Test Drive: 2010 Buick LaCrosse CXS

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March 22, 2010

2010 Buick LaCrosse CXS. Click image to enlarge

Inside, this new Buick is gorgeous, with saddle-stitch trim, ice-blue lighting (including a strip that illuminates the width of the dash at night), just enough well-done fake wood for that old-school feeling of luxury, and fit-and-finish that now matches or exceeds its competitors. The seats are all-day comfortable, and not just in the front row. Thank the Chinese for that: the LaCrosse is built in China for that market, where it’s considered a premium brand and is often used by chauffeur-driven executives. As a result, the amount of headroom and legroom in the rear seat is exceptional. Speaking of seats, I have a minor quibble: the almost-identical buttons for the seat heating and cooling both light up in blue when the functions are on. Making the “hot” indicator red would make it easier to determine, at a glance, if you’ve hit the right one before your personal built-in seat sensors figure it out.

There are some other issues as well. The inside door handles are a lovely design, with a hood that sweeps over the hand-hold, but they’re unwieldy to use, and the armrest needs a hand-hold further back to make it easier to control the door on windy days or when opening it in tight parking spots. The swept-back console brings the centre stack buttons within easy reach, but the shift lever is so far back that it’s difficult to use the manual shift mode feature, and the centre console box is too high to be a comfortable armrest.

A major issue is with the thick A-pillars. Between the huge pillar and the adjacent mirror, I was paranoid when making right-hand turns, moving forward and back in my seat to see around them to ensure there wasn’t a pedestrian waiting to step off the curb and hidden behind that wide expanse of metal. Toronto has recently experienced an unprecedented number of pedestrian deaths and injuries, and while there are many factors, I don’t doubt that the thick pillars now used on many cars – one method of meeting roof crush standards – play at least some part.

And while I’m on the negative side, it’s time for my regular rant about OnStar’s Turn-by-Turn Navigation system. In theory, you press the button to summon the OnStar operator, give your destination, and have directions downloaded wirelessly into your vehicle, which are then fed back to you via voice commands. In practice, I’ve found Turn-by-Turn leads to wrong destinations or along out-of-the-way routes almost as often as it gets it right.

It seemed redundant, given that my car had an in-dash navigation system, but the garden centre I sought wasn’t in its memory banks, and so I called OnStar. A very pleasant operator found the centre by name and address, and downloaded it to the car, where the in-dash system ran me through the directions and provided a map. I thought perhaps I’d hit a lucky day with Turn-by-Turn, until the voice commands sent me into the parking lot of a flea market some four kilometres south of the garden centre, and triumphantly repeated the address – which sounded nothing like the street we were actually on. When I summoned the operator again, she found the correct destination, punched it in, and then said, “Oh, wait …it seems you’re already there.” To her credit, she then called the store for directions. Moral of the story: give the cost of the renewal some thought when the one-year included plan expires.

2010 Buick LaCrosse CXS. Click image to enlarge

Once at the garden centre, we could have bought enough to landscape the back forty: the trunk is 116 cm long, and folding the rear seats – easily done, and they fall flat – took it to a length of 175 cm.

It’s not inexpensive, but the LaCrosse is a fine example of a luxury machine: it’s comfortable, quiet as a cloister, handles beautifully, and is poised to take over a younger audience than the brand normally engages. With the smaller and presumably sportier Regal on its way, Buick looks like it’s ready to take General Motors forward into the future.

Pricing: 2010 Buick LaCrosse CXS

Base price: $40,795

Options: $8,715 (Touch-screen navigation with 40-GB hard drive and rear-view camera, $3,465; Driver Confidence package of adaptive xenon headlamps and head-up display, $1,550; power sliding and tilt panoramic sunroof, $1,395; premium paint, $995; Touring Package of 19-inch wheels, sport mode selectivity and continuously variable real-time damping chassis, $895; rear seat thorax airbags, $415)

A/C tax: $100

Freight: $1,350

Price as tested: $50,960
Click here for options, dealer invoice prices and factory incentives

Specifications

Buyer’s Guide: 2010 Buick LaCrosse

Competitors

Buyer’s Guide: 2010 Chrysler 300

Buyer’s Guide: 2010 Ford Taurus

Buyer’s Guide: 2010 Hyundai Genesis

Buyer’s Guide: 2010 Infiniti G37

Buyer’s Guide: 2010 Lexus ES 350

Buyer’s Guide: 2010 Mazda6