, and what other brands they consider to be competitors.  The two brands that immediately come to mind Buick may be shooting for are Acura and Lexus.  Buick certainly has Acura covered and the quality of their cars are at least as good if not much better than their equivalent Lexus counterparts. On top of that, the Buicks have some style and personality unlike the cars from Lexus. 

The exterior styling of the Buick Regal, while not groundbreaking, nor extraordinary, is nonetheless very pleasing to the eye and does have character. You could say, that the car even has a bit of elegance in its design. Maybe the better term for it it would be graceful. The design language certainly is a carryover from what we saw with the Lacrosse and even a little bit with the Enclave, which was really the first of the new exterior design language. 

Inside the Regal, the quality of the materials are very pleasing and while the leather of the seats was not buttery soft, the material did have a nice thickness to its feel.  The use of hard plastics was kept to an absolute minimum, and the materials had a nice soft touch and good graining. That said, there were some interesting omissions from our Regal test car.  Number one, if there was a trunk release button inside the car it was not to be found.  Number two, at the price level of our test car, which was a fully optioned CXL Turbo model, there was no backup camera, no remote start, nor proximity locks.  While some of this may seem very nit picky, we recently had a  Kia Optima in for review that was $7000 less expensive than the Regal, yet had all of these features.  As competitive as this market segment is, it’s these little things that can make or break a car’s acceptance. 

The Telematics system worked very well we had no problems pairing our iPod, nor our Blackberry phone to the system.  As part of the option package there was a Harman Kardon nine speaker stereo system, and we have to say it’s one of the best factory installed systems we have yet experienced. We tested it with a number of genres including jazz, techno, classical and rock, and it held up well to all of these. For example, we had an old “Everything But The Girl” album playing, and got some looks from how much the system was bumping, all without distortion. On top of that Tracie Thorn’s vocals made you feel as if you were in a small club with her. 

The driver seat is multi adjustable including lumbar and side bolsters. We had no problem finding a comfortable driving position that were sure would be good for 500+ miles.  Back seat room was also very good, a six-foot person would have no problem being comfortable for an extended period of time. The trunk of the Buick Regal is also quite substantial. While it missed out on our bimonthly Costco, Trader Joe, Meijer’s runs we have no doubt he would’ve swallowed all of that with ease.

While many people expected the turbo model to be a performance car, our take away was that much like Hyundai and Kia the use of a turbo four-cylinder is more a replacement for a V6 then it is to be a performance model. While the Buick regal Turbo certainly has good power, it’s not going to blow you away. The level of power is certainly more than acceptable and the four-cylinder engine is very smooth, it never had us wishing that there was a V6 upfront instead. Fuel mileage for our Regal Turbo is rated by the EPA at 18 city 28 highway and 22 combined. Our results sow 21 in city driving and 32 on the highway, which we were pleased with. 

The Regal Turbo gives you the option of two additional suspension settings, a sport mode and a touring mode. The difference between the two can be felt, the sport mode did firm things up, and you certainly felt more of the road through the seat. However, the majority of our time with the car we chose neither. In the standard mode the car rode very well and ate up highway miles, it dealt nicely with the bomb craters that we have for roads in Southeast Michigan. There was no harshness to the suspension in dealing with several large potholes, which, in other cars, have caused unpleasantness.  The steering could have used a little more feedback and road feel, it wasn’t bad but it would have been nice for just a little more. The car was responsive to direction change, and held lines nicely when we tested it on a few off ramps. 

Our test car had a base price of $28,745, the top level option equipment package added $5690 to the total giving and as delivered price including destination of $35,185. The way Buick have decided to option this car is to offer the choice of seven different packages rather than mix-and-match choices, and there were no options that were not included in this car. At 35 grand the Buick is in a tough price range. For essentially the same money you can get a well-equipped though not loaded  La Crosse, which to this day is still one of our favorite cars we tested over the last two or three years. The Regal is certainly a match for any Lexus IS or Acura TL and would probably offer better value for money, but it’s the omission of a few little things that keep us from having the same reaction to the Regal that we did for the Lacrosse. 

At the end of the day the Buick Regal Turbo is a very good effort. While we are a bit disappointed that it not our socks off like the Lacrosse did we were still pleased to see that Buick is continuing its efforts to redefine its brand and deliver quality products that are much more than you would expect.

 

Autoline After Hours Tonight With Tom Crumm, Author and Duncan Dayton, Highcroft Racing

This week can you say “Double Feature”? Join us for not one but two visionary guests. Our first guest wants to do away with the assembly line as we know it. Tom Crumm, the author of “What’s Good for GM?”, believes the future of manufacturing lies in the past when small teams built each car from start to finish. Crumm thinks this is a surefire way to rekindle the passion workers once had for their products. Speaking of passion, our next guest has plenty of it. Duncan Dayton is the owner of Highcroft Racing, which is involved in bringing the DeltaWing concept to race at Le Mans in 2012. He says this could be “one of the most significant developments in motor racing in 50 years.” John McElroy is joined in studio by the one and only Autoextremist, Peter De Lorenzo.
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Reviewed: 2012 Ford Focus Titanium

Back in January we had the opportunity to head out to Los Angeles for the press launch of the 2012 Ford Focus and came away very impressed with the car.  However, we only got to spend a couple of hours with the car, we wanted to know, it those good first impressions would hold out on a longer review.

So, did we end up liking the Focus as much as we did in California?  How did it stack up against the Hyundai Elantra? Have a look at the video to find out!

Walkaround: 2011 Chevy Volt

There has been a lot of contriversy about the Chevy Volt, it is an electric car, is it a hybrid car, is it something inbetween.  Who cares, what it is, is brilliant!  We are in the middle of our week with the car, and we think it’s a 5 Star kind of car.

We will have more in a few weeks, but what we want to do now is take your for a walkaround of the car and have a look at some of the features and highlights.  This video is a bit long, but it is very through.

Our thanks to Scott Vandekerckhove from ESI for helping us out and walking us through.