Buick Enters a New Era of Design and Inexpensive, Premium SUVs

Buick holds a lot of firsts in the automotive hall of records. It was one of the first car companies, producing its first vehicle in 1899. That's before Henry Ford built the first assembly line, before General Motors was incorporated and well before the Dodge Brothers.

It was the first to create an overhead valve engine, a technology still used today. It was also the first winner of the first race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and was the first to install turn signals.

However, it's been a long time since Buick was first at anything. After averaging almost half a million U.S sales per year in the late '90s and early 2000s, they dipped to around 200,000 in the 2010s.

Today Buick is in a new era, in design, marketing and overall ethos. It did keep one thing it was famous for: concept cars. These vehicles that begin life as artistic design experiments on raised, rotating display stands at auto shows around the world, sometimes change the way a brand creates its cars.

"The Avenir (2015) concept was a beautiful vehicle which solidified Sculptural Beauty as one of Buick's brand pillars. We began an initiative in 2018 to update that philosophy to be something more unique and progressive. The Wildcat EV concept, which debuted in 2022, was the first vehicle to explore this new direction and it ended up being very influential," Bob Boniface, global director, Buick design told Newsweek.

Boniface has been with Buick since 2016 after leading Cadillac exterior design. He oversaw the development of the current Enclave and Envision as well as vehicles with Buick's new design language such as the Encore GX, Envista and Wildcat EV concept.

"The new signature front end styling does away with a lot of tradition. There is no more Americana-infused waterfall grille, and with Envista, Envision, and Enclave, there is more lineup commonality between the two markets. From a North American perspective, the new Buicks look much more cosmopolitan and youthful, as well as more premium than mainstream brands like Chevrolet," Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at AutoPacific told Newsweek.

Buick didn't want to completely break from the past. It aimed to keep the sculptural components but update the front-end signature to something bolder and more unique while still reinforcing the message of Sculptural Beauty.

The company is in the middle of an 18-month cycle introducing and launching five new Buick vehicles in North America. It's the most aggressive product turnover Buick has seen in decades.

"The result will be one of the freshest portfolios in the industry. We've already shown the new Encore GX and Envista, and we've teased the 2024 Envision. It's very exciting to be reinventing a brand that has as rich a history as Buick," Sam Russell, director of Buick marketing told Newsweek.

The company has found a white space as the market has drastically changed from just a few years ago. In 2019, nearly half the market transacted below $30,000, today that number has dropped below 20 percent, Buick says. Those buyers still need a vehicle, and Buick is there with several premium cars with approachable price tags.

"This leaves ample opportunity. Both the Encore GX and Envista put Buick's best foot forward in terms of design and technology, however we were very strategic on packaging for both vehicles, to ensure we include the right technology for our customer base. As a result, we have been able to deliver excellent vehicles at very competitive pricing," said Russell.

Buick does still lead in some areas. As a brand, it holds the highest percentage of female buyers, an accomplishment it says it is proud of. However, it concedes that more women tend to gravitate towards the segments the brand sells in.

"We have found that our vehicles and messaging really resonate with female buyers. This could be attributed to the dedicated partnerships we have formed over recent years such as: Hello Sunshine (Reese Witherspoon's media company that focuses on female empowerment) and the NCAA, where we're dedicated to raising awareness of female athletes and highlighting the discrepancies between men/women sports viewership," said Russell.

With a big brand design change, not to mention electric vehicles (EVs) on the horizon, there's a new amount of freedom and flexibility for the company, as well as new risks. Design needs to be translated across the range Buick vehicles now and in the immediate future.

"Fortunately for us, Buick has an incredibly rich heritage from which to draw. We made sure to reference many of the vehicles from Buick's heyday, such as the Y-Job from 1938, as well as the Wildcat concepts from the 1950s. Those were vehicles which expressed a sense of optimism for the future and we wanted to capture some of that for our new range of products," said Boniface.

"We needed to ensure that our new design language worked for both EV as well as conventional internal combustion powertrains."

The final piece of the puzzle was the new tri-shield logo, which has been around in some form or another since 1960. The breakthrough happened when designers were tagging their sketches with simplified, non-circular logos. Boniface said that one of the sketches found its way into a senior leadership review and the idea took hold. They were ready to explore a more modern interpretation of the badge.

"Now, as reflected in the new brand logo, Buick seems ready to depart with tradition with a much more concerted effort to evolve the brand and bring on its next generation of customers," said Kim.