Why does Buick still exist?
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Nope. Buick is definitely at a lower level than Cadillac. As @Doog said, entry and not really sporty Buick to high end and somewhat sporty Cadillac.
I'd have Audi in there with Cadillac as well, but mostly because of the sporting aspect. If there's anything that Buick is lacking, it's that they don't have a their own fast car. The thing is, they don't need one. Buick (and Oldsmobile) for that matter were never about sporty cars, it didn't really fit their image. Cadillac was the same way until about 15 years ago when performance and luxury became standard for German makes that Cadillac was forced to try their own hand. Buick serves a rightful place in GM's lineup between Chevrolet and Cadillac, whereas Pontiac (essentially a Chevy clone near the end) and Oldsmobile (barely above Chevy/Pontiac but not at same level as Buick) were crowded out.
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- YSSMAN
- YSSMAN
As everyone else has said, "China." But, there's a bit more to it.
I'll leave you to your own reading of Buick's history on Wikipedia, but the modern brand basically emerged out of the destruction of Oldsmobile, Saturn, and Saab at GM during the last few years of the 2000's. Although Buick had a hell of a run throughout the '80s as a "fun" luxury brand with serious performance credentials, the shifts at GM throughout the '90s basically regulated them to the bargain end of the luxury segment. They weren't much more than tarted up Chevrolets or downgraded Oldsmobiles, and the people who bought them generally didn't care.
The death of Oldsmobile gave Buick a leg up in the luxury market, but only slightly, thanks to Cadillac getting the larger share of R&D and marketing bucks leading up to the bankruptcy in 2008/2009. Without a competitive powertrain, styling, and so on, they carried on with the W-body and L-body models that had largely been around forever at that point. Just before then, it was doctrine at GM that Cadillac was going to move further upmarket to actually compete with BMW and Mercedes (as we see today), while moving Saturn up to compete with Acura and Lexus - once again leaving Buick out in the wind when it came to R&D and marketing dollars. But, the weird thing was that the brand was selling like gangbusters in China, and someone at GM figured they could pass off Opels as Buicks elsewhere, and so they did - which also happened to be what was going on with Saturn in the US at the time. When Saturn got the axe, all of that cash went straight into the Buick pipeline, and boy oh boy did they rush into producing several cars that changed the game for them:
TL;DR
Because China, and GM needs a brand to fill weird niche needs - which has so far paid off very, very well
That's a much tougher question to answer than Buick. I think at Ford, its a lot of history with the brand, and I think its the marketing department.
As easily as they can charge $70k for a King Ranch F-150, marking up a Fusion to $40k+ levels isn't going to sit well with a lot of people when there is a blue oval on the front of the car. More or less, Lincoln serves as a logical step up for the Ford folks who will drive nothing but FoMoCo products. Although back in the '80s and '90s, there was also a clear distinction in the overall quality of the product as you went from Ford, to Mercury, to Lincoln... But without a Mercury to split the difference, and Ford largely moving up to fill that gap, there is little that they've been able to do to hide those similarities.
The even weirder part has been that the executives and the marketing department can't seem to make up their minds on what exactly is going on there. On the one hand, the execs are saying that they don't plan to go and chase down Cadillac and their German-fighting capabilities. On the other, the marketing folks are trumpeting Lincoln as the only true American luxury brand... More or less, that these are the comfortable, quiet, stylish cars that you'd expect to find... Not a hardcore Nurburgring monster that Cadillac has created.
Pile on the ads from the past half decade or so, and I find the picture to get - you guessed it - even more weird. Lincoln went from this weird value proposition luxury brand that had THE MOTHERDONKIN' TOWNCAR, to a brand that happened to offer some luxurious products. They've been no better than Buick, and yet, here they are trying to slap John Slattery (of Mad Men fame) and some retro-modern-future junk onto the brand. The Matthew Mcconaughey stuff was downright weird, trying to play them off as this post-modern luxury thing. Maybe? But when you go to the auto shows and stand in their stage, it does its best to look like a modern interpretation of a retro interpretation of the future. Think of the '60s World's Fair, crossed with Mad Men, and an Apple Store... You've got the idea. Sure, the Lincoln MKZ fits that. So does the MKC. But the MKS and MKT? Why even bother?
