GM March sales up 21 pct as incentives draw buyers

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By TOM KRISHER (AP)

DETROIT — Sales of General Motors Co. cars and trucks rose 21 percent last month compared with a dismal March last year, a sign that U.S. auto sales are benefiting from an incentive war touched off by Toyota.

GM said Thursday sales of its four core brands — Buick, GMC, Chevrolet and Cadillac — rose 43 percent on strong demand for redesigned vehicles like the Chevrolet Equinox midsize crossover and Buick LaCrosse luxury sedan.

Meanwhile, Hyundai's sales rose 15 percent to 47,000 vehicles, propelled by sharply higher demand for its newly released Sonata sedan and its Tucson small SUV.

It's likely that higher incentives from GM and other automakers drove traffic to showrooms. Toyota Motor Corp. raised its rebates and low-interest financing deals last month to counter publicity about safety-related recalls, and other automakers were forced to respond.

GM says it sold 188,546 vehicles last month, up from the 156,380 it sold in March of 2009 as it was receiving government aid and heading into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, which is shedding Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer, sold just over 27,000 vehicles from those brands in March of last year, but that dropped to about 3,100 last month because few cars and trucks remain on dealer lots.

Last month Toyota boosted interest-free financing, low-priced leasing and free maintenance in an effort to bring customers into showrooms as it dealt with the recall of more than 8 million cars and trucks around the world.

Toyota has been forced to recall cars and trucks mainly due to reports of unintended acceleration. The company is fixing gas pedals and floor mats in many of its top sellers including the Camry midsize sedan, a top-selling car in the U.S.

A top Toyota executive said on Wednesday that the automaker's sales would rise 40 percent in March and that some of those deals would extend into the spring. The company's sales fell 9 percent in February, before it launched its aggressive incentives. The broader industry's sales climbed 13 percent that month.

The automaker is to update its incentives on Monday.

Toyota's March surge likely outpaced the U.S. industry. Sales of new vehicles as a whole climbed 23 percent in March, according to market research firm J.D. Power and Associates.

Although auto sales have been steadily recovering, automakers have been raising their spending on incentives due to the shaky economy. Automakers are spending less on incentives now than they did a year ago, according to data from the auto Web site Edmunds.com.

Sales tanked in March of last year as the economy slowed, layoffs rose and GM and Chrysler headed into bankruptcy protection. Last March was among the worst auto sales months in decades.

AP Auto Writers Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit and Dan Strumpf in New York contributed to this report.

2010 Buick LaCrosse CXL aims upmarket and hits target

With great fanfare, General Motors has introduced the 2010 Buick LaCrosse, a vehicle with which the automaker hopes to jump-start a sweeping brand transformation for the tired Tri-Shield. For Buick to be a success in GM's post-bailout, post-bankruptcy era, the brand must dump its well-deserved reputation as the preferred marque of last-time buyers. (Average age of previous-model LaCrosse buyer: Around 70.) For better or worse, as it scrambles to get more – and younger – drivers behind the wheel, Buick has elected to position itself as America's Lexus in a bid to give itself some premium cachet.

Frankly, that's a pretty tall order, but if first impressions mean anything, the Buick LaCrosse might be crowned GM's savior on appearances alone, because it's that attractive, especially compared to the fish-faced namesake it replaces. The 2009-and-prior LaCrosse looks like the unfortunate love child of a third-generation Ford Taurus and a Mitsuoka Orochi. Or, put plainly, it looks like some ugly Chinese car. By comparison, the 2010 LaCrosse is classy and stylish. Therein lies the delicious irony: the 2010 Buick LaCrosse's glitzy looks were, in fact, jointly developed with GM China's design team. Go figure, and be thankful. In the metal, this ride draws plenty appreciative stares.

Viewed in profile, the 2010 Buick LaCrosse's fast-looking roofline sweeps down into a short, high rear decklid. Acres of sheet metal reside under the greenhouse, and to mitigate the ensuing slab-sidedness, the designers employ a Lexus-style chrome strip along the bottom of the door panels along with a corresponding indent in the bodywork. What really breaks up the monotony, however, is the 21st-century version of the Buick sweep-spear, implemented here as a crease in the bodywork that turns the LaCrosse's chunkiness into a something a bit more voluptuous-looking. The LaCrosse CXL's chrome-finished, seven-spoke 18-inch wheels fill out the wells nicely, and the 19-inchers you get with the top-spec Lacrosse CXS would look better proportioned still.

Arched headlamps flank Buick's signature waterfall grille, and the lower bumper openings turn down into a frown at the corners. It makes for a sterner look than the bewildered, four-eyed face sported by the old LaCrosse. The hood ventiports on the new LaCrosse are also purely ornamental. Tail lamps resembling chrome-edged flower petals finish off the rear end. From an exterior styling perspective, the new Buick LaCrosse drips curb appeal all over the sidewalk.

The good news continues with the swanky interior, elegantly decked out in a tasteful two-tone motif in the case of our tester. Material quality gets a solid thumbs-up, and GM goes so far as to add stitching to some of the soft-touch door and dash surfaces, making them look as though they're wrapped in leather, when in fact it's merely a visual sleight-of-hand. Don't laugh – it works. The front seats are comfortable and reasonably bolstered, but the best seats in the house may be one row back. At 40.5 inches, rear seat legroom is very good. That's more than the Pontiac G8 – no slouch in the department at 39.4 inches – just shy of the Toyota Avalon's 40.9 inches, and simply obliterates the 35.9 inches you'll get as a backseater in the Lexus ES350. If you don't get to ride shotgun in the LaCrosse, it's no penalty to be relegated to the back, where you can sit back and enjoy the quiet cabin in great comfort. Go ahead, cross your legs. You can.

