I sat in the passenger seat of the new Buick LaCrosse and asked the driver to turn on the engine, to start the air conditioning. She said the engine was running already. I didn’t believe her. Not a sound could be heard; not a vibration felt.
She must have been mistaken. The new LaCrosse comes with automatic stop-start as standard, which turns the engine off when the car’s not moving to save fuel. (Europeans love this with their $2/litre gas, but North Americans are just discovering it.) The engine must have shut itself off while we waited. I touched the front dash and felt for vibration, and there was nothing to be felt.
“No, really, it’s running,” the driver said, and revved the engine as proof.
The passenger in the back seat chirped up: “I love that you couldn’t hear or feel the engine,” Cathy Turzewski said. “That’s exactly what we were trying to do.”
Turzewski is Buick’s global program engineering manager. She’s based in China, where drivers are less impressed with sound and fury and more concerned with keeping their parents comfortable in the family car. The next-generation LaCrosse we were sitting in was designed to be serenely quiet and supersmooth – a full-sized passenger car intended as much for passengers as the driver.
China is Buick’s biggest market, so the needs and wants of its drivers are essential to the company. Buicks are sold only in North America and in China, built in both regions, and three times as many vehicles are sold there compared with here.
We pulled away and the LaCrosse soaked up the bumps of Portland’s terrible roads. After a while, I swapped seats with Turzewski and sat in the back. There was so much legroom I thought the sedan was a stretch model, but no, it’s the regular size. This all-new model is only 15 millimetres longer than last year’s car, but the wheelbase is stretched out an extra 65 mm.
Turzewski, a chassis engineer, spoke about how the handling of the LaCrosse is improved by its front-drive wheels being pulled forward and all the wheels being pushed out a little. When we reached a section of particularly winding road out of town, with corners rated at 20 miles (32 kilometres) an hour and slower, I took over the driving and pushed the Sport button. This tightens the steering, firms the suspension, quickens the throttle response and adjusts the eight-speed automatic transmission.
Turzewski said she never gets carsick in the rear seat, so this became a challenge. The LaCrosse has an all-new 3.6-litre engine that makes 305 horsepower, the second generation for General Motors’ V-6 design, and it’s responsive enough when you flick through the paddle-shifted gears. The car is also about 135 kilograms lighter than before, thanks to lighter-weight construction materials, which helps its handling.
I hurled the big sedan around the corners, watching in the mirror for Turzewski to follow suit, but she never obliged.
It was a different matter later, when I returned with Amrit Mehta in the back. He’s the head of Buick’s product planning, an amiable Canadian based in Michigan, and he was already wearing a pair of anti-nausea wristbands. It was an ordeal for him earlier, he explained, driving with a pair of enthusiastic Americans.
We were in a different LaCrosse, the less expensive trim model that Mehta expects to be the volume seller. This “Preferred” edition starts at $39,730 with leather seats, while the loaded “Premium” edition will start at $44,950 (add $2,450 for all-wheel drive). The base model comes with leatherette seating and starts at $35,345.
Mehta said he’d be fine with the wristbands so I pushed the car a bit through the corners, but it wasn’t dropping down through the gears when I pressed on the throttle. At one point, we drove for at least 10 seconds with my foot hard to the floor and nothing really happened.
I let the original driver get back behind the wheel and she found the same thing. Mehta got off easy.
Later, Buick’s chief engineer explained that if the gear selector is moved from automatic to manual, then the transmission will only respond to the paddle shifters, not to the throttle. This is a design decision by Buick that I think is wrong, because if a driver needs to move an automatic transmission car in a hurry, it’s a reactive response to mash the pedal. In which case, the chief engineer said, don’t select manual.
I’m not convinced I was always in manual, because I thought I tried every combination to get the transmission to respond to the throttle. But I might have been. I’d already been proved wrong at the start of the day, after all.
Buick’s LaCrosse arrives in showrooms in September. Keep an eye out – you probably won’t hear it coming.
You’ll like this car if ... You want a quiet, spacious ride.
TECH SPECS
Base price: $35,345
Engine: 3.6-litre V-6
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel economy (litres/100 km): 11.1 city, 8.4 highway, 9.9 combined
Alternatives: Ford Taurus, Hyundai Genesis, Lincoln MKZ, Lexus ES350, Nissan Maxima, Acura TL
RATINGS
Looks: It’s lower and wider, and just looks sleek. That split crease above the rear fender was apparently really tricky to design.
Performance: You won’t want to take this car to a track, but it’ll be comfortable enough getting there.
Technology: Most of the fancy driver-assistance technology is only available with the more expensive models, but it’s all there if you want to buy it.
Cargo: The trunk is 7 per cent larger than before and has enough room for four golf bags.
THE VERDICT
9.0
A little bigger inside and serenely quiet – a comfortable place to escape from the road.
The writer was a guest of the auto maker. Content was not subject to approval.
