buick has some ok cars, they just need somthign to turn people's heads in their direction and take the focus away from other companies

 

A rebadge of the GTO would be exactly what Buick doesn't need for a new Grand National. The GTO, nice car that it may be, is kind of bland, and that's why Pontiac has only had limited success in selling it.

 

i agree that they need a halo car or two. but to completely turn their image around and return buick to it's heyday reputation is going to take a serious amount of work. somehow i kind of doubt a 25-30 year old is going to walk into a buick dealership to test drive a new grand national, and leave with a lesabre. they'll eventually have to start from the ground up with each of their models (or trash them all and come out with replacements) if they want to pickup more younger buyers.

 

yeh,. but some new, more angular body panels might result in a brawnier and less stealthy look, more of the brute scary look of the mid-80's GN, looking like a bat out of hell....


just like before, the modest pontiac model should be overshadowed by the buick cousin... i don't think GM has the mindset allowing them to create a whole new vehicle for buick following it's current sales...

is there another GM model that you could see transforming into a new "grand national" possibly in other countries that i dont know about??
i figured that the new GTO is unique enough to allow them to transform it without having 90 clones all over the place....


maybe bring back the trans-am while their at it and make the GN off a new trans-am, possibly stiring up both pontiac and buick?

 

Buicks, in their hey-day, were basically luxury cars with balls. They weren't sports cars or performance cars, but they had broad appeal because, unlike most Cadillacs of the 60's and 70's, you could hit the gas and really get thrown back into your leather seats. I knew a car collector who was a late 60's - early 70's Buick fanatic. He owned a '67 Riviera with a 430 and a '72 GS with a 389. They were loaded just like Cadillacs of the day, but unlike Cadillacs (even with their vaunted 500ci V8), they were fast. And they sounded like Chevelles and GTOs. Buicks were seen, really, as the luxury car for men. Guys into cars who made good money, wanted a luxury car, but weren't stoodgy old geezers. Those were Cadillac people. The Buick guys could also be seen going up against those Chevelle SS and GTO muscle cars, and even give them a run for their money. At the same time, they had the comfort of A/C and convenience of cruise control.

So if Buick is to go back to their roots, they really are in need of an image makeover a bit. They don't need to go with all out sports cars, but their lineup needs a little attitude.

 

thats just what i was thinking

 

What fastball said. You'll see Buicks during the Woodward Dream Cruise, but they're not as popular because few younger types could afford them back in the "good old days," so they buy and fix up Chevelles instead, because those were what they lusted after as "kids."

Acura does occupy the market position that Buick, Chrysler, and Mercury occupied back when Detroit automakers were kings and these marques were the showcases of luxury-and-power, even though they weren't so far away from really being Chevys, Plymouths, and Fords, the way that Acuras are nicer Hondas.

 

General Motors sales and marketing chief Mark LaNeve stopped in today and had this to say about GM's most problematic brands--Pontiac and Buick.

"Everybody asks me if I think we have too many brands? The answer is No, but we have to manage them a lot better." Buick and Pontiac have been decliining for years. These are not 21st Century brands, if you ask me. LaNeve admits that if GM is going to grow its market share, it won't be through Pontiac and Buick. Market share stabilization, and maybe a bit of growth, will come from Chevrolet, Cadillac, and Saturn. Sales stablization and likely decline is the best they can hope for with Buick and Pontiac, he says. But they have to make the brands more profitable, even as they get smaller. That's refreshing. Usually, GM and other companies don't 'fess up that some of brands are not being managed for sales growth.

GM, which began closing down its struggling Oldsmobile brand in 2000, has been quietly combining Buick, Pontiac and GMC dealerships into one channel. Some 80% of GMC-Pontiac sales points are combined and 50% of Buick sales points are already combined with Pontiac and GMC.
That channel, which will be nearly 100% combined in the next few years would, today, be the fifth largest channel of car distribution in the country.

GMC trucks and SUVs will be the bread and butter of this channel. Buick and Pontiac would each have only about four core models per brand, says LaNeve. And most important--no stupid overlapping products. No Buick Ranier SUV, which is copycat of the GMC Envoy. No Pontiac Grand Prix, which would be in the same segment as Buick sedan at a similar price point. No Buick Rendezvous SUV and Pontiac Aztek in the same dealership. "All this is Marketing 101," says LaNeve. "But we have had to keep learning it over and over again."

LaNeve thinks of the future of Pontiac and Buick in terms of MINI and Porsche. MINI only has one product today, but that's expected to change within a few years where it will have at least two and perhaps three. "And everyone is clear what a MINI is," says LaNeve. "Porsche, too...what do they have...three or four core models, and noone is unclear about what Porsche stands for." "We can do that with Pontiac and Buick over time. Take down the model offerings to ultra focus them on maybe four models at the most per brand and make them part of an overall portfolio of GMC-Pontiac and Buick at one dealership facility." He also says to look at Hummer for what GM is out to do. Three products at Hummer now, including the original H1, with a possible fourth, and everyone is crystal clear what Hummer stands for. That's the way we are going to fix Buick and Pontiac."

If you will allow me this analogy: I do a lot of gardening and I know every Spring, early, you have to clip the rose bushes just right if you want healthy roses and strong blooms. If you dont prune away the dead wood just right, the plants suffer. This is what LaNeve has in mind. It seems like a reasonable strategy going forward if they execute and are serious about saying no to their own executives who want every brand to have a minivan, roadster, sport wagon, etc.

One idea LaNeve was intent on leaving behind during his visit: "We are not looking to cut any of our eight brands." And he's not keen to see the number of models go down much either--suprisingly. Taking down three models between Buick and Pontiac, he says, may well result in three being added between Chevy and Cadillac where the growth is.

Laneve earned his stripes and two big promotions in the last eighteen months by fixing the marketing of Cadillac and making some smart product decisions. Rick Wagoner is counting on LaNeve to make sense of the rest of the GM brand stable.

http://blogs.businessweek.com/the_th..._were_won.html

 

easier to kill them if they are all in one place :chuckles:

but seriously, it is inevitable, all three of those brnads are becoming more and more useless the way i see it. phase them out already, put them out of their misery

 

GMC is far from useless. The new plan actually makes sense. The problem with GM for years has been the shitty product they push to more then one marque. If they all had different models then the others didn't I think they'll have a better chance at success. Of course, that means they need some good models. Pontiac has the Solstice (possibly, haven't driven one yet obviously) and the GTO (still not up to par in quality but far better than any other pontiac). Buick has.. well pontiac has two anyways.

GMC has a number of good models and are selling fine.