Introduction

Buick LaCrosse is a premium midsize sedan. It's quiet and pleasant-mannered as we'd expect of a Buick, yet its steering is more precise than owners of previous Buicks might expect, and it turns into corners crisply, with little body lean. Its V6 engines offer good power, growling under acceleration, but motoring along smoothly and quietly on the freeway, and the transmission works flawlessly. Inside is a rich, high-quality cabin with attractive woodgrain trim, nicely presented instruments and controls, and available leather seats with nice-looking gathered stitching. Electronic features make the well-equipped LaCrosse a safe, all-weather family car with nice conveniences. Among them: a remote starting system that will work from up to 500 feet away, great on cold winter mornings; OnStar, which will dispatch emergency crews to your precise location if you have a wreck and don't respond to operators' calls; XM Satellite Radio to pick up Fox News, CNN, ESPN, or your favorite music; and StabiliTrak, which can help keep you from skidding off a slippery road. LaCrosse was introduced as a 2005 model, replacing both the Century and Regal. For 2006, ABS and side-curtain airbags have been made standard on all models.

Walkaround

LaCrosse is unmistakably a Buick, with its trademark vertical-bar waterfall grille, long nose, long slopes and simple body curves. A tiny third side window behind the C-pillar adds some visual interest, while at the rear, a discernible dent in the decklid ties the taillamps together and recalls the more adventurous surface development that characterized Buicks of the early 1960s. A single, slender chrome spear decorates the doors. XM Satellite Radio shares a single antenna with the standard OnStar system. CX models can be identified by a grained, graphite-color finish on the rocker panels underneath the doors, while this panel is body color on CXL and CXS. Otherwise, the base CX has almost no decoration at all, beyond the bolt-on faux alloy covers for its 16-inch steel wheels. Construction quality looks good. Body, door, and fender gaps on the LaCrosse are all noticeably smaller than on the previous Regal and Century models. And LaCrosse's headlamps are said to be 35-percent brighter. To improve crash safety and reduce noise, Buick used generous amounts of expensive, high-strength steel, a magnesium cross beam behind the instrument panel, another cross beam behind the rear seats, steel reinforcements in the rocker panels, an interlocking door latch system, high-strength steel door beams, a double-thick Quiet Steel floor pan and firewall, and structural foam in the front fenders.

Interior Features

The Buick LaCrosse features a roomy, comfortable cabin with a general look of quality. The standard front bucket seats, clad in leather in the CXL and CXS, feature a new type of stitching, and newly developed silk-impregnated vinyl on the seat side panels emulates the look and feel of leather. Rear-seat legroom is generous, thanks to a relatively long wheelbase of 110 inches. My 6-foot, 4-inch frame can sit behind a 6-foot, 4-inch driver with plenty of room to spare. Interior quality and appearance are enhanced by reducing the number of individual trim pieces, which makes everything fit better and gives the cabin a richer, higher grade look. The instruments and controls are white on black, and each of the three round dials is wringed in chrome and set into a deeply tunneled instrument panel. It's all very nicely presented, and relatively sporty looking. The center stack is finished a mica-flecked flat black, with a trip computer and driver information system that's easy to put through its menu. However, the information panel is so glossy that it's hard to read in early morning or late afternoon light. The entire dashboard is decorated with a very good imitation woodgrain. Buick uses its Quiet Tuning program to reduce, tune out, absorb, cover up and mask noise sources all through the car. Quiet Tuning uses specially engineered parts and adds sound insulation in the engine, on the firewall, under the toeboard, inside the wheel wells and in the roof. Buick's Quiet Tuning has made LaCrosse one of the quietest cars in the class. Optional features upgrade this car to a cut above, making for a truly complete, safe, all-weather family car. Among them are a remote starting system that will work from up to 500 feet away, OnStar, XM Satellite Radio, and StabiliTrak; if we were ordering a LaCrosse, we would add all of these excellent systems.