2012 Buick Enclave on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: 1973 Buick LeSabre Custom Hardtop Sedan

The steps on Alfred Sloan's "Ladder of Success," in which you'd start your career by buying a Chevrolet and then move up through the GM marques as your wealth increased, stayed rigidly fixed from the 1930s into the late 1960s. By the early 1970s, though, "prestige creep" among The General's divisions had set in, with lower-zoot marques leapfrogging their betters with ballooning price tags and snob appeal; a fully-loaded Chevy Caprice could cost more than an Olds 98, a Pontiac Bonneville could out-snoot a Buick LeSabre, and the LeSabre itself came to threaten mighty Cadillac at the top of the GM pyramid. Here's a fully depreciated '73 LeSabre Custom Hardtop Sedan, once the picture of Malaise Era opulence but now brought down to earth in a San Jose self-service car graveyard. The high-rollingest of all LeSabres in 1973 was the Custom (though shoppers for full-sized 1973 Buicks really wishing to rub the noses of their lessers in their success could opt for the even pricier Centurion or Electra 225), and that's what I found among the Achievas and Cateras of this yard's GM section. Wasps now nest in the rust holes caused by rainwater seeping beneath the padded vinyl roof, but this car once told the world, "I've made it!" It went without saying that your big, comfy Detroit luxury sedan had a big, comfy front bench seat; let those frivolous rakehells in their Rivieras have their bucket seats. Believe it or not, a three-on-the-tree column-shift manual transmission was still standard equipment on the lower-level Buick Century in 1973, but all LeSabre buyers enjoyed two-pedal luxury that year. Some junkyard shopper grabbed the massive 455-cubic-inch (7.5-liter) V8 — rated at 225 horsepower, due to Nixon's stricter emissions standards and the switch from gross to net horsepower ratings — before I got here. I'm guessing this car got driven into the ground by the early 2000s (there's a 2001 calendar inside) and then spent the next couple of decades bleaching in the harsh South Bay sun before arriving here. So good, shoppers bought them sight unseen!

2019 Buick Regal TourX sells better than expected, has brand's wealthiest buyers

Being a wagon fan in America is tough, since it seems everyone prefers the higher ride heights and SUV looks of crossovers. But today we have some good news for wagon fans via Buick. Apparently the 2019 Buick Regal TourX is popular with well-heeled buyers, and it's been selling quite a bit better than Buick expected. A representative from Buick revealed that Regal TourX buyers have the highest average income of any of the brand's products. He even noted that TourX buyers' average income is higher than the Buick Enclave Avenir, the extra-plush variant of the three-row crossover and the most expensive vehicle in Buick's lineup. To put the price difference into perspective, the most expensive Regal TourX starts at $35,995, while the Enclave Avenir starts at $54,695. Besides selling to people of some means, the Regal TourX has proven to be more popular than Buick expected. Buick's representative said that initial estimates were that the wagon would make up about 25% of sales, but it's actually making up about 40% right now. Buick has sold 3,408 Regals in total this year, so that means about 1,400 of them were TourX wagons. That number doesn't quite translate over all of 2018 since the TourX was released a little later and the supply was still ramping up through the year. As such sales were closer to 3,000 out of a little over 14,000 for the whole year, or somewhere above 20%. But the increased percentage from the model's release is still impressive. Granted, sales still favor crossovers. Buick's least popular crossover, the Envision, sold about twice as many units as all Regals last quarter. Yet, we count this as good news on the wagon front. Better still, the TourX's top rival, the Subaru Outback, has moved 76,000 units so far this year. Times may be tough for the wagon fan, but there are still some small wins to celebrate. UPDATE: The estimate of Regal TourX numbers for 2018 was higher than actual sales as the TourX was launched later than all Regal models, and the supply wasn't up to full steam for the whole year. The corrected number is now in the text. Related Video:

GM's Ultium EV platform finally shows up in Q3 sales numbers

General Motors has heralded its Ultium battery-electric platform as the future of its passenger car and truck lineup, but for the first two years of its existence, its impact on the marketplace has been virtually nonexistent. Well, that finally changed in the third quarter of 2023, and while the cars based on this architecture don't represent anywhere near the volume of GM's broader combustion portfolio, we're reaching a point where Ultium products are finally in view (and in the hands) of real-world shoppers. At this point, five U.S.-market Ultium models are in production: the GMC Hummer EV, Cadillac Lyriq, Chevrolet Blazer & Silverado EV, and BrightDrop Zevo 600. If you're not familiar with that last one, that's OK; it's a commercial product that you likely won't see on the road for some time. Together, these four combined for 4,257 sales in the third quarter alone — up from 2,663 for the entire first half of the year. While that may not seem like a significant uptick when viewed from altitude, the quarter-to-quarter numbers paint a clearer picture.  Let's toss out the stragglers first. The Chevy Blazer EV, and Silverado EV for example, are barely in production. GM delivered 19 Blazers and 18 Silverados in the third quarter and that's the entirety of their production runs so far. Likewise, GM's BrightDrop Zevo 600 delivery van effectively exists apart from the consumer marketplace, so its contribution of just 35 units can be set aside too. That leaves us the two you've heard of: the GMC Hummer EV and Cadillac Lyriq — models with high sticker prices and long reservation queues.  Through the second quarter (remember, we're talking six months here), GMC sold 49 Hummer EVs. No typo. In the three months that made up the third quarter, GM moved 1,167 of them. Not only is that a dramatic improvement over the first half, but it's more Hummers than GMC sold in the entirety of 2022 (854). Lyriq's improvement was less eye-popping on paper, but after moving just 122 total units in 2022 and 2,013 of them in the first half of 2023, Cadillac managed to up that figure to 3,018 units in the third quarter alone.  GM is betting its short-term EV future on the Ultium platform, so these trends need to continue if that's going to be a profitable wager.