Wheels

Buick Name Is Erased From Buicks as Sales Slip for Century-Old Marque

Buick’s first all-electric model for China was unveiled at the Shanghai auto show in April. Most of Buick’s sales are now in China. CreditCreditNg Han Guan/Associated Press


By Jerry Garrett


Sept. 19, 2019, 6:00 a.m. ET

DETROIT — Buick, the rock upon which General Motors was built more than a century ago, appears to be fading in the company’s rearview mirror.


As of the 2019 model year, the Buick name is no longer stamped across the back of its North American models. In China, where Buick claims most of its sales these days, the “Buick” nameplate disappeared years ago. The brand’s logo is all that’s left, and soon, the company might be gone from the car business altogether — making only S.U.V.s and crossovers.

It seems that, after 115 years, the name’s image has become too outdated for a company that wants to be thought of as a thoroughly modern “attainable luxury” vehicle in a class with Acura, Infiniti, Lincoln and Lexus, a notch below high-end offerings like Cadillac.

The company has gone so far as to produce advertisements that explicitly distance the brand from its reputation. “That’s not a Buick” spots were placed in high-profile slots, like the Super Bowl, to drive home the point.


Today’s Buicks are arguably not quite Buicks anyway — not in any sense that the founder, the all-but-forgotten David Dunbar Buick, would recognize.

Buick, the company, effectively ceased to be an automobile manufacturer after 2010, when General Motors shut down its vast “Buick City” manufacturing complex in Flint, Mich. Buick City, once the largest auto factory in the world, had for more than a century produced purebred Buick vehicles, parts and powertrains.







With David Buick’s son Tom in the passenger seat, a 1904 Model B was driven by the designer Walter Marr. CreditGeneral Motors


Since then, Buick dealers’ lots have been filled with a mélange of G.M.-owned vehicles borrowed from Opel, Holden, Daewoo and others, with a Buick badge affixed. So-called badge-engineering is a tried-and-failed G.M. strategy that has been criticized as helping to undermine brands including Oldsmobile, Saturn and Pontiac.

Today’s Buick-less Buicks still carry a stylized version of the brand’s “tri-shield” logo, which was introduced to highlight its stylish but poor-selling 1959 Electra, Invicta and LeSabre models. The absence of Buick lettering leaves room for the new Avenir badge, which Buick introduced as a “sub-brand” suggesting a higher level of luxury. Some auto analysts expect that Buick will eventually make a full transition to the Avenir name.


A Buick spokeswoman, Michelle Malcho, wouldn’t comment on that possibility. She did push back on any suggestion that the division might be facing any existential crisis.

“We see dynamic changes, certainly, but we see opportunities for growth,” she said. “The company is uniquely suited and well positioned for today’s global automotive market.”

That position, with significant business in both China and the United States, also presents a challenge, with a trade war creating uncertainty over tariffs and currency exchange rates.

Interestingly, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Saturn were canceled while selling at North American volumes far higher than Buick is now. Olds, in particular, was posting comparatively robust sales near a quarter-million a year when it was handed its surprise death notice in late 2000. Saturn and Pontiac had dipped below 200,000 in yearly sales and did not survive G.M.’s bankruptcy in 2009.

If not for the Buick name’s esteem in China — Communist Party leaders once favored lavishly appointed Buick land yachts — it is possible the brand would have been abandoned when Buick City was.





A leveled section of the old “Buick City” complex in Flint, Mich., in 2009. Once the largest auto factory in the world, Buick City closed for good in 2010. Credit Stephen McGee for The New York Times


But the Buick division soldiers on, still in the black despite falling sales, Ms. Malcho said, thanks to sales of high-margin sport utility vehicles and crossovers.


This calendar year, Buick dealers in the United States might be lucky to top 100,000 vehicle sales despite deals, discounts and incentives of up to 20 percent — and lately even more, at times — off the manufacturer’s suggested price. (Buick’s North American sales are a small fraction of G.M.’s Chevrolet and GMC truck volumes, although more than Cadillac’s.)

In China, sales have been dropping ominously. In 2016 and 2017, Buick and its partner SAIC Motor of Shanghai sold about 1.23 million vehicles. Last year, sales fell to 1.06 million, and they are expected to finish under 900,000 this year. China’s auto market is rapidly slowing from recession to near-depression, analysts say.

Besides headwinds from the trade war, the Chinese market faces oversaturation, said John Murphy, senior auto analyst for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, in his annual “Car Wars” industry outlook in June. He predicted a 7.5 percent sales drop this year.

Another problem for Buick is that it is running out of cars. It is winding down its flagship LaCrosse sedan and Cascada convertible — models no longer available from their source, Opel of Europe, since G.M. sold the division two years ago. Its last car, the Regal sedan (now also offered in hatchback and wagon variants), is dated and in need of a costly redesign. Fewer than 6,000 Regals are likely to be sold in 2019 — an unsustainable volume.

If an affordable Regal replacement can’t be found, Ms. Malcho conceded, Buick will probably cancel it, too, thus exiting the “car” side of the business.

“Ninety percent of our sales are now in S.U.V.s and crossovers,” Ms. Malcho said. The flagship Enclave, produced in G.M.’s Lansing plant alongside the largely similar GMC Acadia and Chevrolet Traverse, is enjoying improved sales this year, after a down year in 2018. Sales of the Chinese-built Envision are flat this year but down considerably from recent years. The tiny South Korean-sourced Encore line of crossovers is up slightly this year, and hoping for a boost from a coming variant, the GX.











The introduction of the redesigned 1959 Buicks, which sold so poorly the brand’s existence was threatened.

Credit General Motors


Mr. Murphy, the auto analyst, expects the auto market will slide a further 30 percent from current levels by 2022. That might tempt automakers to engage in ruinous price wars, as they did in 2007-09, in an attempt to maintain volume and market share.


In fact, chief financial officers from G.M. and Ford confirmed recently that they were preparing for dire conditions in the near term: They are stockpiling capital, rationing resources, deferring expenditures and redirecting sales strategies to lower-priced models.

But Mr. Murphy suggested that manufacturers would need to speed up — not slow down — the introduction of new models to every two and a half years, rather than four or five years or even longer.

“A lot of good, fresh product,” he said, is needed to sustain demand.

Crossovers and trucks account for 70 percent of new models, Mr. Murphy said, with crossover nameplates expected to grow to almost 150 by the 2023 model year — 25 percent more than trucks or cars. That could create overcrowding in the crossover market, but Ms. Malcho said she felt that Buick’s relatively early entry bolstered its status as an established player.

Regardless, Mr. Murphy said, “when you think of the profitability of crossovers, the market could quickly fade and erode to where passenger car profits have been more recently.”

“The industry really needs to be ready to recognize it’s going to be a tough time in the future,” he added.

None of this is good news for planners at China-centric Buick, of course.

The silver lining, Mr. Murphy said, could come in 2023, when he foresees the survivors enjoying “a strong recovery.”

The question is: Will the Buick-less Buick, or Avenir, or whatever else it may be called, be one of them?