Among the key vehicles from General Motors at April’s 2012 New York Auto Show will be the 2013 Buick Enclave – likely bringing about the first major refresh for the popular sport utility vehicle since it was introduced for the 2008 model year and today GM offered the first teaser image of the new SUV.
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This first teaser of the 2013 Buick Enclave (which we have enhanced a bit for better visibility) obviously doesn’t give us any idea what the full sized luxury sport ute will look like on the outside and honestly, it doesn’t give us an idea what the inside will look like but we can see the interesting, flowing interior design and the basic features of the dash and center stack. Based on what appears to be a load of ambient lighting throughout the interior of the 2013 Enclave, we can only see a few features of the interior itself – most importantly the flow of the dash back into the upper door panels. Buick has offered similar subtle ambient lighting in other current models and I, for one, love it. There is a slight amount of footwell lighting that looks to highlight a dash face that extends out at an angle with the center stack running down into the center console complete with more ambient lighting and cup holders.
In the hard to see detail, the first teaser of the 2013 Buick Enclave offers a touch screen that will control nearly every function inside of the vehicle including the stereo, navigation, the phone system, Pandora radio, XM radio, and the heated/cooler seats while the dual zone climate system is controlled by the large knobs located just below the touch screen. The gauge cluster looks as though it will have a very unique design, with two large gauges and three small gauge ‘pods’ running along the base of the cluster.
The full sized Buick Enclave has been one of the brand’s bestselling vehicles in the last half-decade with the sales of the affordable luxury sport ute peaking in 2011 with 58,392 units sold. This is an impressive figure considering the rising price of gasoline over the past few years and it is even more impressive when you consider the fact that the Enclave has improved substantially in sales volume since being introduced even though there have been no real improvements made to the vehicle. However that is going to change with the introduction of the 2013 Buick Enclave. In addition to a revised interior, we can expect an exterior refresh that will keep the Enclave look more like the other vehicles in the Buick lineup – perhaps fitted with the cool blue-trimmed projection headlights seen on the Verano.
General Motors has promised more information in the coming weeks and based on the General’s pleasure for teasing vehicles ahead of auto show debuts – we can expect more pictures and maybe some solid technical information leading up to the full debut in April at the New York show.
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