Wouldn't You Really Rather Have a Buick?

Model stagnation—LeSabre, Century, Park Avenue—presented a sink-or-swim challenge for Buick. General Motors has paddled furiously on the marque’s behalf, and two very good sedans and a couple of truck-based SUVs have emerged.

While the SUVs have sold well enough, the fact is that SUVs are changing. Giant, truck-based gas slurpers are being supplanted by more compact and efficient crossovers. Enter the Buick Enclave.

The drivetrain is the 3.6-liter V6 that is proliferating throughout the GM powertrain scheme, ultimately meant to replace the dependable but 50-year-old 3800 pushrod V6 with a truly world-class and high-tech piece. With 275 horsepower, the V6 sends the Enclave smartly down the road.

Because of extra heft resulting from its spacious third-row seats and cargo area, the Enclave doesn’t get great fuel economy. In my tests, I got 18.5 miles per gallon against an EPA estimate of 16 to 22 in the all-wheel-drive model, and 17.6 compared with the EPA’s 17 to 24 mpg in the front-drive model. (But I was shifting the six-speed automatic by hand and running up the revs to see how the Enclave would react to being driven in a sporty fashion—see box at right.)

Heavy-duty sound-deadening means that normal conversation or the big-time Bose audio system can be fully appreciated in the hushed interior. The luxury CXL that I drove at the introduction was certainly opulent. But on a more recent drive, I also liked the interior of an iridescent white CX, whose lighter tones and artificial, but realistic, woodgrain (except for a real mahogany steering wheel) gave elevated status to the term “base model.”