A GM brand that nearly died is having a revival
Brothers Matt and Andy Wonnacott of Livonia, Mich., are young, single guys who choose to drive Buicks.
They are atypical Buick buyers given its reputation as an old-man sedan brand. But the Wonnacotts are unfazed.
“Look at them now; they don’t look like old people’s cars,” said Matt Wonnacott, 37, who described his 2015 Buick Regal sedan as fast, reliable and stylish. “I don’t care about perception, I just want what makes me happy.”
Andy Wonnacott, 32, has been so pleased with Buick, he is on his second Verano compact sedan in red. He said he’s “hooked” on the brand.
“They are nice looking, reliable and conventional cars,” Andy Wonnacott said.
The Wonnacotts exemplify a remarkable image change by General Motors.
Buick was the highestrated U.S. car brand for dependability in J.D. Power’s ratings this year. It is pushing up against Mercedes Benz for a top spot in consumer consideration as measured by Kelley Blue Book.
It is GM’s second-biggest-selling brand globally behind Chevrolet. And, through stylish design, new SUV and crossover entrants and consistent advertising, Buick has done what GM’s luxury brand, Cadillac, has not: achieved a brand renaissance that drives increased new car sales and attracts younger buyers.
“Cadillac can learn a lot from Buick,” said Rebecca Lindland, executive analyst at Kelley Blue Book in New York. “Cadillac needs to have more SUVs and they need to be really nice.”
If Buick leaders want continued success, they must sharpen the marketing message to better articulate the reasons to buy a Buick, experts said.
“The advertising that says, ‘Wow, that’s a Buick?’ is ready to evolve beyond the apology,” Lindland said. “They don’t have anything to apologize for anymore.”
At glance, Buick’s success story is simple. Call it luck or genius, but less than a decade ago, Buick’s marketing and product developers foresaw consumers’ evolving preference for SUVs and crossovers instead of sedans.
Under GM product boss Mark Reuss, designers and engineers moved swiftly to create hot-looking Buick SUVs. Buick’s advertising team rebranded it as hip and the business model locked it in a niche where it successfully toggles between luxury and mainstream.
Meanwhile, Buick has become integral to GM’s profits. It is GM’s biggestselling brand in China, the world’s largest car market.
That’s a remarkable feat considering that 10 years ago, Buick’s sales sputtered and the brand teetered on the edge of GM’s chopping block, with the now-defunct Pontiac and Saturn brands.
Yet at the end of the first quarter, Buick was nipping at the heels of Mercedes Benz for consumer consideration, coming in sixth overall among 17 luxury brands, according to Kelley Blue Book’s Brand Watch quarterly survey. Cadillac was in the seventh spot for consideration in the survey results, Lindland said.
For the first quarter, GM reported that Buick’s global sales rose 9.2 percent to 332,321 vehicles. A decade earlier, in the first quarter of 2008, Buick reported it sold 122,412 cars, a Buick spokesman said.
“Buick is capturing attention,” said Phil Brook, Buick and GMC’s vice president of marketing.
Nearly three-quarters of Buick’s sales currently come from crossovers and SUVs, compared with 2013 when most Buick’s sales came from sedans, Lindland said.
Buick’s Brook characterizes the vehicles as affordable luxury. Year to date, Buick’s average transaction price for cars is $31,009. For crossovers, it’s $28,715, a Buick spokesman said.