Buick LaCrosse
Luxury sedan offers several amenities
I’m head over wheels in love with the Buick LaCrosse.
Redesigned from the ground up, the LaCrosse luxury sedan rolls into 2011 building on the attributes that have made it an unqualified success.
In a still-recovering market, LaCrosse sales are up more than 200 percent when compared to the model it replaced. I can see why and feel like it will probably be the next car I buy.
A feature I’ve never experienced is Side Blind Zone Alert technology that notifies the driver if a vehicle in adjacent lanes is traveling in the driver’s blind spot.
LaCrosse offers a great design, all-wheel drive, a suite of advanced personal technologies and safety features and a choice of two fuel-saving powertrains. We drove the fuel-efficient, direct injected Ecotec 2.4-liter, four-cylinder, the standard engine in CXL FWD models.
Backed by a fuel-saving, six-speed automatic transmission, this powertrain delivers an Environmental Protection Agency-rated 30 miles per gallon on the highway and 19 in the city.
Inside, the interior is defined by a flowing, uninterrupted design theme that wraps around the instrument and door panels. Attention to detail is evident throughout the interior, including the analog instrument cluster, chrome offset by dark woodgrain accents and contrasting stitching on the instrument panel.
Buick’s signature QuietTuning – an engineering process to reduce, block and absorb interior noise – provides a distraction-free passenger environment.
An unexpected, inviting touch is the ice blue ambient lighting throughout the cabin from the center console, instrument panel and door handle pockets. This feature annoyed me in a previous test drive, but not this time.
The contemporary atmosphere of the cabin is accented with available digital connectivity and personal technologies that include in-dash navigation with a 40-gig hard drive (10 gigs reserved for music), Bluetooth, an auxiliary audio input and a USB port.
Rear-seat passengers can enjoy an available power rear-window sunshade and a DVD entertainment system with two display screens integrated into the seatbacks.
LaCrosse’s technologies also work to deliver a 360-degree field of vision behind the steering wheel, for a greater feeling of comfort, security and safety. It starts with the available head-up display in the windshield, allowing the driver to monitor speed while keeping his eyes on the road.
At night, available adaptive lighting can direct the high-intensity discharge headlight beams up to 15 degrees for enhanced illumination of the road and its curves.
— Mary Ann Van Osdell
Published in May 2011
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by Mary Ann
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