A cushion against life’s nasty jolts
It was a week of crazy driving: two round trips from Virginia to New York, nearly 1,000 miles of motoring mostly along Interstate 95 and the New Jersey Turnpike.
New York traffic was brutal.
The city was a slalom course, replete with barriers and cratered streets with narrow apertures through which cars, trucks and pedestrians simultaneously attempted to pass without passing into eternity, hospital wards or endless litigation.
It was madness on a grand scale. But I had sanctuary within the elegant confines of the 2006 Buick Lucerne CXS, a full-size luxury car built for hostile driving environments.
It is a plush automobile. But it is not a motorized marshmallow in the manner of the big Buicks of old. Nor, for that matter, is it an effete car mimicking all things European but devoid of anything that defines its own soul.
How to put it? It is not classical music rendered via the Suzuki method. It is American jazz and blues with a little bluegrass and rock ‘n’ roll thrown in.
You know about a car after 1,000 miles. You certainly know if you’d like to spend another 1,000 miles in its driver’s seat. When it comes to the Lucerne CXS, I’d say “yes” in a hurry. And I’d say “yes” to the Lucerne CXS even if the alternative rides included the Toyota Avalon, the Chrysler 300 or the Cadillac DTS, the latter of which shares the Lucerne’s front-wheel-drive platform.
It has something to do with personal comfort zones. That concept involves a car’s personality and attitude as much as it does an automobile’s overall performance, dimensions and accouterments, areas in which the Lucerne CXS -- base price $34,265 -- beats or matches the competition.
The Lucerne comes in three iterations: the base CX, upscale CXL and the tested, top-of-the-line CXS. All models offer more interior room than the Avalon or Chrysler 300. Quality and fit of the Lucerne’s interior materials are competitive. The layout -- interior design, if you will -- is high-line without being highbrow or overdone.
The CX and CXL are equipped with a standard 3.8-liter V-6 engine that develops 197 horsepower and 227 foot-pounds of torque -- less than the 268 hp and 248 foot-pounds of torque produced by the Toyota Avalon’s 3.5-liter V-6 but more than the 190 horsepower and 190 foot-pounds of torque offered by the Chrysler 300’s V-6 engine.
But the CXS comes with General Motors Corp.’s 4.6-liter, 32-valve Northstar V-8, which can put out a maximum 275 horsepower and 295 foot-pounds of torque. I wish GM had bothered to link that engine to a five-speed or six-speed automatic transmission. But the standard four-speed automatic, endowed with what the company calls “enhanced” electronic assistance, works quite well. It shifts smoothly, without any discernible gear-hunting.
More gears generally yield better fuel economy. Company sources say GM soon will give the Lucerne, as well as other GM vehicles, five-speed automatic gearboxes. Here’s suggesting that GM hurry.
But what GM has presented in the Lucerne thus far is commendable and enjoyable. I particularly liked the feel of the car’s four-wheel independent Sport-Tuned suspension on New York City’s rough streets, which would have shaken to oblivion a car with lesser underpinnings. Instead, the Lucerne CXS proved remarkably stable and agile on all surfaces, never once becoming upset or jostling me and my passengers. I like that.
I also like the decorative portholes on the front fenders of the Lucerne CXS. There’s something funky about them, something wonderfully Detroit, like hot jazz and snazzy rags covering swaying bodies in a downtown joint on a Saturday night.
