Real World Review - 2010 Buick LaCrosse

I rented a 2010 LaCrosse for a 2-day trip from Dayton to Orono, ME, on a visit to the University of Maine with my son Rob. It was a basic version, the CX, with cloth seats, no sunroof, standard wheels, etc. It was also kind of a blah color, a light gold with same color interior. We put about 1,000 miles on it in the 2 days, 95% of it highway miles, and also had about 2 hours of severe stop-and-go traffic on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut (my 'most hated' state).

The LaCrosse rides extremely well on the highway, as you'd expect from a large American car. It is extremely quiet, with no wind noise at all, even though it has large side mirrors. On freshly-paved surfaces, the only sound you hear (besides the decent audio system) is some tire noise. The engine does moan a bit when pressed, not an unpleasant sound, but not something to cherish, either.... Minimal sound comes from the dual exhaust.

Outward vision is a bit problematic, especially to the front angles - the combination of large side mirrors, which seem to be mounted high up on the body, and think A-pillars cause a lot of craning of the neck when initialy turning into parking spot or during low-speed maneuvering. And vision to the rear is terrible, a result of a short (vertically) rear window and high trunk lid. A car 12 feet behind you appears to be driving into your trunk! The front corners of the car are difficult to see as well.

The key fob is a cool switchblade, just like my Audi. But the remote buttons seem very sensitive. After stopping at a rest area on the Mass Turnpike, we came out to find the trunk popped open. And after stopping for lunch on Saturday in Newport, ME, someone came into the restaurant to ask who owned the LaCrosse, as the car alarm was wailing! Turns out I had the fob in my back pocket both times, so I am assuming that sitting on it caused the trunk to open and the panic alarm to go off. On the flip side, the range of the fob seems to be very good!

Exterior and interior styling is very nicely done, IMHO. This car would look great in a dark exterior color, as it has enough chrome accenting to really set off those darker colors - a dark blue with tan leather interior would be really sharp. The character line that dips down in the rear doors - kind of Austin-Healey-like - is very distinctive and the whole car is kind of canted forward, making it look like it's moving even at rest. The interior has cool blue lighting in several spots - along the upper edge of the dashboard, along the lower sides of the console, inside the door handle wells and around various points of the center stack. Very nice and subtle. The controls have a nice tactile feel to them, and the blinkers - which blink 3 times when you partially depress the stalk, again, just like my Audi - have a very subtle but solid sound to them as they flash. The trip computer is a little clunky to operate - a combination of 3 separate stalk-mounted switches have to be operated to move through the menus - but the visibility of the display is excellent - right between the 2 big chrome-trimmed dials. The cool blue lighting circulates around the speedometer and tach. And the needles of all 4 gauges (speedo, tach, temp and fuel) swing around their dials when you start the carm before settling back to 'normal' when you start the car, a neat touch.

Unfortunately, I found the seats a little uncomfortable. They were a little soft and narrow - I had to take my wallet out of my back pocket after a while, as my right leg would start to feel like it was losing circulation. Perhaps the leather seats are a little better and more firm.

One strange item - according to my navigation system, the speedometer was actually 1 - 2 mph LOWER than actual speed. I've never seen that before - most cars are optimistic with their speedos by 1 - 2 mph.

Mileage was good for a large car - we averaged just under 26 mpg for the trip, with the cruise set at 73 mph (except for the 2 hours in stop and go traffic mentioned above).

Here are my pictures -

Car Choices

The lease on our 2007 Honda Odyssey van expires on December 1 (Thank God!). We are currently 500 miles over our total allotment of 36,000 miles, so we will be close to 39,000 miles by the time the lease expires, in all probability. This sucks. We've been trying to figure out what we're going to do. We can buy the car for something around $16,000; we can turn it in (after paying for the excess mileage, probably around $300); or we could probably trade it in on another Honda and not have to pay the mileage. The problem with the third option is that Honda doesn't really have anything I am interested in right now. We don't think we want another van. Kathleen doesn't really like the Pilot - I do, but I don't think I want another vehicle that size. And the Accord is ugh-ly and a another sedan isn't really going to cut it. Honda does have a crossover coming out in a week or so - the Crosstour - that I will look at. Could be interested in that.

Other cars we are going to look at -

o Chevy Traverse - meh, but going to look at it.
o Mazda CX-9 - bro and sis-in-law just bought one, very nice...
o VW Jetta SprtWagen TDI - I would love to get one of these - 41 mpg, DSG. But
probably too small, about the same as my A4.
o Ford Edge, Flex - I really like the Flex, and the Edge is nice too although I think
I'd like the extra space of the Flex.
o Toyota Venza - pretty neat but expensive when you add a few options.

