Review: 2012 Buick Regal GS
A Great Sport Sedan With One Big “But”
Of the remaining General Motors nameplates, is the one that’s most difficult to wrap your mind around. On the one hand, it’s supposed to be a premium brand, but on the other, it’s selling vehicles with sticker prices that tend to start in the $20,000 price range, seemingly encroaching on territory. To wit: The is a bit over $23,000 and the starts just under $28,000, while Chevy sells its , and in that same range. Even the , whose price shot up nearly $4,000 this year, starts at $31,045. Indeed, GM must be using a mandoline to price the different versions of its sedans clustered around the $25,000-$30,000 price range.
But it’s over that threshold where things get really perplexing. Because whether we understand GM’s strategy or not, a twenty-some-thousand dollar Buick makes sense. You look at all the boxes you have to tick on a mainstream brand product to get the amenities that Buick offers and you dump that and all the data about the premium competition in a spreadsheet, and you can probably justify a Buick as a wise purchase. If you’re an actuary or an accountant, all the better.
A Regal GS with a $35,310 base price (or an as-tested cost of $38,155 like ours), however, has stepped onto an entirely different playing field, like a junior varsity kid getting bumped up to play on Friday night. This isn’t the sort of car you research over the Internet and lease after a five-minute test drive. It’s purportedly a driver’s car, something to seek out and manhandle. We thus find it rather disingenuous to compare it with cars from and – the Regal GS is really scrapping with vetted sports sedans like the and , and even its kissing-GM-cousin, the larger .
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