These days, the ideas of the executives and the marketing department seem to be coming together a bit more clearly with the new Continental. They want to be an American luxury brand. Nothing more, nothing less. What that means is largely up to what you think it should mean - and much of that seems to be high style, high comfort, high quality, and a not-very-high price. I get the feeling that Ford wants to make Lincoln not only a logical step up from the blue oval, but also a logical step up from Buick or Acura before you go onto an Audi or a Mercedes. And honestly, I don't think that that's a bad place to be.
I'll leave you to your own reading of Buick's history on Wikipedia, but the modern brand basically emerged out of the destruction of Oldsmobile, Saturn, and Saab at GM during the last few years of the 2000's. Although Buick had a hell of a run throughout the '80s as a "fun" luxury brand with serious performance credentials, the shifts at GM throughout the '90s basically regulated them to the bargain end of the luxury segment. They weren't much more than tarted up Chevrolets or downgraded Oldsmobiles, and the people who bought them generally didn't care.
The death of Oldsmobile gave Buick a leg up in the luxury market, but only slightly, thanks to Cadillac getting the larger share of R&D and marketing bucks leading up to the bankruptcy in 2008/2009. Without a competitive powertrain, styling, and so on, they carried on with the W-body and L-body models that had largely been around forever at that point. Just before then, it was doctrine at GM that Cadillac was going to move further upmarket to actually compete with BMW and Mercedes (as we see today), while moving Saturn up to compete with Acura and Lexus - once again leaving Buick out in the wind when it came to R&D and marketing dollars. But, the weird thing was that the brand was selling like gangbusters in China, and someone at GM figured they could pass off Opels as Buicks elsewhere, and so they did - which also happened to be what was going on with Saturn in the US at the time. When Saturn got the axe, all of that cash went straight into the Buick pipeline, and boy oh boy did they rush into producing several cars that changed the game for them:
- Buick LaCrosse: After jumping off the W-Body onto the larger Epsilon platform, refinement seemed to go up a hundred fold. Although it is big/heavy compared to most of the Acura and Lexus competition, it does the soft/quiet/comfortable thing well enough to sell, and sell, and sell. Adding the standard hybrid mode didn't work all that well, but luxury AWD V6 did
- Buick Regal: A Regal to be taken seriously did great things for the company. They had a credible entry-level luxury car, even if most of the rest of the world loathe the Insignia that it shares the overwhelming majority of its parts with. The GS model sits in a weird performance zone that people seem to like, and even the lower trim level model attracts the kind of buyers that are looking for something that's quiet and stylish, without breaking the bank
- Buick Verano: More or less, Buick kinda lead the way with the foray into compact luxury cars here. Although Audi had done the A3 for a bit, it wasn't until Buick jumped in that the segment seemed to explode with options. Based on the Astra, again another car not well liked in all places, it shines with a pretty hefty bit of quiet-tuning and refinement that not all the rest of the luxury compacts have. That, and its a good bit cheaper than some of the competition
- Buick Encore: Welp. Buick hit the ball out of the goddamn park on this one. No one knew that the compact luxury crossover would become a "thing," hell, the idea of a compact crossover wasn't even a "thing" when this showed up. Cheap, good on gas, quiet, comfortable, and has optional AWD. They couldn't build them fast enough for quite a while, which was a similar thing to the...
- Buick Enclave: Although the full size luxury crossover had kinda/sorta been a thing for a bit here (I guess the Chrysler Pacifica?), Buick turned that segment pretty much upside down with the thing. I don't think anyone expected the Buick to be a volume seller on the Lambda chassis, and it still is all these years later. Again, comfortable, quiet, reasonably luxurious at a good price... It all adds up to a very successful formula at GM
TL;DR
Because China, and GM needs a brand to fill weird niche needs - which has so far paid off very, very well
That should be the real topic of this thread. Why does Lincoln still exist?
That's a much tougher question to answer than Buick. I think at Ford, its a lot of history with the brand, and I think its the marketing department.
As easily as they can charge $70k for a King Ranch F-150, marking up a Fusion to $40k+ levels isn't going to sit well with a lot of people when there is a blue oval on the front of the car. More or less, Lincoln serves as a logical step up for the Ford folks who will drive nothing but FoMoCo products. Although back in the '80s and '90s, there was also a clear distinction in the overall quality of the product as you went from Ford, to Mercury, to Lincoln... But without a Mercury to split the difference, and Ford largely moving up to fill that gap, there is little that they've been able to do to hide those similarities.
