GM’s Buick Brand Has a Bright Future

The Times’ April 2 article “Buick Sales Epitomize GM’s Woes” painted a misleading and inaccurate picture of Buick.

Buick’s sales of 282,000 cars and trucks last year put us at 19th among the 50 automotive brands in the U.S. market, ahead of Volvo, Infiniti, Audi, Lincoln, Audi and Jaguar, among others. That’s hardly a weak position.

The Times implies that Buick’s quality is less than that of some other leading automotive brands. In fact, Buick for years has been one of the highest-ranked brands in independent rankings of automotive quality. Buick consistently outranks Toyota, Honda, Infiniti and several others in J.D. Power & Associates’ initial quality study, long-term dependability study and sales satisfaction index. J.D. Power also ranks the GM plants where Buicks are built among the highest-quality assembly plants in North and South America.

The notion that golf tournaments don’t reach out to young buyers is simply false. Almost two-thirds of the television viewing audience for golf is 54 or younger (Mediamark Research, 2004). Golf provides Buick with the affluent and educated buyers whom we are targeting.

The U.S. automotive market is the most open and competitive in the world, offering customers an incredible array of choices. We do not take anything for granted, we appreciate each and every customer, and we are not resting on the laurels of Buick’s past success. We’re in the process of revamping the entire Buick lineup to offer customers vehicles with more style, luxury features, world-class quality and incredible value. This is vividly evident in the new Lucerne, which has received excellent media and consumer reviews, is selling fast and has helped Buick record monthly sales increases since it went on sale in December.

It is disappointing that none of these positive facts were included in the Times article. The fact is that Buick has a bright future.

Steve Shannon

Buick General Manager

Detroit