SO...

Let me get this straight:


GM is naming its new Buick after a brand of milk?

UPDATE — Why I love Nexis: It turns out the Lucerne, introduced this year by GM vice chairman Bob Lutz (also the official company blogger), was originally a concept car from the late 1980s. The irony is that Lutz has released it with a slate of so-called "LutzMobiles" at a time when the company is in peril (Mickey Kaus is right, the only cool one is the Pontiac Solstice), just as the original was unveiled with a line of GM prototypes when former Michael Moore nemesis Roger Smith himself was under fire.

Here's what the Chicago Tribune said in 1999:

In January 1988, then GM Chairman Roger Smith invited stockholders, politicians, celebrities and the media to New York. Smith wanted to take the heat off GM, criticized for look-alike cars, by unveiling a host of concepts to prove novel cars were soon coming--the Buick Lucerne, Cadillac Voyage, Chevy Venture (sedan, not the van), Olds Aerotech, Pontiac Banshee and one truck, the GMC Centaur, named for the half-man, half-horse of Greek mythology.

And here's Crain's Automotive News, January 4, 1988:

Buick's image car, the Lucerne, is based on a Riviera. ... Earlier versions of Buick's Lucerne actually were called the Riviera, then the name was changed to Sceptre and finally to Lucerne. It shows Buick as the premium American motor car, part of the division's mission statement. It is large, substantial, with a combination of beauty and power, as it is described by its designers, without being the doctor's car of Buick's past.

True, doctors don't really make house calls any longer. But neither does the milk man.

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posted by WWB at 6:35 PM |