I can’t stand those goofy little windows that extend past the door seam………and this car has em’ on the front and rear doors. Sigh. Ah well, I suppose it’s better than having the black plasitc piece that’s at the rear door on the Cruze. Other than that, this car looks ok. Nice interior.

HIRE AN EDITOR!

Told you the next thing to get the Volt powertrain after they canceled the Converj would be a Buick.

Looks like the Harlequin Edition is going to bow first.

with a manual transmission, too, as it should be

(yes, i’m trolling, it’s friday and i’m bored at work)

Buick really is back. I like the size, interior and exterior and the fact that it shares the Astra platform. This should give the below 20K mark cars some good competition.

Wow…fantastic interior, and I imagine the exterior will be buttoned down quite well. Nice job. I agree, Buick is back. As a new Buick owner (2010 Enclave for my wife), I couldn’t be more pleased.

Not bad. Two tone seats seem out of place in a contemporary Buick, though. Hate the name. Hope they revive the Skylark name.

CajuRican – I agree, the skylark name was much better.

I really like this car, but have two gripes.

1. The front doors look like it would be impossible to get in and out comfortably. Looking at the interiors shots, you can see that the seat extends to within inches of the front part of the door frame.

2. No real arm rest. I know that this is an basically an astra, but fat americans need a good place to plop down their fat arms

Its really nice to look at though, and I think GM will be ahead of the game on the premium compact market everyone is trying to get into

I agree with most posters that this looks like a winner. Too bad it took GM 20 years to make a small car that can compete with the japs and germans. Good luck GM!

It looks about the size and shape of my 2008 Mazda 3. That is a right-sized, high-content, fun-to-drive car that outperforms and outclasses the Corolla and Civic for only a little more money. American carmakers have traditionally struck out in this segment because they think anything compact should be cheap and not cannibalize sales from midsized vehicles. This looks like a strategy change. I’m not sold on the Malibu-type two-tone interior but I like the concept and the overall footprint

I had a buick allure as a rental for a week, and I find it amazing that buick has the arrogance to compare this car to a lexus! The interior quality and fit is absolutely not equal to lexus, the exterior fit and finish I will admit is good, almost Lexus quality but still not on par. Driving it quickly showed how much more work GM needs to do with this car. Acceleration not bad, but handling was terrible, and the brakes! warped rotors and not even 25k on the thing! Also the sunroof that refused to close completely, thankfully it never rained. And when I would use the remote to unlock the door, it wont open the drivers door, I have to press the button twice to open all the doors, even the trunk opens inorder for the drivers door to unlock. GM, go back to school and learn how to make cars for christ sakes!

planet_drive…Buick isn’t the one comparing this to Lexus so much as the media is. In spite of your experience, the LaCrosse (Allure I guess?) is a fine automobile…much better looking than the Lexus. Edmunds seems to think the LaCrosse is superior to the ES. I agree.

The problem with GM is it owes billions and billions of dollars. Thats a scary amount of debt, so its difficult to produce a quality product when you have to nickel and dime all the parts and materials you use in your products. It may all look good and feel nice while the cars still under warranty, but as soon as the warranty is up, GM cars will quickly age beyond what their model year suggests. I just wouldnt trust buying a product from a company thats so heavily in debt, and the consumer will suffer in the end with a subpar product.

This is basically an Astra sedan……just look at it.

-iluvamcars

Hyundai Excel…Buick Excelle…WTF?

Why would you tarnish the Buick luxury reputation (what’s left of it), trying to compete w/Lexus, with this tiny (albeit highly stylized) econobox?

planet_drive – The Buick Allure was only sold in Canada if I am not mistaken up until 2009. The new model is actually called the LaCrosse in Canada the same as the States. So if you were in fact driving an Allure you were driving the old model which was crap compared to the new one.

Am I the only one who thinks this car will be outdated by the time 2012 arrives??? Good Good car though

and with the Cruze SS comes the Excelle GS

planet_drive: do you always let your ass do the talking, or is it 50/50 between it and your wife?

planet_drive, you must travel to Canada for work or something, eh?

planet_drive –

All companies are deeply in debt and if you really believe they are doing what you said you need to put back on the tin foil hat and get back to your underground bunker.

Supposedly they are going to call it Verano in the US, also a bad name.
Skylark would be better but Buick Bengal would be even better than that, IMO.

Verano is way to close to Murano.. not to mention the unlamented Suzuki Verona. I kind of like the name “Apollo” for this handsome little sedan, but I doubt they’ll bring that name out of mothballs.

Am I the only one that thinks those wheels and tires look like crap? Ditch those wheels for some chrome 17’s and low profile tires like in the concept picture. Otherwise, it just looks like a 10 year old Daewoo.

Excelle huh? Not bad. Based off the Astra. Seems reasonable and pretty much what I was thinking it was going to be. Now. if we recall the Saturn Astra apparantly had a pricing problem that made its sales poor here in America. So I’m assuming that being its a Buick now instead of a Saturn maybe the slightly higher than average price tag will be more worth it. And leather seats should be standard. Im not feeling that ugly Kia-like red cloth seating.

teahead – You took the thought right out of my head. I thought the same exact thing. Hyundai Excel on a Buick, I don’t think that’s gonna be a good idea. Why not Century or Skylark or one of the classical Buick names from the past? I personally like Skylark just as steve333 says.

@ planet_drive

You said it was a rental? Don’t you think that might have something to do with the rotors being warped? HELLO!

I’m still wondering if Buick plans on bringing the Opel Insignia Sportwagon as a Regal Sportwagon being the TSX and S60 will also introduce wagon variants.

@ 85ZingoGTR

Skylark or Apollo would be good. Also the Lacrosse badly needs to be renamed to Electra.

Has no defining traits to me. Another fine badge engineering job from GM.

BuyUSA – I think Skylark would be better than Apollo. The Skylark name is a name that Buick had for a long time. Apollo name only lasted two years for some reason. As for Lacrosse, Electra is ok. Although I like Century better.

jake, one exception to your “all companies are deeply in debt” statement: apple…zero debt and billions of cash in the bank…

C’mon everyone. Be real here, this is another low quality economy car from Gm. Just look at those seats. That’s just disgusting! Does anybody else see anything good about the exterior design? Or the lack thereof? Hmm… is that fabric covering the dashboard? Did GM get tired of everyone complaining about their low quality plastics? And if it’s sharing the same platform with the Cruze… expect non independent, cheap torsion beam suspension in the rear, and cheap macstruts up front.

What we have here people, is a Buick that is actually mediocre. No, this time not so horrible it’s incomparable to the competition, but one that you might actually compare to other cars. But from what I’m seeing, it’s just another Skylark, another Century or another Skyhawk- a slightly better, slightly more refined and slightly more impressive Grand Am, Impala or Cavalier.

I’m not impressed with this. The outside looks like the current Hyundai Elantra, and the inside looks more appropriate for a Cruze SS.

If Buick wants to compete with Lexus on any level, there are a few things they should concede too:

Match Lexus on standard equipment.
Ditch cloth interior option.

I can totally understand why the “Design Sketches” don’t show the interior of this car. It is nowhere near the IS250 in terms of style or execution.

@85ZingoGTR – I was at the car show over the weekend and at the Buick booth there was a guy talking about the new Regal on display. He confirmed the wagon is coming and they are studying bringing the GS version of the wagon. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Please tell me why the Buick Division is planning to offer a small(er) compact model? This size and market should be reserved for Chevrolet. Otherwise the Buick had better be remarketably more upscale than the Chevrolet Cruze. Oherwise GM looks like they are rebadging the same models like in the past, which is usually just to satisfy the dealers.