Can This Brand Be Saved?

摘要

For much of the last two decades buick has been entombed-forgotten by General Motors and remembered only by a dwindling band of loyalists. Twenty years ago Buick sold 845,000 vehicles. Last year it sold 337,000. The average age of a Buick buyer, 62, is the oldest in the industry (AARP members sometimes get a $500 rebate). Buick is retaining less than half of its customers, according to J.D. Power and Associates. These days the likely buyers are flocking instead to Lexus and Mercedes-Benz. "The buyers who are about to be Buick buyers hate Buick," says Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at forecasting firm Global Insight. All of which leaves GM executives with the ultimate marketing assignment Can this brand come back from the crypt? GM is about to spend $3 billion over the next five years to find out. The idea is to reinvent the charisma Buick once displayed with its big, beautiful cars of the 1940s and 1950s. That vision will be shown off in April, at the New York Auto Show, in the form of a long, elegant rear-wheel-drive convertible prototype called Velite. With cars like Velite, and a new sport utility, a mini-van and a pair of redesigned sedans, GM hopes Buick will compete with imports like Volvo, Infiniti and the lower-price offerings from Lexus and Mercedes-Benz.