Where are the new Buicks?

Buick cost more $$$$ thats why you see more Chevy's. If your not seeing many Buicks in you area people must not like them and sales are very low.

Here in Chicago I see the new Lucerne's every now and then. LaCrosse's are rare too. Considering Chicago used to be a big sales leader for Buick, now with only two cars in the showroom to choose from the shopers are buying their cars elsewhere.

Of course when you drop names of cars that have been around since 1959's & 1977 people tend to get uspset and look elsewhere for a car.

One poster in here who had problems with his Buick LeSabre just bought a

2007 Hyundia.

Harryface

05 Park Avenue 49,899 91 Bonneville 307,349

there is a pretty green/blue Lucerne with gold pinstripes, even including the Buick logo in the pinstripe, and 4 holes in the fender that I see frequently running around my little town of 5700 people

We have a good Buick dealer in our small town. After a year since introduction, I'm finally starting to see some Lacrosse and a few Lucernes around town and on my way to work. Even a few used ones are popping up on his lot now that they are starting to come in from rental places. He had three Lucernes from the Pro Gof Tour that had ~800 miles and a big discount.

I'm seeing more of the '07 Carmrys though. They sure seem to be moving. Even a few Hyundai Sontats, even one showed up in my driveway last night, a Silver Blue Limited.

Well one lil Buick out of 5700 aint half bad...now is it...considering its an ..AMERICAN car. And you know how patriotic Americans just hate there own and love Japanese products.

"Tommy Bastogne" wrote in news:4514d5a8$0$19896$ snipped-for-privacy@news.adtechcomputers.com:

Chevys are cheaper than Buicks thus more Chevys running around than Buicks/Caddies. Starting back when cars really became commonplace,

1940's/50's, the blue collar everyday workingman/bloke would have a Chevy or possibly Pontiac, the manager at the plant or small store owners would drive an Olds, and the town doctor or lawyer or successful contractor would drive the Buick or Caddy.

Assessing a person's wealth based on the car they drive is a part of Americana along with: Apple pie, women in their checkered aprons cooking a hot meal for their family (back when women still cooked). Kids playing sandlot baseball on the corner (before this insidious video game craze took over). Chevys are still the most owned car amongst my blue collar pals, and Buicks/Caddies are owned by the wealthier types.

T

Not everyone loves the Japanese cars.

I tried to buy a good American car, but could not find anything I really liked that was a good value. I've owned mostly GM cars for the past 45 years. I set out to buy another Buick, but ended up with a Hyundai Sonata. Some of my money went to Seoul instead of Detroit. Meantime, the Buick goes back in the shop AGAIN on Monday.They really have to stop pissing off customers.

Some of her complaint is legitimate, but reading the manual would have soled most of them. Personally, I like the auto headlights. I have them on my new Hyundai also and thing they are great. In the five years of owning my Buick, I've probably overridden them maybe once or twice.

Cry a river. So a cranky woman decided she wants to be empowered and found something as trivial as this stuff to complain about. Many folks don't mind those features and a good number actually like them. Not another pissed off potential customer - another Toyota customer running off with diareah of the mouth. You don't like a car - then don't buy it. Believe it or not, not everybody is enamored with Toyota engineering.

Amen to that! GROSSLY overrated mediocrity!

What's wrong with "the lights being on when they don't need to be"? Daytime running lamps make a car a lot easier to see by other cars. It's a proven safety feature, and most cars have the feature now. In fact, my Kia Sedona doesn't have daytime running lamps, but I wish it did. It does have lights that come on automatically when the sun starts going down. She sounds like a cranky, pissed off, never satisfied person. Get her back into her boring, personality-less transportation appliance Camry.

Do rental cars have the manual in them (not sure)?

Trivial things are what usually annoy the average person, if you stop think about it. Like Edwin's post indicated, the manual (if rental cars even include them) would have provided instructions on how to adjust the radio auto speed adjustment sensitivity (or disable it completely), which I tried to explain. But her response is "why should I have to use energy to figure out how to make the car work as one would expect it to work." She has an interesting point. Making a car that is an annoyance to use to any segment of the population has to negatively impact sales to some degree.

I do think that GM should default to "normal" or "industry common" functions and let the people that want the bells and whistles activate those on their own. Reason being is that the people that want "normal" or "expected" are the ones that can't figure out (or can't be bothered by their very nature to figure them out) how to disable them. While the people that want the car to wipe their rear-end each time they fart a juicy one are more inclined to know how to program the auto-butt-wiper feature.

Yeah - but you know what they say - you can't please all of the people all of the time. It's true too. Someone like her sounds like she's just cranky and nothing out of her norm is going to go over with her. I mean Geeze - how hard is it to figure out speed sensing radios these days? And to complain as she did about using energy... well, I guess little things are just too tough for her. You get into a different car and you expect it to be exactly like your Toyota? That's more than a little bit absurd.

Yeah but why? GM owners don't dislike a lot of these features. That's why there are more than one brand of car to choose from. You pick from the list of things you like. There are no industry norms when it comes to ammenities. Everyone does different things. GM sure isn't taking any sales hits because of DRL's or speed sensing radios. Now quality issues on the other hand...

Just make sure you select the warm water wash with the butt wiper feature. The cold water is only for those drives when the wife is wearing a T-shirt.

Otherwise - let those that don't want those kinds of options buy a different car. Why should GM or any manufacturer default to the lowest common denominator? That still wouldn't satisfy those who just want to complain anyway.

What is wrong (or right) isn't really the point. Personal opinions aside, the point I think came through fairly clearly in her expression is that, absent a law that requires them to be illuminated, the customer should have the choice either way. It doesn't make sense for a manufacturer to keep a customer from making a choice that the customer has the legal right to make. Unless, of course, GM purposefully decided to "write-off" that particular customer segment (which doesn't make a lick of business sense to me since it could be 5%-10% or more of the buying public and they NEED the sales!)

BTW: Last I checked (a couple of years back when I was in the market for a car), the feature is optional per customer preference for other manufacturers except for GM and VW.

At one time, the government was going to try to mandate DRL's for all cars. Just as it is mandatory in most (if not all) states to have headlights on when wipers are used. How many people comply? My Buick has them come on with the wipers. I like that.

It would help with wiper/light compliance, for sure.

Yea, the NHTSA has been sitting on the DRL ruling for 10 or more years now. My guess is that they're having trouble conclusively proving the

*overall* benefit. Reports on file seem to have conflicting conclusions or inconsistent benefit conclusions. And, they've not yet explained the cause of motor cycle and pedestrian accident rates going up seemingly coincident with the increasing numbers of cars with DRLs. It will probably take another 10 years to understand who wins and who looses with DRL usage. Clearly it isn't a "all win" situation, seems to me. Someone pays a price for another's benefit. Understanding that dynamic is a tough one.

Usually not. Considering that most people never read the one that came with the car they own, why would they read one on their rental they only have for a day to a week? That said, the Taurus rental I had a few years back did have the manual in the glove box with the manual still in the shrink wrap. I didn't open it as the control in the Taurus were very easy to understand.

JCR,

The last 3 cars I've rented (2 Kias and a Taurus, all from Hertz) did have the Owner's Manual in the glove box. It was handy on the Kia, since the audio system in the Armante is a bit strange to operate.

Regards, Bill Bowen Sacramento, CA

Thanks...