April 30, 2016
Dan Neil, WSJ
To Buick's credit, it fills a gap left behind by the Sebring, Solara, and G6 so standards weren't high to begin with, but if Buick is supposed to move forward as a credible global brand it can't pull half-assed rebadges like this.AGEISM IS A THING. As a young person I was guilty of undervaluing older people, and now that I am older, I am in turn occasionally undervalued. Especially at the mall, where young clerks apparently cannot see me, as if I were a ninja.
But before I go, I cannot let pass GM’s subtle ageism with regard to the Buick Cascada. Hey, you, up in the RenCen in Detroit: I see you.
This car is destined for seniors in the Sunbelt, particularly Florida. One thing we know about senior car-buyers is they do fewer comparison test-drives, often one or none. They might thus be unaware what a trembling relic the Cascada actually is.
And what if some sun-loving seniors did drive it? After all, it looks fantash: a windshield laid down at the angle of a doorstop; 20-inch wheels; cute little butt.
That’s the tragedy of it, the lost opportunity. If GM had built the Cascada on the Alpha platform (Cadillac ATS), and stuck a proper engine in it, well, we wouldn’t be here now, roasting the product-planning department’s innards over a fire.
As a critic I have praised the new GM, but my regard for management rests solely on my conviction that they have turned the page. The Cascada is right out of the old GM playbook. It’s practically a PTSD flashback.
And what happens if these consumers should walk across the auto-mall plaza and testdrive a Cadillac ATS that, compared with the Cascada, feels like the work of extraterrestrial intelligence? GM— indeed, the entire automotive world—has come so far since the bankruptcy. Why the backsliding here? Do they think seniors won’t notice?
I submit the following knowing it disqualifies me from being the CEO of a car company. Sometimes you have to leave money on the table. I don’t doubt the business case for the Cascada (kas-KATA) is strong. The four-seat cabriolet looks tremendous and always has, ever since it made its debut in 2013 as the soft-top version of the Opel Astra (Opel is a subsidiary of GM).
These things are retirement-village Lamborghinis.
Built on the previous generation of GM’s front-drive Delta platform, the Buick Cascada has engineering-design roots that reach back to 2010. Also, Cascada production has moved from Rüsselsheim, Germany, to Gliwice, Poland. The production tooling is paid for and labor just got a lot cheaper.
Meanwhile, there are Buick dealers in South Florida with their tongues hanging out to get these cars. These things are retirement- village Lamborghinis.
Besides, why not? Car makers routinely phase products in and out of regional markets, so that two or even three generations of a vehicle might be selling in different parts of the world at any given time.
In any event, the picture I’m painting is of the easiest product-planning decision ever made, the happiest of balance sheets, sweet honey from the rock. What’s the harm in rebadging and selling a few thousand of these things to some nice people in Arizona and Florida, and maybe some rental car agencies in Hawaii? Because the Cascada does not represent GM’s best practices and, postbankruptcy, only their best work should be afield.
I mean, hard-core, starting with bailout-vintage centerstack controls for navi-audio and climate, comprising three tiers of soft-touch, flush-mounted bafflement, four rotary controllers, with the crazy Pontiac red backlighting, which is fine if you are developing film. These were bad even in the bad old days. Above the center stack is a 7-inch LCD screen, small and partially obscured at the bottom. The driver information center display between the gauges is early Hewlett-Packard to perfection.
The Cascada is a time capsule of GM switchgear, including what must be the last of the conventional keylock ignitions in the column.
The Cascada has remote starting, but not a keyless, push-button starter? Keyed ignition switches should have been retired from GM products years ago, for obvious reasons; they weren’t for reasons just as obvious.
GM would argue this makes the Cascada more accessible. But at the $37,000 price point, the Cascada is nose-to-nose with the Ford Mustang EcoBoost Premium, all hopped up on 310-hp and weighing 300 pounds less than the Cascada.
The object of this enterprise is the convertible top, which works just fine, once you figure out the flippy parcel shelf flap in the trunk.
The top is noise-insulated and retracts under the rigid mechanized tonneau in 17 seconds at speeds of 31 mph. The biggest issue with the top is the weight of the structural reinforcements it required, including an underbody X-brace; a reinforced “torsion box” section in the rear; bigger, stronger side sills; and a welter of welds, gussets and brackets.
The additional bracing adds hundreds of pounds compared with the sister coupe, the Opel Astra GTC.
Cascada’s curb weight is listed at an outrageous 3,979 pounds, 811 pounds more than the Euro-spec Astra GTC.
Dynamically, the Cascada never had a chance. Sitting sideways under the hood is a 1.6-liter turbocharged, direct- injection in-line four, pedaling the front wheels through a pretty dated sixspeed automatic. Four-thousand pounds divided by 200 hp comes to a well-marbled 20 pounds per horsepower.
I totally get why a car-agnostic senior wouldn’t fret that their sassy new Buick convertible— the first in 25 years, by the way—isn’t state of the art. Neither are they.
But Buick knows better.
The most charming thing about this car is the ad campaign.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RbZt8nrI14[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yieFIhdeJQ[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxfXn_vjOe0[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnmbxmh3gxU[/youtube]
