GM Inside News Forum - Cadillac & Buick Discussion

Who Knew a Buick Regal could be so Fabulous?

Buick61 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:18:04 GMT

Quote:

The party made me think - which I assure you is something that parties don't usually do. It reminded me of how we all made it through this past year. This event was a perfect way to start ending my year. You know that saying, "As GM goes, so goes the country." It definitely fit that night. We have all gone through our own makeover, and are now on the other side of it, and are ready to relaunch our own selves. The Buick Regal has done what we have all had to do - rethink who we are and how it fits into today's paradigms, leave what works, and rethink what doesn't. We are all coming to the end of this trying time, much different than who we were in January, and frankly we are the better for it. GM is providing us hope - that we can come out of this economic crisis in a stronger position than we were before. It is just going to take effort. If GM can do the work, than so can the rest of us.

I commend GM for having the courage to realize that what they were doing was not the answer- we all know how hard it can be to admit that one - and for having the know-how to create a new, and hopefully, very successful car line.

Remember, as GM goes, so goes the country. We all have a stake in this one.

That ain't NOTHIN' but the truth!

Maximum Bob Confirms CTS-V SportWagon

HoeyHimself — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:14:42 GMT

And so it begins...

One of our guys sat down with Mr.Lutz where he offered up some much awaited good news. We WILL be seeing a CTS-V wagon, unless of course it is to be produced along side the G8-based Impala that will go on sale in an alternate reality that Lutz has taken us to in the past.

Scoop! Bob Lutz Says Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon is Definitely Coming - Car News
Pick your poison! Incredible 556-hp CTS-V available �any way you want.�

BY STEVE SILER

GM�s vice chairman Bob Lutz has confirmed that the 556-hp Cadillac CTS-V wagon will indeed become a production reality. Lutz dropped the W-bomb during a recent one-on-one interview while discussing how to prime the market for cool cargo haulers�like a possible Buick Regal wagon�especially among the over-35 set that grew up traumatized by wood-paneled Grand Marquis and Chrysler K-car wagon-trocities. Then Lutz said, �You know what�s really going to get you guys [on board with wagons] is the CTS-V wagon.�

�Oh, has the wagon been confirmed?� we asked, already aware that the hot-rod CTS would also be available as a coupe. �Yes,� he replied, �You�ll be able to get the CTS-V any way you want.�

Keep Reading

Houston - SRX Comparo (Ride and Drive)

rueben44 — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:38:45 GMT

Hey Everyone,
I wanted to know did anyone else attend the Houston Cadillac of Crossovers SRX event in the Galleria?
I tell you I learned a lot from this event. I will make it short but they had the Lexus RX, Mercedes GLK, BMW X5, CTS Sports wagon, and SRX (3.0) on hand.

1st place CTS Wagon
You can feel the chassis of this car is much more superior to the others here. It looked stunning, better than the sedan, and it felt so high quality in every way. Also I noted that the seat coolers were not loud like I read in some compare�.lies.

2nd place SRX
Now the SRX is not made as quality as the CTS on the inside even though it has a little more to the gauge design that is really neat. The seats are so comfy and I love the extensions for the lower back of your legs. Also I like the fact that Cadillac carpets the cargo areas rather than use plastic like the competition because I hate those scratches. Finally the 3.0 is fine and all that mess about it being slow and this and that is so unfounded. Drive it for yourself and tell me anything is wrong with that engine. It is loud from the front outside that much is true. From the inside however it is nice and quiet.

3rd BMW X5
It is a little to heavy in turns and the accelerator has a delay but it is nice and quality packed even if it is way over priced.

4th Benz GLK
Cheap Cheap Cheap and harsh. It looks good to the eyes at first on the inside but then you notice the door panels are molded plastic and the brush aluminum is just grey plastic with fake aluminum marks in it. All of the buttons are far apart and it rides like most new Mercedes hard as a brick. Not to mention rear seat room is so cramped in this thing.

5th Lexus RX
How do they move so many of these things? They have the worst door panels that don�t even blend into the dash and are just big and plain. I will say the seats and very soft and comfy but that Toyota shifter stuck almost upright in the dash is horrible. I just hated this thing it was so low quality that I now question the taste of the people I see driving them.
Anyway I can say without bias that GM is truly back in the game because you don�t have to make excuses anymore for driving a Cadillac.

Buick Regal Wagon Being Discussed

ctdriver — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:51:15 GMT

http://blog.caranddriver.com/blazing...ing-discussed/

NYT: Cadillac Thrives as a Figure of Speech

Buick61 — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:14:31 GMT

By BEN ZIMMER
Published: November 5, 2009

The Cadillac division of General Motors has seen better days, with woeful sales figures even compared with those of other brands in the slumping luxury-car market. Yet the name Cadillac is thriving, at least on Capitol Hill. A centerpiece of legislation seeking to rein in health care costs is a tax on “Cadillac plans,” the favored shorthand for high-cost insurance policies. At the very high end are “gold-plated Cadillac plans,” or even “super-gold-plated Cadillac plans,” to use President Obama’s turn of phrase. How has the Cadillac brand survived as a stand-in for luxury, even as the cars themselves have lost much of their cachet?

Cadillacs have been a symbol of prestige ever since the first ones were rolled out in 1902, but the association was solidified in the 1920s by the G.M. chairman Alfred P. Sloan, who aligned each of the company’s car models with a stage of social mobility — and placed Cadillac at the top of the ladder. “G.M. ushered you into auto ownership with a modestly priced Chevy and then encouraged you to aspire to an Olds, a Pontiac, a Buick and — at the pinnacle — a Cadillac,” explains Nancy Friedman, a branding consultant based in Oakland, Calif. “So the notion of upward mobility, aspiration and ‘the best’ were built into the brand almost from the start.”

