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That the average Buick buyer can’t see above that good looking dash.
I was thoroughly impressed by this interior at NAIAS. Best from GM so far. Asked the designer to do something about the Lambdas.
Is GM ever going to build a car with buttons and knobs that are not gray?
I guess GM’s found a gear shift lever they like and now they’re going to put it in every car they make. Same goes for the vertical HVAC vents on either side of the radio. They seriously need to find different identities for their model lines.
That Lexus, Buick, and some other makers think luxury means a WOOD steering wheel. Just give me nice leather, thanks. They can talk to BMW if they’re in need of assistance.
It all just looks tacked together. None of the components on that dash are integrated; each was designed for a different vehicle and then the backside of each piece was cut away to make it fit to ONTO the other parts.
Good looking interior and GM-brand logo in the same picture.
“That’s a Buick?”
This picture doesn’t show it, but the door handles are the goofiest things I’ve ever seen.
The longer you spend in the interior, the cheaper it looks…
Looks good until the Shift Knob comes off in your hand.
No joke. It’s a snap fit. Saved the two cents on a threaded fastener or clip.
Nothing is wrong with that picture – it’s a gorgeous interior for a vehicle that starts at 28K.
I can see a face looking back in the upper console, resembling characters from the Robots movie a few years back. The nose is the central big knob (power, I think), eyes are above and on either side, and CD/DVD slot the mouth.
I saw one of these parked on the road in a neighborhood just outside of Detroit. I was really impressed with how nice it looked. I do definitely see a new Buick design language connection between this and the Enclave. It really looks good and quite modern. I dislike the beige color, but that seems to appeal to the same folks who think that painting all the walls in your how beige is classy. It looks better any Lexus, except the IS which is pretty sporty looking.
Jalopnik was very unimpressed with the interior.
‘the dreaded GM flat gray and beige plastic making an unexpected reappearance. There are hard plastic panels at knee points where there should be soft; rubberized plastic across the dash where it should be leather and a bizarre application of real stitching into fake leather to simulate a French seam which isn’t even there. Everything inside is very pretty, until you look closely at it’
And it’s still a fancy Malibu with a terrible name from a dead brand for nearly-dead people.
It looks good, very open and spacious. Unless you sit in an A4.
Lexus interiors feel cheap with their spray painted silver trim/dash bits- tacky. Jump in an A4 and things are different. If its priced to compete with a Camry, OK. If its A4 money, deliver them to the airport for rental.
Either way, their bankrupt with a crappy reputation and lots of good competition, so it doesn’t matter much.
No glovebox lock? Weak.
Richard Chen,
Now I can’t look at the pic without seeing that face.
PartsUnknown,
All glovebox locks I’ve encountered were flimsy at best. Perhaps GM decided to forgo something that is redundant. Just lock the car. If someone breaks in, and wants access to the glovebox, a lock (cheap or expensive) isn’t going to keep them out of it.
Too many buttons and if you look at in in a certain way it looks like a face, for me it started with just a person, but now it looks like a dog with its ears up in terror.
Its too bad because otherwise it looks like a pretty nice interior, perhaps even better than those of Cadillacs.
@boosterseat:
I’m also unimpressed with the recent trend towards spray-painted silver dash parts. That goes for Nissan, Honda, and Toyota just as well as it does for Lexus and Buick. Just give me soft-touch plastic in the color of the vehicle’s interior, thanks.
BTW, the vertical center HVAC vents are a hallmark of Hyundai. Perhaps Buick is trying to emulate them?
Well, I’ve always thought that Lexus builds the best Buicks ever made, so is it so surprising that Buick would ape Lexus with their next generation of vehicles?!
I think not! ;-)
It’s 2009. Who still uses a glove box lock? That’s like complaining it doesn’t have opera lights.
Lexus, Shmexus – Buick, Shmuick…
The dash was stolen from an Infinity Q45.
http://www.carid.com/dash-kit-gallery/images/dash-kits/Infiniti_Q45_2002.jpg
07Frontier,
Glovebox locks are not strictly for theft protection. They are also useful for keeping things secure from someone who isn’t wielding a crowbar – valets, children and nosy mothers-in-law, for example.
Hank,
I do. I don’t like opera lights though.
The steering wheel.
It’s not shared with the Malibu/G6/Aura/Sky/Solstice crowd and is finally distinctive for once.
‘the dreaded GM flat gray and beige plastic making an unexpected reappearance. There are hard plastic panels at knee points where there should be soft; rubberized plastic across the dash where it should be leather and a bizarre application of real stitching into fake leather to simulate a French seam which isn’t even there. Everything inside is very pretty, until you look closely at it’
The Malibu LTZ is the same way – looks great in photos, but up close, the cheap materials and shoddy detailing become apparent.
It’s 2009. Who still uses a glove box lock? That’s like complaining it doesn’t have opera lights.
I do. Having lockable storage in the interior is a nice alternative.
What does 2009 have to do with it? If anything, people keep more small, valuable items in their cars which makes lockable storage even more relevant.
The design looks nice, but the same could be said of the Malibu and Aura. I’m withholding judgment until I can actually see and feel the quality of the materials.
Fussy.
PartsUnknown,
Point taken.
There’s no real good place for the stick-on compass and the AAA sticker.
+1 to what PartsUnknown said.
as my father told me once, locks are to keep honest people out.
as for the rest, it still looks to me like a decent knock off of a lexus interior (which interiors don’t impress me all that much to begin with).
And it’s still a fancy Fusion/Edge/Taurus/Flex with a terrible name from a dead brand for nearly-dead people.
HAHAH!
I thought it would work.
Naturally everyone has their own tastes….but I hate the glare from the chrome/shiny surfaces used on instrument clusters and center stacks.
