Ordered a new Encore GX today.
I'm not in a terribly big hurry. I've been through this a number of times in my life.....both for me and for other car-shoppers.
And, yes, my health does seem to have improved quite a bit lately, for several reasons, but definitely among them has been being able to regularly swim again. IMO, shutting down the pools for the pandemic probably did us older folks, who depend a lot on the water for exercise, more harm than good.
Last edited by mmarshall; Aug 15, 2020 at 07:20 AM.
I can’t believe I missed this...
Congrats! With you in an SUV, sedans are truly dead lol. I wish you good health and enjoyment with it.
My Lexus got hit in the back last week (thread about it in the LS460 forum, I’m okay and it was very low speed but the car is pretty f’ed up) and then I immediately went out of town. And I’ve shopped around while sitting on the beach. What hit me was a big lifted Jeep, and it just wiped out my trunk. Part of Me wants to be higher off the ground like everybody else...
Congrats! With you in an SUV, sedans are truly dead lol. I wish you good health and enjoyment with it.
My Lexus got hit in the back last week (thread about it in the LS460 forum, I’m okay and it was very low speed but the car is pretty f’ed up) and then I immediately went out of town. And I’ve shopped around while sitting on the beach. What hit me was a big lifted Jeep, and it just wiped out my trunk. Part of Me wants to be higher off the ground like everybody else...
I can’t believe I missed this...
Congrats! With you in an SUV, sedans are truly dead lol. I wish you good health and enjoyment with it.
My Lexus got hit in the back last week (thread about it in the LS460 forum, I’m okay and it was very low speed but the car is pretty f’ed up) and then I immediately went out of town. And I’ve shopped around while sitting on the beach. What hit me was a big lifted Jeep, and it just wiped out my trunk. Part of Me wants to be higher off the ground like everybody else...
Congrats! With you in an SUV, sedans are truly dead lol. I wish you good health and enjoyment with it.
My Lexus got hit in the back last week (thread about it in the LS460 forum, I’m okay and it was very low speed but the car is pretty f’ed up) and then I immediately went out of town. And I’ve shopped around while sitting on the beach. What hit me was a big lifted Jeep, and it just wiped out my trunk. Part of Me wants to be higher off the ground like everybody else...
Thanks. Glad that apparently no one got hurt. Was it totalled, or are you going to have it repaired? (probably takes a lot to total a 3-year-old LS). I know, from your posts, that you, like me, aren't impressed with the new LS500, so I'd assume you'd have reason to want to keep the 460, or get another CPO like it on the used-car market to replace it, though you said you may (?) have a possible deal on an S560 in the works.
I greatly respect the S-class for its unsurpassed ride-comfort and safety-features, though it is way more than I'd care to spend on a car.
Probably couldn't see you, in your low-slung LS, over that lifted hood....and most of those lifted Jeeps are older models, without obstacle-detection devices on them.
Congrats on the new SUV!
I got my first SUV in December and I personally never liked them.
Unfortunately nowadays there so many more SUV options than sedans and I feel the engineers/designers are placing more effort into them. SUVs have greatly improved in past 10years in terms of design, comfort, luxury and performance. You can’t say the same for sedans.
Personally I wish BMW offered 3 or 5 Series wagon as I think that would have been my choice. They are planning to do M3 wagon for the 1st time - would be perfect family car!
I got my first SUV in December and I personally never liked them.
Unfortunately nowadays there so many more SUV options than sedans and I feel the engineers/designers are placing more effort into them. SUVs have greatly improved in past 10years in terms of design, comfort, luxury and performance. You can’t say the same for sedans.
Personally I wish BMW offered 3 or 5 Series wagon as I think that would have been my choice. They are planning to do M3 wagon for the 1st time - would be perfect family car!
Thanks. 
Although the new 2021 Bronco will be an exception, most of today's SUVs are crossover/raised-height AWD station wagons, not traditional SUVs.
BMW offered them before, and the sales in the U.S. were just not high enough to sustain them. Subaru seems to be the only manufacturer that can still sell wagons in the U.S. in big numbers....perhaps Volvo, to a lesser extent.

