Quiet, comfortable Verano has all the right qualities
It’s been a while since the Buick division of General Motors offered a car in the compact segment. For 2012, Buick is back in the compact game with the Verano, a car based on the same platform used for the Chevrolet Cruze. Evolved, perhaps, as a way of improving Buick’s overall average fuel consumption, the Verano is powered by GM’s well-regarded Ecotec four-cylinder engine but offers the high level of trim and features customers expect in a Buick.
Our tester, Brian Milloy, is a real car guy.
“It’s been a passion since I was a kid,” he said. Although the car he learned to drive on wasn’t too exciting, “my mom’s ’70 Pontiac Strato Chief,” his own first car was a big block ’70 Mustang Mach 1.
From then on, he said, “You name it and I’ve probably owned it and driven it.”
Married, with three children at home, Milloy usually wheels an Infiniti G35 sedan with a six-speed manual transmission. His prize possession is a newly acquired 2010 Dodge Viper, and his garage also contains a selection of motorcycles.
Milloy cites “value and performance” as his two main considerations when buying a car.
He pays some attention to styling, he admits, “I want to open the door to my garage and like what I’m looking at,” but it isn’t a primary consideration.
“I’m not brand loyal,” he says. “I didn’t like American cars. I’m more focused on Japanese and European cars. I read the reviews and the blogs, but I don’t buy something until I test it.”
With this kind of automotive resume, it is not too surprising that Milloy’s first reaction upon hearing what car he’d be testing was, “‘Oh, man! I’m getting a front-wheel drive, four-cylinder GM with an automatic!’ I was saying, ‘OK, I’m going to give it a fair shake. I’m not going to come down too hard on it’. After the first day, I’m saying, ‘I hate to admit it but I kind of like this car.’ Don’t tell any of my friends.
“It looked like a full-sized Buick that had gone through the dryer,” Milloy said of his first reaction when he saw his test car.
“You can see that it’s a Buick. I think that’s a good thing.”
Inside, he found the Verano, “really comfortable and well laid-out. The interactive features of the car I thought were just phenomenal. I love the dash and the touch screen in the console. It was very intuitive, within twenty minutes I figured everything out without the manual. The build quality was really nice.”
The Milloy family approved of the Verano’s passenger amenities. “It felt like you were in a much bigger car,” he reported. He says there were no issues with either passengers or cargo.
The Verano was used several times on Milloy’s 25km commute as well as for jaunts down 22X and Deerfoot Trail.
“It drives like a small car in terms of braking and handling,” he observed. “It was far flatter than I would have thought in the corners. Usually, when you have a small car that handles that well and brakes that well, you can feel the ride and it’s not like that. It’s like you’re driving a big car, but it’s small.”
The single characteristic of the Verano that impressed Milloy the most, in fact his favourite feature of the car, was how quiet it was.
Once, he says, he found himself in a traffic jam, on a conference call, with a dump truck beside him and nobody could hear the truck.
“It’s a car that I didn’t want to drive fast,” he said. “I was thinking when I got into it, ‘This is going to be the quietest moment of my day. When I got home, I was relaxed. I don’t think I get that in any car I’ve got right now.
“I was trying to pick out faults and I couldn’t really find anything other than the power and the blind spots,” Milloy said.
“It’s got enough for getting around town. When you put some people in it and get out on the highway and you need to pass, you’ve got to take a run at stuff. I wasn’t expecting any kind of rocket ship or anything. It wasn’t disappointing, but it could use a little more low-end grunt.”
You could almost say Milloy started his test with a bad attitude.
“I felt I was going to get into your typical four-cylinder frontdrive GM substandard product. Here they are, putting lipstick on the pig.
“I was really, really surprised. It’s changed my opinion of Buick and GM — and I’m a fairly picky guy. I would take a totally different look at Buicks because of this test. If this is their lower-end, entry model — what are their higher-end ones going to be like?”
So positive was the experience, he continues, that he suggested that both his Buick-driving neighbour and his parents, who are on their fourth or fifth Camry, should seriously consider the Verano.
“Anybody who’s in the market for a car like a Camry should look at one of these,” he said, “and not just look at it but take it for a drive. They’ve done something right with this one. I actually miss it, kind of.”
All this is not to say that a Verano will appear in the Milloy garage any time soon.
“I’m a rear-wheel drive, sixspeed manual type of guy,” he said. “It’s not who I am.” However, he adds, “If they brought back a high-performance Buick, I’d absolutely look at it.”