Tag: featured

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Front Center Air Bag Helps Enclave Achieve Five-Star Safety

Buick’s luxury crossover SUV is also IIHS 2013 Top Safety Pick

DETROIT – The 2013 Buick Enclave, equipped  with a standard front center air bag, has received the highest possible five-star overall vehicle score for safety as part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s New Car Assessment Program.

Previously, the luxury crossover SUV was also named a 2013 Top Safety Pick by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

“Safety is a key consideration for all car buyers, and particularly when it comes to family-oriented luxury vehicles,” said Gay Kent, GM general director of Vehicle Safety and Crashworthiness. “The Enclave is designed to provide excellent crash safety, and goes one step further by offering a front center air bag – an industry first in crash protection.”

The front center air bag is an inflatable restraint designed to help protect drivers and front passengers in far-side impact crashes where the affected occupant is on the opposite, non-struck side of the vehicle. When a severe impact occurs, the air bag deploys in milliseconds from the inboard side of the driver’s seat and inflates between the driver and front passenger, providing added protection for both front occupants.

Other Enclave safety features include:

  • Available Side Blind Zone Alert and Rear Cross Traffic Alert systems use radar to watch spots the driver may not see – and provide visible and audible warnings to help prevent collisions.
  • Standard head curtain side air bags with rollover protection for outboard occupants in all seating rows. In addition to providing protection in moderate-to-severe side crashes, the roof-mounted head curtain air bags will deploy in a rollover to help provide increased occupant protection and containment.
  • StabiliTrak electronic stability control with rollover mitigation technology is standard on all models and incorporates full-function traction control.
  • Standard rearview camera system is designed to provide the driver with added capability to view what is in the rearward path of the vehicle.
  • Standard four-wheel-disc brake system with ABS featuring smooth, quiet operation, longer pad life and more resistance to brake pulsation.
  • Safety belt pretensioners reduce forward movement during a collision, and are standard on the front safety belts, along with load-limiting retractors that help limit the belts’ impact on the occupants’ chest. The dynamic locking latch plate locks to hold the occupants’ pelvis in place.
  • LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for CHildren) child seat attachment system is included in outboard second-row seating positions.
  • Tire pressure monitoring system is standard on all models.
  • Strong body structure to absorb crash energy and provide a protective “safety cage” around occupants.
  • Standard hill start assist brakes help reduce the tendency of a vehicle to roll forward or backward on a hill after the brake pedal is released by momentarily retaining pressure on the brake discs.
  • Standard OnStar uses GPS and cellular phone technology to automatically call for help in the event of a crash. OnStar subscribers also can use the service to be Good Samaritans by sending help to other motorists, and to call for help in other non-crash emergencies.

Starting with 2011 models, NHTSA introduced tougher tests and more rigorous requirements for its five-star safety ratings program that provide more comprehensive information about safety performance and crash-avoidance technologies. Changes include a new side pole test simulating a 20-mph side-impact crash into a 10-inch-diameter pole or tree at a 75-degree angle just behind the A-pillar on the driver’s side.

Discuss the Buick Enclave in our live community by clicking here.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Buick Delivers Best February Sales Since 2004

Verano, Enclave and Encore help drive retail sales growth of 13 percent

DETROIT – Buick’s February retail sales were the best since 2004 with a 13 percent year-over-year increase, the 10th consecutive month of higher sales to individual customers. Total sales, including those sold to executive fleets and other commercial customers, were up 15 percent.

Buick’s newest models continue to drive retail sales growth, with Enclave, Verano and the all-new Encore leading February’s gains. The Enclave luxury crossover SUV continues its sales momentum for the fifth consecutive month with retail and total sales up 22 and 26 percent year over year respectively. Both represent the best February ever for the Buick Enclave.

The Verano compact luxury sedan continues to sell well representing a significant growth over 2012. One in two Verano customers come from outside General Motors’ brands and the luxury sedan was recently named U.S. News and World Report Top 2013 Cars for the money.

The all-new Encore small luxury crossover is off to a strong start with more than 1,834 sold since shipping to dealerships began in mid-January.

“New models like the Verano and Encore continue to bring new customers to Buick showrooms,” said Brian Sweeney, vice president of Buick Sales and Service. “With the introduction of the redesigned Enclave, we are seeing a new generation of loyalists returning to the showrooms for another Buick.”

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Quiet Cabin Makes Buick LaCrosse a Better Listener

Speech engine picks up accents and dialects from IntelliLink voice commands

DETROIT – When General Motors speech recognition engineer Robert Sims worked to develop one of the industry’s first in-car hands-free calling systems years ago, his goal was to make the call quality clear enough that his wife wouldn’t hang up on him.

Today, Buick’s IntelliLink system can do far more than place a call, and QuietTuning technologies like those in the LaCrosse luxury sedan make using voice controls easier for owners regardless of marital or relationship status.

QuietTuning is Buick’s comprehensive engineering process to reduce, block and absorb interior noise. For LaCrosse, that means features like laminated window glass, triple door seals and liquid applied sound deadening.

“There’s definitely an advantage when we’re developing voice controls in a quieter cabin,” said Sims. “The system’s ability to hear a command relies on SNR, or signal-to-noise ratio. If noise is extremely low like it is in the LaCrosse, the user’s voice, or signal, can be lower. In other words, a LaCrosse driver can easily speak to the IntelliLink system at a normal, conversational volume.”

As someone who drives an 80-mile commute each day, quietness and minimizing distractions are a personal matter for Sims. That’s helped drive him to make Buick’s IntelliLink voice commands simple, intuitive and designed around the controls drivers need most.

With IntelliLink – standard on every 2013 Buick – drivers can use voice commands to control navigation and audio functions with the push of a button while keeping eyes on the road. With a smartphone paired, IntelliLink’s voice commands can even tune to a Pandora internet radio station or “like” a song.

How does it work? Using a microphone in the cabin’s headliner – optimally placed by Sims and his team – the system uses a speech engine to match spoken words to known voice commands. When the engine finds a match, that command is executed.

“We’ve also designed the system with speaker adaptation, which means the engine is trained for different accents or dialects,” said Sims. “It can begin to predict speech patterns based on those models. Your LaCrosse remembers your speech patterns even after the car is turned off and on, but it can also identify another user and predict his or her patterns as well.”

Click here to discuss the Buick LaCrosse in our live community!