I got my first SUV in December and I personally never liked them.
Unfortunately nowadays there so many more SUV options than sedans and I feel the engineers/designers are placing more effort into them. SUVs have greatly improved in past 10years in terms of design, comfort, luxury and performance. You can’t say the same for sedans.
Unfortunately nowadays there so many more SUV options than sedans and I feel the engineers/designers are placing more effort into them. SUVs have greatly improved in past 10years in terms of design, comfort, luxury and performance. You can’t say the same for sedans.
Personally I wish BMW offered 3 or 5 Series wagon as I think that would have been my choice.
BMW offered them before, and the sales in the U.S. were just not high enough to sustain them. Subaru seems to be the only manufacturer that can still sell wagons in the U.S. in big numbers....perhaps Volvo, to a lesser extent.
Congrats on the new CUV. You are going to love it. I've owned a CUV since the first Lexus RX300 in 2001. I've never turned back.
Also, thanks for not buying a Chinese Envision. I was happy to read your reasons. I only wish more people would think like that.
Also, thanks for not buying a Chinese Envision. I was happy to read your reasons. I only wish more people would think like that.
Thanks. 
So far, based on my static-observations and test-drive, I like almost everything about it, except for the pair of three-pot turbo engines.....and, unlike the past, I have become flexible enough that I can learn to live with them. I especially like the two-tone interior, paint colors, flexibility of use, ground clearance, AWD/FWD-disconnect, and its general overall size for easy driving/manuvering/parking in the dense-traffic and tight-parking areas I frequent almost every day.
An Encore GX, though a little larger than the former Encore, is certainly not in the same class as an RX, a D-class crossover......but, IMO, it is at or near the top of the B-class crossovers, and is probably on the borderline of a B and C-class.
Agreed. Yes, I like the Buick nameplate (I have for many years)...but I'm not going to help them, or GM, support the Chinese economy with labor that is both probably underpaid and should be here in the U.S. or Canada to start with. Don't forget, this is the company that not only shut down almost half a dozen U.S. and Canadian sedan-producing plants less than two years ago (Ford has also done some of the same things), but also brought on the longest and largest UAW strike in some 50 years.
And that is not the only reason I decided to nix the next Envision. Unlike the Encore GX, it uses an electronic shifter on the console.....the Encore GX has the traditional fore/aft PRNDL console-lever that I prefer. The new Envision, although very impressive-looking style-wise, also is probably at least one size larger than I'd like for easy maneuvering. And I don't think they are going to sell for 30K or less like my GX did.
On the other hand, though, to be fair, we can probably (ultimately) thank the Chinese for the fact that Buick, as a Division, still exists in the U.S. Buick probably would have been axed 10 years ago, along with Pontiac and Saturn, except for the fact that the Chinese loved the nameplate back then (and still do), give Buick 80% of its world-sales, the Lacrosse was selling very well in the U.S. back then, especially with older folks, and, though signs were definitely growing in that direction, the SUV craze in the U.S. had not yet reached the proportions it has today. And the Chinese public, themselves, will probably buy a lot of new Encore GXs, even though it is built in Korea.

You are going to love it.
I've owned a CUV since the first Lexus RX300 in 2001. I've never turned back.
Also, thanks for not buying a Chinese Envision. I was happy to read your reasons. I only wish more people would think like that.
And that is not the only reason I decided to nix the next Envision. Unlike the Encore GX, it uses an electronic shifter on the console.....the Encore GX has the traditional fore/aft PRNDL console-lever that I prefer. The new Envision, although very impressive-looking style-wise, also is probably at least one size larger than I'd like for easy maneuvering. And I don't think they are going to sell for 30K or less like my GX did.

On the other hand, though, to be fair, we can probably (ultimately) thank the Chinese for the fact that Buick, as a Division, still exists in the U.S. Buick probably would have been axed 10 years ago, along with Pontiac and Saturn, except for the fact that the Chinese loved the nameplate back then (and still do), give Buick 80% of its world-sales, the Lacrosse was selling very well in the U.S. back then, especially with older folks, and, though signs were definitely growing in that direction, the SUV craze in the U.S. had not yet reached the proportions it has today. And the Chinese public, themselves, will probably buy a lot of new Encore GXs, even though it is built in Korea.
Last edited by mmarshall; Aug 15, 2020 at 03:30 PM.















