Buick Automobile

Fighter pilots call it "target fixation" when you become so focused on a single adversary that you lose situational awareness and fly into something large and obvious, like the ground. Buick's 2010 LaCrosse -- a near-luxury, mid-size-to-large sedan -- was built to put the cross-hairs on a single bogie, the Lexus ES350, and I'll tell you right now, it blows the Lexus out of the sky. Pow. Parachute. Smoking crater. Oh, you can quibble over one detail or another.

You CAN have your shiny new Bimmer. Your eerily silent hybrids and your Lamborghini. I have the Buick. For reasons I won't go into -- save to say my 16-year-old is fine, the Volvo not so much -- I'm borrowing my parents' 2001 Buick. I get in every morning and there's the scent of my father's cologne, my mother's perfume. I'm 8 years old again, tiptoeing into their bedroom after they've left for the evening, the lamp lighted next to my mother's side of the bed, the fragrance lingering.

Buick was the seed from which General Motors Corp. sprouted. And for generations, the luxury car line was one of GM's most bountiful divisions. The Buick brand filled a crucial niche for the auto giant, attracting well-heeled consumers who wanted more than an Oldsmobile but weren't comfortable with the flash of a Cadillac. Now as GM faces the threat of bankruptcy, Buick has emerged as an emblem of the auto giant's broader woes. GM sold nearly a million Buicks in the U.S. in 1984.

As long as there have been high school proms and students with no dates to attend them, parents have reassured their awkward/chubby/ mouth-breathing adolescents that it's what is on the inside that counts. I myself was full of inner beauty, though that beauty was trapped in a sebaceous mutant with glasses as thick as lighthouse lenses. I would counsel and console the Buick LaCrosse in similar fashion. It's all right, honey. Don't cry.

General Motors Corp., which issued a shocking profit warning last week and has been losing market share, may phase out one of its weaker car brands if sales fail to meet projections, company Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said Wednesday. GM's Buick and Pontiac are both "damaged brands" because of lack of investment over the years, and GM is working to correct that with an array of new vehicles coming to market, Lutz said at an investment conference in New York.

When the 2004 New York International Auto Show opens to the world's media today, expect the renaissance of Buick to be among the headlines. After successfully bringing its Cadillac brand back from the dead, General Motors is turning its attention and $3 billion worth of investment to Buick. Actually, the renaissance started three years ago, with the introduction of the Rendezvous crossover sport utility vehicle, followed last year by the Rainier, Buick's first full-frame truck-based SUV.

Lincoln and Buick finished in the top two spots of the annual J.D. Power & Associates study of car owners' satisfaction with dealership service departments, replacing longtime leaders Lexus and Infiniti. Lincoln is part of Ford Motor Co. and Buick is a General Motors Corp. unit. Five of the top 10 finishers in the 2004 study were domestic brands. Nissan Motor Co.'s Infiniti brand finished third; GM's Cadillac was fourth, and Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus brand placed fifth.

When Manny Vasquez went shopping late last year to replace his wife's 1994 Ford Thunderbird, he was disillusioned with American cars and expected to buy a nimble Japanese import. But after comparing the Nissan Maxima, Toyota Camry, Lexus ES 300 and Acura models, Vasquez surprised both himself and his wife by settling on a 2000 Buick Regal GS.

The New Century has arrived, and it is made in China. At the new General Motors plant here, the first Chinese-made Buick rolled off the assembly line recently, heralded by trumpets and 1,700 cheering auto workers. Forty dignitaries--from the mayor of Shanghai to the U.S. ambassador to China--autographed the gleaming white hood with a thick black pen. John F. Smith Jr., GM's chairman and chief executive, signed his name with a flourish and added simply: "#1."