Buick At the Crossroads - There’s More to Dealer Closings Than Just The EV Angle

Buick dealers across America are closing in droves. General Motors has decided to pare down the number of dealers by half, according to some GM sources, and as much as 75%, according to dealer sources we spoke to. As of now, the brand is not going away. We’re glad that Buick is not planning to close up shop entirely. Some outstanding models are built by Buick, and the brand continues to be the quality leader, and in many ways, overall leader of all the GM brands. For example, Consumer Reports ranks Buick higher than Cadillac, Chevy, and GMC in its "Best Brands" listing. Buick is ranked third in the industry for dependability by J.D. Power. 

General Motors found itself with a problem about 15 years ago. Over the course of its long history, GM had added in brand after brand, many of which overlap one another. You may remember that GM shed its Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Saturn brands during the upheaval in the economy from about 2008 to 2010. Each of those brands overlapped other products sold by other GM brands and it was necessary for GM to stop the rampant badge-engineeering and start to differentiate its brands better. 

Saturn’s failure hurt the most in a way. Saturn was intended to be GM's way of proving to the industry that they could create a new brand that would beat the “imports” at their own game. Instead, the “imports” invested heavily in North American plants, design centers, and headquarters and ate GM’s lunch. Today, brands like Toyota and Honda make some of the most American-made vehicles in the country. 

The import vs. domestic angle is important here. Buick was kept by GM over Oldsmobile because the Buick brand was very strong in China, the world’s largest automobile market. With GM planning to keep Buick to satisfy that market’s needs, killing it in North America made little sense for many reasons. So, the Buick brand survived the axe back circa 2010. 

Although Buick kept moving forward in America, the models sold by Buick trended towards being imports. Buick very quickly became GM’s most international brand, and in many stories related to Buick, we have referred to it as “GM’s import brand.” Three-quarters of the Buicks sold to American consumers last year were imported from South Korea and China. 

Electrification is coming, and the recent slowdown in growth of that trend is not the end of the road but a speed bump. Hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and battery-electric vehicles are the future for all brands. Buick presently has none, but GM says it has plans to change that. The plan is to make Buick an all-EV brand by 2030. While we don't doubt the sincerity of the reporting on that subject, Buick's all-new 2024 Envista is not electric, and a recent press release says that a new generation 2025 Enclave is just around the corner. Insiders predict the 2025 Enclave will use GM's latest V6 gas engine.

With the many changes happening and Buick still badge-engineering its Enclave (a.k.a. Chevy Traverse and similar to GMC Acadia), sales of one of its top models are parasitic to other GM brands. Since many dealers who had Buick also had GMC, something had to go. With GMC being a big truck brand for GM, dealers and GM both preferred to see the brand to go be Buick.

There are some who say that Buick dealers are dropping the brand due to Buick's trend toward EVs. This may certainly be true or partly true, but one Buick-GMC dealer we spoke with in a region where EVs sell quite well pointed out that GMC is also an electrified brand. Their dealership has already adapted to welcome the Hummer EV line and other future EVs. 

The upshot of the changes to the industry is that dealers are eagerly accepting generous buyouts of their Buick franchises from General Motors. Most already own other co-located GM brands, and a dealer we spoke with told us that if they had opted to keep their Buick franchise, GM was only offering to send them a fraction of the vehicle volume required to stay in business. 

The first cars called Buicks were built in America before the turn of the century in 1899. Buick generally says its brand began in 1903. With such a long history, it is sad to see the Buick name being sidelined and to see dealerships that have been in business for many generations opting to drop the Buick line. Time marches on. We look forward to reporting on new Buick models and hope the changes we are seeing are not the first step in the dissolution of the brand. 
 

For more on this subject, we suggest checking out GM buys out around half of its Buick dealers, published by Automotive Drive. 

Image by John Goreham. 

John Goreham is an experienced New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can follow John on Twitter, and connect with him at Linkedin.