The Chevrolet-to-Cadillac hierarchy offered a convenient ranking system for other lines of consumer products marketed with gradations of quality and price. When Lucien Wulsin, the head of the Baldwin Piano Company, was interviewed by the magazine Sales Management in 1932, he drew an explicit parallel between his product line and G.M.’s, calling the Baldwin grand piano “the Cadillac of our line, just as our other models can be compared to the Buick, Oldsmobile and the Chevrolet models of General Motors.”

While Cadillac was taking on the broader meaning of “the highest quality (of something),” a similar semantic evolution was happening in England with Rolls-Royce. The Oxford English Dictionary records a 1916 usage from William A. Robson’s book “Aircraft in War and Peace,” which spoke of “the best pleasure aeroplane, the Rolls-Royce of the air.” American airmen pulled the same trick with Cadillac. During the 1925 court martial of Gen. William Mitchell, the chief prosecutor countered Mitchell’s ridicule of antiquated DH planes as “flaming coffins” by lauding them as “Cadillacs of the skies.” The World War II-era Mustang fighter planes that J. G. Ballard admired as “the Cadillacs of air combat” in his autobiographical novel “Empire of the Sun” were no doubt more worthy of the title.

“The Cadillac of such-and-such” became such a popular form of praise in the late ’40s and ’50s that even advertisers of relatively small-ticket items borrowed the brand name to bask in its reflected glory. Hillquist sold “the Cadillac of all trim saws,” a Huffy children’s bicycle was “the Cadillac of the sand-pile set,” Rock-Ola was “the Cadillac of phonographs” and so on. G.M. didn’t object to this appropriation, since it only further boosted the status of the Cadillac brand. After all, according to a 1959 advertisement, Cadillac was “the world’s best synonym for quality.” (To get technical, it’s really a metonym for quality, but that wouldn’t fly in ad copy.)

As the years passed, however, the luster began to fade. It was perhaps a bad sign when, in a print ad in 1979, Cadillac felt the need to remind consumers that it was still “the Cadillac of cars.” As the fortunes of Cadillac declined in the ’80s and ’90s, the old laudatory expression became a source of pop-cultural satire: Krusty the Clown on “The Simpsons” endorsed an S.U.V. called the Canyonero as “the Cadillac of automobiles”; the rental-car attendant in the film “Get Shorty” assured John Travolta’s character that the Oldsmobile Silhouette was “the Cadillac of minivans.” Most recently, in the HBO series “The Wire,” when the young female thug Snoop is sold what a salesman calls the Cadillac of nail guns, she dismisses his pitch with the line, “He mean Lexus, but he ain’t know it.”

In the health-insurance field, meanwhile, Cadillac had taken hold as an adjective to describe costly coverage that may require little in the way of co-payments or deductibles. As early as May 1964, a Congressional subcommittee heard testimony from a member of the Florida State Council for Senior Citizens that “Cadillac policies” were “driving insurance rates up.”

“The Cadillac of X” has also survived as a sturdy phrasal template, even if it’s now often used with tongue in cheek. Why has Cadillac persisted and not, say, Lincoln? Friedman, the branding consultant, says she suspects that Cadillac has benefited from “the euphony of its name”: “It rolls off the tongue, which you can’t say about Studebaker or Edsel — or Mitsubishi, Lexus or Saturn.”

LINK

Cruze based "baby buick" shape exposed

indica — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:26:23 GMT

http://www.worldcarfans.com/10911062...ess-camouflage

Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac SRX reliability stats

mkaresh — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:25:46 GMT

I think the new Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac SRX are both going to sell much better than their predecessors, and so am very interested in providing reliability stats on them ASAP.

TrueDelta's Car Reliability Survey updates quarterly, so it can provide results far ahead of other sources. The November results will already include a few 2010s--but all are imports. I'd love to include more domestic models--just a matter of how soon enough owners sign up and participate.

Participants simply report repairs the month after they occur on a one-page survey. When there are no repairs, they simply report an approximate odometer reading four times a year, at the end of each quarter.

To encourage participation, participants receive full access to all results, not just those for the LaCrosse and SRX, for free.

For the details, and to sign up to help out:

Car reliability research

3.6 l V6 Twin turbo

asrapid — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:11:43 GMT

Most of us have read rumors about v6 with twin turbo being developed for CTS to sit between 300 HP CTS and V series. Later it was canceled. Now there is a concept from GM at SEMA with v6 TT and around 425 HP in Camaro.
Link
Is there any chance that this engine is the engine which was supposed to go in CTS?? Or maybe it is still in plans?

Hennessey CTS-V: So Fast, On Star Called.

ChevGuy3186 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:12:08 GMT

It�s not very often that a car is so blindingly fast that it�s on board computer management systems thinks there�s a problem. Well if it�s going to happen to anyone, it�s going to happen to John Hennessy and his crew. Watch as their 700 pony-pushing CTS-V runs an 11 second quarter-mile, and then procedes to alert On-Star because .99 G�s of acceleration registers as a �vehicle event�.

Watch It At The Link Below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8As1zshWxn0&feature...

2011 Buick Regal camo pics

-World Class- — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:03:19 GMT

Not very revealing, but 'official pics' nonetheless says the source.

Link -> http://www.leftlanenews.com/buick-regal.html