The even weirder part has been that the executives and the marketing department can't seem to make up their minds on what exactly is going on there. On the one hand, the execs are saying that they don't plan to go and chase down Cadillac and their German-fighting capabilities. On the other, the marketing folks are trumpeting Lincoln as the only true American luxury brand... More or less, that these are the comfortable, quiet, stylish cars that you'd expect to find... Not a hardcore Nurburgring monster that Cadillac has created.
Pile on the ads from the past half decade or so, and I find the picture to get - you guessed it - even more weird. Lincoln went from this weird value proposition luxury brand that had THE MOTHERDONKIN' TOWNCAR, to a brand that happened to offer some luxurious products. They've been no better than Buick, and yet, here they are trying to slap John Slattery (of Mad Men fame) and some retro-modern-future junk onto the brand. The Matthew Mcconaughey stuff was downright weird, trying to play them off as this post-modern luxury thing. Maybe? But when you go to the auto shows and stand in their stage, it does its best to look like a modern interpretation of a retro interpretation of the future. Think of the '60s World's Fair, crossed with Mad Men, and an Apple Store... You've got the idea. Sure, the Lincoln MKZ fits that. So does the MKC. But the MKS and MKT? Why even bother?
These days, the ideas of the executives and the marketing department seem to be coming together a bit more clearly with the new Continental. They want to be an American luxury brand. Nothing more, nothing less. What that means is largely up to what you think it should mean - and much of that seems to be high style, high comfort, high quality, and a not-very-high price. I get the feeling that Ford wants to make Lincoln not only a logical step up from the blue oval, but also a logical step up from Buick or Acura before you go onto an Audi or a Mercedes. And honestly, I don't think that that's a bad place to be.
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- HamiltonMP427
I wouldn't say equal in price but all of the rest yes, it's another way of providing what would seem like upper luxury vehicles but to those who are not in the same ball park as Cadi. To those who are new business men that are just making enough at their new job to afford to look the part with out actually paying the part, and also not wanting something as bland as a Chevy Malibu or chevy anything. And those who just cant afford a Camaro in the same price range cause they also went and had a family while becoming part of some new business firm. Those are the types and clearly there are plenty of those people cause Buick is alive.
Also old people who still remember what it's like to drive a FWD buick regal from the late 90s and figure a GS is just the modern iteration of that so they buy it. In reality Buick has no more reason to exist than defunct GM cousins that were once apart of the mix.
The way I see it is Chevy provides a quality low to mid range (price and quality let's say) car in sub compact, compact, mid-size sedan and more upper mid to high range large sedan, sports car and super car. Cadillac only provides luxury cars but from varying size xts is the smaller, then the ATS is mid range business exec so it challenges the A4, 3 series area, and the large exec CTS which is more toward 5 series, A6/A7. GMC I don't care about nor do I think they should exist because I don't believe they're a stronger version of what you get at Chevy despite what the salesmen may say. But this is basically the general thinking of why it works even if you don't see it at first.
Buick seems to fill a lower spectrum niches that Cadillac just cant fill due to the pricing they sit at, and at the same time Buick does other things. For example the cross-over wing of GM is basically Buick as far as I can remember and so that helps it have some importance along with what I also said. To me it just doesn't justify it staying in the grouping.
EDIT:
Oh and @YSSMAN just reminded me, China. I recall during the worst of the recession Buick and other GM vehicles were the best selling and most selling cars in China. And so they helped GM alot during that time frame, not enough to bring em fully back from near death but a good life line.
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- YSSMAN
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Its tough to focus in on any one particular thing Buick has done right, I think, is because each model is doing something different for them. Where I feel like there is an overarching "story" of sorts with Chevrolet and Cadillac, almost every Buick model can slot between two models in a Chevy or Caddy lineup, or have invented a segment all of their own. But, not only that, their models generally target a segment that's been left behind by a lot of brands - folks who want a quiet, comfortable, and reliable car without having to spend a ton of money. That's where Acura, Infiniti and Lexus made all their money in the '90s, and that's the market that Infiniti and Lexus left to go chase the Germans.