So we'll probably start test driving these vehicles in the next couple of months. THAT part will be fun!

Some Fun Stuff

Too much serious stuff in the automotive business these days, and too many problems with my own cars (I'll post about that later). So here are some fun things to check out, automotively-speaking.....

- A fun movie done by Chrysler for the 1939 World's Fair. It's supposed to be
3D, that's why stuff keeps going at the cameras, I guess.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlurdOFTvH8

- This woman really loves her 'chariot'!

http://growingbolder.com/media/technology/vehicles/romancing-the-road-259598.html

- An oldie but goodie -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3GU0a7KqTg

Replacing Gas Tax with Mileage Tax

The discussion of replacing a gasoline tax with a tax on miles driven (mileage tax) is becoming more heated (even though President Obama says the Federal government isn't interested in doing it). Attached is the text of an e-mail I have sent to all of my state and federal elected representatives.

I've been reading more and more discussion about this topic - a replacement of the gasoline tax with a tax based on the number of miles driven. I am against this idea for several reasons -

1) Privacy - yet again, Big Brother will be tracking my every move. The fact of the matter is, that once the government can start to monitor how many miles I am driving, it's a small step to now gauge my speed, where I am driving to and from and transmitting this information to a central database that already contains too much information about me. I don't care to be monitored in this way. It's a slippery slope, and we are already on it with EZPass. This would push us further down that slope.

2) Cost of equipment - if all new cars will be required to have a GPS device, a counting mechanism and some sort of transmitter, who will bear the cost of the added technology? The consumer, of course. I could see this adding several hundred dollars to the price of a new car.

3) Retrofitting older vehicles - again, who pays for the cost, if this were to be required? Also, older vehicles don't necessarily have the means to handle additional devices requiring electrical power - so that could lead to additional upgrades of the vehicles systems. Meaning additional cost. And any sort of government subsidy of these items would end up costing me in the end.

I also own 2 classic cars, from the '60's and '70's. They have relatively rudimentary electrical systems, so retrofitting any sort of GPS device would be almost impossible at any sort of reasonable cost. I also value the authenticity of these cars, so any sort of modern tracking system would destroy that authenticity and impact the value of the car.

4) Infrastructure to run this thing - more government bureaucrats? And I keep thinking about the initial application of EZPass here in the Northeast - there were many many problems when this system was implemented, and even today, there are problems with phantom tickets and bad transponders.

5) This is completely counter to the move to get people to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles! An increased gas tax would certainly incent people to continue to look at vehicles that get better economy; this sort of tax doesn't drive that behavior at all. We already have too many large SUV's with only a driver on our NJ roads, although the recent spike in gas prices has certainly started a trend the other way. Eliminating the gas tax could reverse that trend.

6) This sort of tax really penalizes those who MUST drive for a living. My wife is a home health-casr nurse. As such, she drives 200+ miles each week, caring for patients that cannot leave their homes to visit a doctor or healthcare facility. This Miles-Driven Tax would impact our income and further inhibit our ability to pay for college and save for retirement, to say nothing of our day-to-day needs.

This issue is one that rates very highly with me, and I would definitely look at your stand on this issue as an indicator of whether I will vote for you come re-election time.

GM To Kill Off Pontiac?

I saw on the NBC Nightly News that GM might be killing off Pontiac....wow.... That really struck me. They had a nice retrospective on the cars. My Dad owned three Pontiacs - a 1969 Pontiac Executive station wagon - maroon with a black interior and the third seat that faced the back. I learned to drive in this car, and the first day after I passed my driver's test (after taking it a second time!) I hit the back of a school bus and put a little ding in the front bumper.

The second one we had was a really ballsy car - a 1972 Grand Prix SJ! 400 cubic inch V8, dual exhausts, Rallye Wheels and the long hood - short deck styling. That was a fun car. Only car I ever ran out of gas. It was a lot of fun to drive - loud, ballsy and really sharp looking. I got it up to 110 mph once - but that was really scary as I think the front tires only touched the ground once every 10 feet or so!

Lastly, a 1977 Safari station wagon. Light green with 'wood' sides and a tan interior. I remember going with my Dad to pick this car up at the dealer, then taking it somewhere to get the CB radio - cool! - installed. We immediately departed for a trip to Disneyworld in it! This was one of the newly downsized GM full-sized cars.

These three cars covered about 15 years of my life. A shame that Pontiac has to be the one to go, instead of, say, Buick. OTOH, the Aztek was also a Pontiac, as was the Fiero...