Running With a Younger Crowd
When Manny Vasquez went shopping late last year to replace his wife’s 1994 Ford Thunderbird, he was disillusioned with American cars and expected to buy a nimble Japanese import.
But after comparing the Nissan Maxima, Toyota Camry, Lexus ES 300 and Acura models, Vasquez surprised both himself and his wife by settling on a 2000 Buick Regal GS.
They made their purchase only after his 40-year-old wife shook off a reservation that is the biggest problem facing General Motors’ Buick division: She closely associated the brand with old people.
“We fell in love with the Regal. It handles nice and has lots of power. By no means does it look like an old person’s car,” said Vasquez, 46, a leasing manager who lives in Torrance. “We wanted something that looked sporty, and this looks real nice. If you see it from a distance it almost looks like the Lexus.”
Buick has long had a muddled identity, sandwiched between Oldsmobile and Cadillac as Olds tried to move upscale and Caddy downscale. The average age of Buick customers is 60, and the auto maker’s U.S. sales last year fell 9.2% to about 404,600, less than half its volume at its peak in 1984.
Buick and Oldsmobile often bumped up against each other, with the Olds Aurora a cousin of the Buick Riviera and Park Avenue, Olds’ Eighty Eight a derivative of Buick’s LeSabre, and the Olds Intrigue similar to the Buick Regal and Century.
But with GM’s decision in December to eliminate the slow-selling Oldsmobile, Buick has room to strike out in new directions. Its Regal GS, with its extra power, wider tires and stiffer suspension, has started bringing in younger customers.
This spring Buick will begin selling a crossover SUV-minivan, the Rendezvous, and is on the verge of green-lighting production of a fanciful sedan and a curvy roadster that take Buick far from the boxy models driven by grand-uncles in recent decades.
In the last year, Buick has reduced the average age of its customers by six years. With the family-friendly Rendezvous, it is aiming to bring that average down much further.
“We’re starting to get calls from younger people about the Rendezvous,” said Randy Hardison, sales manager of O’Donnell Chevrolet Buick Oldsmobile in San Gabriel.
Attracting younger buyers “is probably the most important thing for Buick,” Hardison said. “The older market is captured. They need to dig into the younger SUV crowd.”
Buick General Manager Roger Adams said the average buyer age is high, but he expects it to drop dramatically. “Ask me again next year--it will be very different. We’re trying to hit the mid- to late 40s as our sweet spot.”
It won’t be easy. The 98-year-old brand comes loaded with baggage, given its association with the silver-haired generation.
“I think it’s a big risk. I don’t think the Buick brand will ever appeal to under-40 buyers,” said Greg Salchow, auto industry analyst with the investment bank Raymond James & Associates in Detroit. “Just by changing vehicles I don’t think you’re going to bring in younger buyers, who associate Buick with larger cars and older drivers.”
Indeed, Buick’s very essence reflects that, Salchow said, noting that an elderly friend of his drives a Buick because getting in and out is easier and the steering column-mounted shift lever is easier on his arthritic hands.
Buick should consider diversifying its models, building more variations on the Regal and Century platform that will appeal to fortysomethings and keep them in the brand as they grow older, said David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.
“We know customers are notoriously disloyal; you can lose them easily,” Cole said.
The Rendezvous is the Buick cousin of the versatile but homely Pontiac Aztek, an SUV-like minivan that people love to drive but hate to look at. The more elegantly and conservatively styled Rendezvous, with its optional third row of seats, may be just what Buick needs when it arrives in showrooms in April.
“People are not heading for the huge SUVs,” dealer Hardison said. “We do Buick and Chevrolet, and I can tell you that the [full-size SUV] Suburban and Tahoe--that business is slowing.”
Established in 1903, Buick was one of the founding companies, along with Oldsmobile, of the corporation that eventually became General Motors. It was known for the swooping, elegant styling of the Special Model 46C of the 1930s, Limited models 81C and 91F of the 1940s and the Skylark and Electra of the 1950s.
A Buick hallmark--”ventaports,” or holes in the hood and later the front fenders that looked like air intakes--lasted from the 1940s to the ‘60s. Buick’s signature vertical-bar grille remains.
“Buick carved out a niche for itself: cars that were big, luxurious, soft-riding, a classic American highway cruiser,” said Bob Casey, transportation curator of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb. “So if you couldn’t afford a Cadillac, or thought they were too ostentatious, Buicks gave you everything you wanted.”