But even then, its been the same kind of story for the middle luxury brands over the past decade or so. As luxury creep has set in on the lower level brands, automakers have been able to push luxed up basic models far more easily than stripper luxury models. That's where the Titanium Fords went to kill Mercury and left Lincoln to flounder, that's where so much of Acura's R&D has gone, and that's what pushed FCA to move Chrysler downmarket to keep them off the heels of Maserati and Alfa Romeo. Buick has been able to dodge it partially because GM has been doing the dance for so long, but also because they can take the chances with the brand.
Granted, it doesn't mean that Buick is infallible in any one particular way. Although the Cascada will bring a lot of fresh blood to the brand, they need that next step to keep things rolling. I'm hoping the Avenir is that next move, perhaps using it as a way to offset models like the Hyundai Genesis and Kia K900, while still building on the base of buyers that have come in with cars like the Real and the Encore. But, much of the rest of the lineup is either in need of a short-term refresh, or a full-on redo. As much as I like the Regal and Verano, both will need to step up the value or upgrade the performance in light of cars like the Audi A3, Acura TLX, and so on. The Encore, despite being a resounding success, will need some upgrades to remain relevant in the segment it created. The Enclave is getting very long in the tooth despite the attempts to upgrade the style and performance. Simply put, we need a Lambda II chassis, and the flagship model should get it first.
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- HamiltonMP427
Exactly and all the more reason why you see this all over the place, low end luxury car maker that also does CUVs and SUVs. Because they are niche and really have no where else to go. And rather have the be encroached upon by even their own sister brands they stick to this and probably will for some time. GM unlike many others is large enough to do this and not worry about losing money but Nissan is different let's say for example. They have to chase Germans because the market that made them (Infiniti I mean) doesn't seem to be so big or doesn't seem to be as interested in those types of cars per say. And more so they see more money to be made in that end of the spectrum, and simply just class up the Nissan sedans. And the smaller end luxury cars they do sell end up going for what a 1 series would, which isn't the same market as a GS.
And as you said when they try to be in that market they're simply outclassed by such cars because of the fact they need more to them.
I will say though that FCA is another story all together and that type of treatment is always done to keep one brand prioritized from the others. I guess my issue with big groups is there is some idea of diminishing return going on, you have so many ideas for such an available market that you have cross brand interference and thus end up hurting yourself. I feel GM has done a good job of giving each group it's own market to work in (other than GMC).
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It's a way to sell already developed cars (Opel/Vauxhalls) in different markets with different badges. It would be stupid of GM to ignore this possible revenue stream seeing as there's already a dealership network and the Buick badge has a ready fan base. It's a business plan that works well enough for VW.
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- HamiltonMP427
GMs done this for years despite if it helps sale or not, and realistically the only good part about it is the fact that it cuts on development cost of an entirely new car. When they can bring a Holden over and badge it a Chevy and sell it as a rear wheel drive performance sedan it only helps they didn't have to design a new car, despite if it sales or not.
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It makes them money. Selling basic cars from Europe with a different badge as luxury vehicles in North America, it's basically what they've been doing with various cars for long time in many different markets.
Although I guess they were trying to push Opel/Vauxhall to lower premium market, when GM tried to place Chevrolet in place of where they used to be from the cheap budget cars market, despite the terrible success of Chevrolet in Europe.
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I always felt like Buick was GM's Mercury. I like some of the modern Buicks, too. They've become less of an "old man's car". Especially cars like the Regal and Encore.
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- That_sneaky_azN
Would "why does GMC exist" apply the same way?
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- YSSMAN
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I'd vote yes and no.
I think there is a pretty wide belief amongst those who buy GMCs that they are getting a superior design and quality level compared to a Chevrolet. At least historically, the GMCs were usually designed to be a bit more tough, but in a post-Denali era, they seem to usually be viewed as a higher quality setup. Thing is, it seems to vary by model for me. As much as I honestly believe that the Yukon and Terrain have a place among their peers, the jury is out on the Sierra, and I could definitely go without the Acadia.
I think what bothers me most is that, since GM clearly sees a value in GMC, its that they've not done much to leverage the brand in different segments. That doesn't necessarily mean that I want a GMC badge slapped on every platform that GM does, but, that there are certain segments where I think it is a bit odd that they haven't done a model yet. I think the biggest one is definitely producing something go against the Jeep Renegade, let alone the Wrangler.
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