2011 Buick Regal live in Hollywood

2011 Buick Regal in Hollywood
On my way to the 2011 Buick Regal event , hosted yesterday (November 12) at the Hollywood Palladium, I had some time to kill at LAX while I waited for my ride. As I stood outside baggage claim, I tried to count how many Buicks drove past. It turns out it was a very easy job, besides an older Century and previous generation LaCrosse, nary a Buick sped by. That dearth of market penetration explained part of the reason why I was in LA to cover a Buick, two things you probably wouldn’t put together. Buick is changing and it would dearly love Californians to give it another chance.

View a slideshow of the 2011 Buick Regal live in Hollywood in the slideshow below this article. For official GM imagery, you can view this linked slideshow of the 2011 Buick Regal.

Buick has been on a bit of a roll. The Buick Enclave crossover has received a lot of notice and re-launched the brand. The recently arrived 2010 Buick LaCrosse kept that momentum going as one of the best looking Buick sedans in decades. Now Buick is turning to the 2011 Buick Regal to keep the ball rolling.

Both the LaCrosse and Regal share a common platform, Epsilon II, with the Regal coming in just a bit shorter than the LaCrosse (four inches less on the wheelbase and 6.7 inches shorter overall) . From an exterior perspective, the Regal is the plainer looking of the two cars. The Opel Insignia, on which the Regal is based, was going to be next Saturn Aura, but that plan was changed when the ringed brand was phased out. This shift in GM’s game plan allowed the Chinese Regal to arrive stateside. The Regal's front end has the traditional Buick waterfall grille, but its execution is less elegant that the LaCrosse. The side profile is clean, but you really miss drama of the LaCrosse’s sweep-spear. The trunk of the LaCrosse is a bit discordant to me, with its integrated ducktail spoiler, it doesn’t match up Buick’s design language.