The division reached its peak in 1984 when it sold 919,000 cars on the strength of its Regal, Century and LeSabre--all of which are still produced today.
But sales have steadily declined as Buick, like Cadillac and Ford’s Lincoln division, has had to contend with the age thing. Younger buyers were attracted to newer, imported luxury brands such as Acura, Audi and Lexus.
“In the ‘80s and ‘90s we didn’t have the flair of design,” conceded Buick’s Adams. “We had a lot less reach in our cars.”
Being shoehorned between Oldsmobile and Cadillac didn’t help, especially in the 1990s when Olds introduced the upscale Aurora and Cadillac launched the entry-level Catera.
“GM dumped a lot of money into product development for Oldsmobile, but it was about 10 years too late,” said J.D. Power III, head of the Thousand Oaks-based consultancy J.D Power & Associates. “I think it will be easier for Buick to have a differentiation now.”
Despite Buick’s sales slide, GM executives wave away any suggestion that Buick might follow Oldsmobile to the scrap heap of automotive history.
“The thing you have to remember is, Buick makes a lot of money for us,” said Ron Zarrella, president of GM North America. “And Buick is a very strong dealer body and a very committed dealer body. With the Oldsmobile decision, we can now do the right things from a product standpoint for Buick.”
So GM is pouring money into building up Buick. The Rendezvous, built on a minivan platform but styled similarly to the Lexus RX 300 and Acura MDX crossovers, boasts a 185-horsepower engine and touches such as the extra row of seats and a center console in front that’s cavernous enough to hold a laptop computer.
GM has decided that the Lacrosse, a low-slung concept car whose rear roof slides open to create a cargo bed, will be produced in some form, starting with the next replacement for the mid-size Century, Zarrella said.
The Bengal, a roadster concept unveiled in January, is so close to getting a go-ahead that GM is already talking pricing: $30,000 to $35,000.
The Bengal was inspired by golfer and Buick pitchman Tiger Woods (Bengal, Tiger--get it?). Woods, who owns a Regal GS given to him by GM, also has two Porsches, so Buick created the Bengal as a performance sports car for golf enthusiasts.
It has a head-up display projected onto the windshield for information normally on the instrument panel. Instead of housing dials, the dashboard holds a huge speaker for a high-end sound system, another Woods pleasure, according to Buick.
The tiny rear seats, which can be concealed with a cover, hold two custom-made golf bags that would come with the sensuously curved car.
An old fogy’s buggy it is not.
They say in Detroit that you can sell an older person a young person’s car, but not a young person an older person’s car. But longtime industry analyst Cole says that’s changing.
“We’re at a time when it can be chic to drive something that looks like an older person’s car,” said Cole, pointing to the retro Chrysler PT Cruiser.
And you never know what trend the Southland may bring next to the rest of the nation. “What’s a cool style to come out of California? It’s hard to predict,” Cole said. “Look at the Honda Civic. Why has it become popular among young people? They feed it with cool and hip accessories.”
Buick is doing just that with Regal, selling a “California package” with options such as leather seating and 16-inch chrome wheels that it is promoting in California with ads featuring Woods.
“We’re seeing younger people here to take a look at it, in their 30s and 40s,” said Hardison at the San Gabriel dealership. “You wouldn’t have seen that a year ago. It was people in their 50s and 60s, even 70s.”
Don Semones is the kind of customer Buick would love to have. A new father of twins and owner of a gigantic Newfoundland dog, he’s looking for a replacement for his aging minivan.
But Semones isn’t interested in the Rendezvous. “I just don’t like the looks,” said the 38-year-old sales manager for an auto parts supplier in Dexter, Mich. “I’m not really interested in a cross between a sedan and an SUV. I’d like something closer to a sedan, and that’s a wagon. I don’t need the SUV image thing.”
Semones did, however, admire the Bengal roadster. “It’s a departure. It actually does look new and fresh, not like a typical Buick.”
If Buick can bring to market cars that elicit that kind of reaction from people such as Semones, it won’t follow Oldsmobile’s road into automotive history.
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Buick’s Rise and Fall
Annual U.S. sales of Buicks, in thousands
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1984: 919,904
2000: 404,612
Sources: General Motors, Autodata Corp.