I can imagine the complaints as Joe/Jane Pensioner squints at the gauges and gets “overwhelmed” by all the buttons.
And second the above comment re. high beltline/cowl.
If Buick really wants to wow the pensioner crowd, it should add as an option or standard:
1. an instrument panel with no tach. and one giant digital speedometer (like the old 1980’s Cadillacs).
2. have a larger touch screen display that offers a “magnified mode” where all the buttons and readouts are super large……or
3. offer voice-operated HVAC/radio standard. Old people (and young people) would love that…..and that would be real American luxury.
Looks fine to me! Looks darn nice, in fact. the Lexii I’ve been in haven’t impressed me significantly more than this. The only thing I’d add is a touch more vivid color, like saddle leather and real metal.
Caveat: the Audi group is in a class of its own anyway, except for the funeral black interiors.
@sailski: yeah, like this flying beagle
GM has really stepped up their interior designs of late. The only thing that I’ve noticed the chrome they use is too shiny (chromey?), yet at the same time there is a lack of crispness to the pieces which makes it more obvious that what you are looking at is vacuum plated plastic instead of chrome plated metal, which is the effect they are going for, no?
Too many button on the center stack(a la Honda)
Actually the center cluster and air vents look like Stitch from Disney’s Lilo and Stitch, right down to the little nicks in the sides of the ears.
The bottles in the cupholders are pointing in uneven directions, suggesting a flawed cupholder bottom finish.
SupaMan : The steering wheel. It’s not shared with the Malibu/G6/Aura/Sky/Solstice crowd and is finally distinctive for once.
But it is shared with upcoming Chevy and Opels. So it’s not exactly distinctive.
At some point we need a brand specific wheel…GM did this years ago, it’s not like we are asking for the moon!
That crammed button style center stack has been pictured on so many pre-release GM cars that it looks old already.
What with the gauges instrument cluster? Looks like it was glued on to the dash. Reminds me of the 60’s cars that had an aftermarket tach banded to the steering coulmn.
Hey, its pretty nice for a Buick, throughly impressed. Its akin to paying the band to play on while the ship sinks, but throughly impressed all the same.
Okay for those who are complaining that GM makes car interiors complete w/gray buttons and such….take a look at the Lexus LS460/600. It has gray buttons, too!! It’s irrelevant what color they are; just as long as the interior looks well put together, which it DOES indeed. Kudos to GM and Buick for doing a VERY nice interior on a nice looking car! BTW-I have sat inside this car at the Houston autoshow January 2009, and even the prototype was well-put together.
Buick is not long for this world.
No, really, think about it. Every time GM starts shovelling money at a dead brand they cancel it. The poured huge dollars into Saturn and Oldsmobile, as well as a not-insignificant volume into Pontiac. The problem is that the can’t seem to wrap their head around the idea that they’ve been buggering the customer for so long that it’ll take a while for them to get traction.
Take Bob Lutz’ work with Saturn: the man was utterly unable to understand how, despite giving the brand a pretty good lineup, buyers weren’t beating down the doors. No understanding that a) the economy wasn’t great, b) that perhaps it takes time to establish a reputation or c) the cars weren’t so good that people were willing to pay premiums from the get-go, ignoring point B above.
And now they’re going to flush millions of dollars into Buick, which has even less of a chance of turning around than Saturn did. They’ll give it decent product and then kill it as soon as buyers fail to beat down the doors at their local dealership and demand to be blessed by GM’s brilliance.
I’m sure this car is good, but it’s just as stupid a waste of resources as the Saturn Aura and Astra were in relation to the Malibu and Cobalt. You already have Cadillac in the next showroom, desperate for a better STS, a little Kaizen for the CTS, and a DTS that isn’t a laughingstock.
Near as I can figure out, this is either distraction activity because they don’t want to deal with Cadillac, or the corporate money train just hasn’t come back around to Caddy again, or they’re just clueless. Expect a Delta-based Buick compact soon, because every brand that sells mostly to septuagenarians needs a compact.
Whatever’s wrong with it is wrong with every other “entry luxury” competitor as well. They’re all exactly the same.
My spin of the big wheel at Hertz this week landed on a 2010 Lincoln MKZ (I think those are the right letters): change the logo on the steering wheel and it was plus or minus the car in the picture.
I’m still waiting for someone, anyone, to come up with a distinctive interior. We see them all the time on concepts, but somewhere in the marketing, accounting, regulatory flowchart they devolve into this. You know, “nice.” As in librarian.
Isn’t there room somewhere in the market for “hot?”
Call me the anti-Lexus, but I believe wood and chrome have no place in a 21st century car.
I’d be impressed with a center console/cluster milled from a single block of aluminum (like high-end notebook computers).
That the latch to the glove-box is pushed to the left side of the door so the driver can conveniently open & rummage while driving?
And grey is weak; go black or navy blue for *bleep’s* sake!
“Glovebox locks are not strictly for theft protection. They are also useful for keeping things secure from someone who isn’t wielding a crowbar – valets, children and nosy mothers-in-law, for example.”
Well, there’s the problem. Neither the children nor the m-in-law are supposed to be in the front seat, and valets…this is a Buick. They don’t have valets at Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans.
That Lexus, Buick, and some other makers think luxury means a WOOD steering wheel. Just give me nice leather, thanks.
Bah, the best steering wheels are wood with chrome/polished metal spokes. They’re not particularly airbag-compliant, but if you’re worried about safety then don’t crash.
And grey is weak; go black or navy blue for *bleep’s* sake!
Or Burgundy. A friend’s father used to have a mid-90s Park Avenue, Navy Blue with a Burgundy Leather Interior. THAT was a Buick.
This is a half-assed Chinese Acura copy.
It would be interesting to see how many negative comments this would have received if a Lexus emblem had been on the steering wheel.