A sweeping, beautifully-designed cockpit envelops the driver and front passenger in leather, attractive woodgrain and a variety of soft-touch surfaces. Beyond GM's new corporate steering wheel (leather-wrapped, heated and with woodgrain on top) is a padded binnacle shrouding the LaCrosse's attractive and unique tach and speedo gauges. Their ice blue illumination is further accented by cool ambient lighting that dresses up the instrument panel at night. The snazzy-looking layout layout stumbles a bit when your eyes land on the parts bin-special driver information and radio displays – similar to the ones you'll find in the Chevrolet Camaro, Equinox and GMC Terrain. They work fine and are eminently readable, but the look isn't as polished as, say, the audio display in the Cadillac CTS (or something in that general vein), whose higher-res presentation would better fit the premium theme GM says it's trying to get at with the revamped Buick.

The LaCrosse's center stack features the familiar, two-dial radio setup you expect to find in a GM car. Below the station preset keys, you'll find a total of 24 additional buttons, controlling various other audio and HVAC features. In daylight, the arrangement is a bit busy, but still usable. At night, however, it can be hard to discern what's what, as the area becomes a jumbled sea of little blue words and icons. One rainy evening, the windshield fogged up quickly and we spent more time looking down at the instrument panel for the proper buttons to make the adjustments than we would normally be comfortable with, particularly at highway speeds. The wheel-mounted cruise and radio controls work great, and there are enough station presets that we seldom needed to reach for the manual tuning dial at all.

Trunk space is actually pretty skinflint, especially for a big vehicle, at just 13.3 cubic feet. It's a shame, too, as the trunk itself is deeper than the short rear deck would suggest. We slid a stroller in lengthwise without even folding back the handle, and it fit with room to spare. The issue is that the usable area is sacrificed in the name of big, intrusive gooseneck hinges. The hinges are blocked off, so there's no danger of crushing your cargo, but the space they occupy would have added a sizable amount of cargo-carrying capacity had GM set up the trunk with struts instead. It's a missed opportunity. Yes, the Lexus ES uses a similar setup, but that's no excuse.

Behind the wheel, the LaCrosse's hydraulically-assisted steering delivers great overall response and feedback, but a smidge less power assistance would be more than welcome. On-center feel is good, and the sedan stays pointed where you want it without any vagueness or slop in the wheel. Dynamically, the Buick is competent if not exciting. Hell, it's actually pretty boring, which, when you consider that the Lexus ES is the named benchmark, is not necessarily a derogatory judgement. Sound isolation is excellent, engine noise is well-muted and if your local DOT isn't known for maintaining silky-smooth roads, the imperfections you drive over are swallowed up ably, with little more than muted thumps making themselves heard and felt inside. Best of all, the suspension delivers comfort without resorting to the wallowy feel that characterized "American luxury" for so long. Drive it hard into a corner, and the LaCrosse protests with understeer, but the reality is that it's not a car that begs to be driven hard in the first place. Refinement and good manners rule the day here, and the LaCrosse is at its best when you take it easy and let it coddle you.

In the end, we walked away from the 2010 Buick LaCrosse CXL impressed, but not completely blown away. If you're looking for excitement, you'll find it in the car's dazzling visual presentation, but its mild-mannered demeanor means it can be a bit of a snooze from behind the wheel. Then again, if the 2010 Buick LaCrosse is the American Lexus that GM so desperately wants it to be, maybe this blend of outward glitz and reserved composure is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Come check out our great selection of the All New LaCrosse at Bradshaw Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick GMC, Pontiac in Greer SC today. You can visit us any time at http://www.bradshawgreer.com/.

2011 Buick Regal Returns After Seven-Year Absence

Once up a time in the '80s, it was fashionable in Detroit to create so-called Euro-sedans by taking conventional mainstream grandma-mobiles and painting all the chrome black, dispensing with the white walls and installing overly stiff springs. Fortunately, those dark days are gone and General Motors and Ford at least have gotten their heads around how to build the kind of cars they sell in Europe. Just bring over European cars.

When bankrupt GM decreed that Buick would survive as one of the company's four core brands, it quickly became clear that Buick would need more models to flesh out its showrooms alongside the LaCrosse and Enclave. It wasn't long before it became obvious that the next addition would be a new Regal. The Regal is already available in Buick's biggest market of China and it's coming back to North America in 2010 as a 2011 model. Anyone familiar with the Opel Insignia will immediately recognize the Regal as the same car with the brand's trademark waterfall grille swapped in.

The new Regal shares its Epsilon II platform with the recently redesigned LaCrosse, but the wheelbase is 6.7 inches shorter overall. While the LaCrosse will soon add an available four-cylinder engine, the Regal will launch with only four-cylinders. The base engine will be the increasingly prevalent 2.4-liter EcoTec with direct injection. As an option, buyers can choose a de-tuned version of the fabulous 2.0-liter DI EcoTec turbo that was used in the Pontiac Solstice GXP, Chevrolet HHR SS and Cobalt SS. For the Regal, output has been trimmed to 220 horsepower while torque remains at 258 pound-feet with a peak at just 2,000 rpm. Both engines are paired only with 6-speed automatic transmissions, the normally aspirated motor getting a Hydramatic unit and the turbo using an Aisin unit.

Only the the premium CXL trim will be available at launch, although others will be added later. When the turbo is added to the lineup next summer, it will have an optional Interactive Drive Control (IDC) system available. The IDC will let drivers pick from three different response modes for the suspension, throttle, steering and transmission. The system offers the usual Sport, Tour and Normal modes but even when the car is in Tour mode, the dampers will automatically stiffen up when the sensors detect a sudden evasive maneuver that could be indicative of an emergency maneuver.

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