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KBB 2013 Brand Image Awards has some obvious and oddball winners

The sixth edition of the Kelley Blue Book Brand Image Awards have crowned a wide range of winners - in a couple of cases the recipient of the laurels might say more about KBB users than they do about the actual winner. Compiled from the responses of more than 12,000 shoppers on KBB.com over the past year, there are 13 categories broken into non-luxury, luxury and truck segments "representing the combined wisdom of the American car-buying public."
The award categories have been revamped this year, with some dropping off, some new ones appearing and at least one other given a new term. What isn't surprising is that Honda won Most Trusted Brand for the second year running, Best Value Brand for the third year in a row and took Best Overall Brand, which wasn't on last year's list of awards.
On our own shores, in the non-luxury categories Chrysler got Most Refined Brand and Buick took Best Value Luxury Brand. Neither one of those marques won anything in last year's Brand Image Awards, while Cadillac, which won Best Interior Design Brand and Best Comfort Brand last year - those awards disappeared this year - went home without a single accolade.

Buick adds Sport Touring trim to sedan lineup

Buick has made a few tweaks to its sedan lineup today, announcing that a new Sport Touring trim will be offered on the LaCrosse, Regal, and Verano. It's best to think of the new Sport Touring models as Buick's answer to Chevrolet's limited range of RS models, focusing on very small style changes rather than any added performance. Best to leave that to the Regal GS, we guess. For the ST trim, Buick has fitted its three four-doors with new 18-inch wheels. These relatively sporty hoops get machined faces with black inserts, like those offered on the Encore Sport Touring and the Enclave Tuscan Edition. Also coming to the LaCrosse, Regal, and Verano Sport Touring is a new rear spoiler. Like we said, these are simple styling packs meant to spice up the staid but handsome exteriors of the brand's sedans. "These new ST models underscore the importance of design choices, while complementing the safety, refinement and connectivity technologies that are drawing new customers to Buick dealerships," Buick VP Duncan Aldred said in the attached statement. The new trim level will be available on all three vehicles this fall, with prices to be announced closer to the on-sale date. Scroll on for the official presser from Buick. Related Video: Buick Expands 2016 Sport Touring Lineup Distinctive sedans join Enclave Tuscan Edition, Encore Sport Touring DETROIT – Buick unveiled 2016 LaCrosse, Regal and Verano Sport Touring (ST) models today – sedans with distinctive exterior cues designed to set them apart from the pack. Each features special 18-inch wheels with machined faces and black "pockets," and a rear spoiler. They join the Enclave Tuscan Edition and recently announced Encore Sport Touring as special models expanding Buick's lineup with more design-focused choices. "Buick is reaching an all-new generation of customers by reinventing itself in terms of design, function and capabilities," said Duncan Aldred, vice president of Buick. "These new ST models underscore the importance of design choices, while complementing the safety, refinement and connectivity technologies that are drawing new customers to Buick dealerships." The new Sport Touring sedans – and Encore Sport Touring – go on sale this fall. LaCrosse Sport Touring includes Buick IntelliLink with Apple CarPlay capability, OnStar 4G LTE connectivity with Wi-Fi hotspot, remote start, eight standard air bags (including rear-seat thorax air bags) and leather-trimmed seats – with heated front seats.

Junkyard Gem: 1962 Buick LeSabre 2-Door Sport Coupe

American car shoppers looking for a full-sized hardtop coupe in 1962 couldn't go wrong with the offerings from The General. Chevrolet would sell you a snazzy new Bel Air sport coupe for just $2,561 (about $23,800 today), but those Joneses next door wouldn't have felt properly shamed if you put a new proletariat-grade Chevy in your driveway. No, to really stand tall during the era of Alfred Sloan's Ladder of Success, you had to go higher up on the GM food chain. For the B-platform full-sized cars of 1962, that meant the Pontiac Catalina/Bonneville beat the Chevy, the Oldsmobile 88 was the next step up the ladder, and at the very top was the Buick: the hot-rod Invicta and its swanky LeSabre sibling. To go beyond that, you had to move up to a C-platform Buick Electra or Cadillac. Today's Junkyard Gem is a once-luxurious '62 LeSabre, now much-faded in a northeastern Colorado boneyard. The reason GM shoppers got so bent out of shape about the "Chevymobile" episodes of the late 1970s, in which some GM cars received engines made by "lesser" GM divisions, was that each division had its own family of V8 engines during the 1950s and 1960s and they weren't supposed to be mingled. The '62 LeSabre got a 401-cubic-inch (6.5-liter) Nailhead engine (so called because the valves were unusually small), rated at 265, 280, or 325 (depending on what kind of compression ratio and carburetion you wanted). That's not crazy horses for a big-displacement, two-ton luxury coupe of its era, but the small valves allowed for combustion chambers optimized for one thing: low-rpm torque. This 401 has the two-barrel carburetor, so it made either 412 or 425 pound-feet of torque. That's just a bit less than the mighty Cadillac's engine that year, and definitely sufficient to get this car moving very quickly. You had to pay a fat premium on the Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile B-bodies to get an automatic transmission (a three-speed column-shift manual was base equipment in those cars), but a Turbine-Drive (formerly known as the Dyna-Flow) automatic was standard issue on the 1962 LeSabre. This was an interesting transmission design that traced its origins back to the 1942 M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer and used torque-converter multiplication to provide a CVT-like experience with no perceptible shifts (the driver could select a separate low gearset manually, so the shifter looks just like the one on the true two-speed Powerglide transmission).