No. I’m not talking about China. Buick is killing it, right now, right here in America. Land of the Free, Home of the Envista. And it’s not even close. Buick is not only outpacing all of GM’s other brands in America, in 2023 there’s no other mainstream brand that can touch it. Were you sleeping on Buick? Don’t sleep on Buick.
The beginning of the year is always a great time in the office of The Morning Dump, which exists one layer below Jason’s basement dwelling and consists mostly of hyper-intelligent guinea pigs I’ve trained to parse data. We’ve got sales data, dammit!
After a long diatribe about Buick, I’m going to launch into a slightly shorter one about the rest of GM’s lineup and a larger look at the haves and have-nots of Q4 2023 and what it means for 2024. Let’s follow that up with a look at how Ford is going to rationalize its F-150 Lightning sales and, hey, what’s the deal with Stellantis?
Buick Up 61.4% In 2023
How many Buick models can you name right now? Go ahead, I’ll wait.
I’ll give you a hint, they all start with En.
Ok, enough waiting. Here they are:
- The Buick Encore GX (aka the TrailBlazer)
- The Buick Envista (aka the Trax)
- The Buick Envision (aka the one built in China)
- The Buick Enclave (aka the seven-seat Traverse thing)
You may not know what all these cars are but, guess what, your neighbors do. Here’s another list. This is the list of brands that Buick sold more cars than in 2023:
- Acura (145,655)
- Genesis (69,175)
- Chrysler (133,739)
- Infiniti (64,699)
And all those brands had a good year, with sales up across the board!
Buick sold a total of 167,030 cars in 2023, which is up a whopping 61.4% year-over-year. The only other mainstream brand with that kind of growth is Acura, at 42.4% thanks to improvements in the supply chain and a new Integra. Infiniti, as well, was up 38.8%, which I think is due to affordability and accessibility. Overall, the car market was up 12.6% in 2023, so Buick is doing much, much, much better.
What gives?
Obviously, any sales report for 2023 needs to acknowledge that the lack of semiconductors meant that there was pent-up demand for products this year compared to 2022. But that’s true for every automaker and not every automaker improved as much in 2023 while also carrying that momentum into Q4, where Buick improved by 56.6%, compared to about 8% for the overall car market according to Automotive News.
There’s something bigger going on here and it has to do with America’s car affordability crunch.
Someone at Buick had the clever idea back in the early 2010s to plug the brand’s tired, aging lineup with a cute and pudgy little crossover designed and built for the Korean market. This was the original Encore and it was a surprise hit, selling almost 50,000 units in its first full year in the United States and another 82,000 units in China.
The near-premium/premium subcompact crossover segment wasn’t much of a thing until the Encore, with the BMW X1 and Mini Countryman sort of filling that spot, but not quite. The immediate success of the Encore showed other automakers the way and the Mercedes GLA/GLB, Lexus NX, XC40, and many others followed.
Affordability is the big factor here, though, as the seemingly very nice Buick Envista starts at just $22,400, with the newly larger Encore GX coming in at $25,600, and the larger Envision costing only $33,400 (all prices before freight/destination). Those are extremely competitive prices for what you get and, with everything else seemingly getting more expensive, the brand’s prices stand out as reasonable. Helping that affordability is the fact that the Envision is made in China and the Enivstas and Encore GXs are made in South Korea. Only the Enclave is made in the United States.
Buick has said it’s going to switch to an all-EV brand by the end of the decade and I wrote earlier this year about how nearly half of Buick’s dealers decided to take a cashout and abandon their Buick dealerships so they wouldn’t have to upgrade to support EVs, but I also think this is a strength for the brand as most of those dealers represented only a small portion of Buick sales and the company can now focus on supporting its more successful showrooms.
Does it make sense to make Buick all-EV given how popular the brand is now? Maybe. Buick has had a better year in China and that’s due partially to the launch of the Ultium-based EVs the Electra E5 and E4.
GM Is The Largest Automaker In America, Had A Rough Q4
I don’t have revenue numbers so it’s entirely possible that, given the product mix, GM made a ton of money in Q4 of 2023. Still, if your job is to sell cars you ideally want to sell more cars and GM barely did that in Q4 of 2023, just edging out Q4 2022 with an increase in sales of 0.3% or about 3,000 vehicles.
Cadillac was down 7.0%, Chevy was down 0.3%, GMC was down 6.5%, and only Buick was up significantly. A bright spot for Chevy was the Trax, related to the Buick Envista, which moved 109,382 units last year.
The EV sales are also interesting. The Chevy Blazer EV, which was MotorTrend‘s SUV of the Year, saw only 482 deliveries all year before a software issue led to a stop sale. The Lyriq was up to 9,154 sales for the year, including 3,820 in Q4. which is a big improvement.
What’s the best seller this year for GM in the EV segment? The soon-to-be-dead, late-to-be-replaced Chevy Bolt, which was up 62.8% year-over-year for a total sales of 62,045 EV/EUVs (though sales were down 22% in Q4).
Overall, GM’s annual sales of 2.6 million cars is better than Toyota-Lexus’s 2.2 million cars so GM still gets to be the biggest automaker in the United States. Ford hasn’t announced total sales yet so we can probably add that data in tomorrow.
Looking at the total market, the sales slowdown for Q4 is concerning if you’re a company like Stellantis, which was down for the quarter, but great if you’re Honda, a Mazda or a Toyota and there’s an opportunity to pick up market share.
Stellantis Pulls Out Of Chicago Auto Show, CES, LAAS
Speaking of Stellantis, the news there isn’t great. The company’s sales were down in the United States and most of its brands started 2024 with a largely mediocre product mix.
If there were any bright spots last year it was with plug-in hybrids, which rode tax credits to a 124% year-over-year increase. The Jeep Wrangler 4xe, Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe, and Chrysler Pacifica PHEV were the three best-selling plug-in hybrids in America for 2023.
So what of 2024? The brand currently has no real full battery electric vehicles for sale, but that’s apparently going to change in 2024 according to the company’s sales press release:
Stellantis will launch eight fully battery-electric vehicles (BEV) in the U.S. by the end of 2024, including Jeep Recon, Ram 1500 REV, Wagoneer S, Dodge Charger Daytona and Fiat (500e)RED.
[The] all new, all-electric Fiat 500e, available for order now at FiatUSA.com, will arrive on this side of the Atlantic as the first BEV offering from Stellantis
One would think that launching all of these EVs would involve promoting them at auto shows, but that’s not the company’s plan. Last year Stellantis pulled out of the LA Auto Show, SEMA and CES at the last minute. This year, Chicago, and Dallas are off the table, with Detroit up in the air.
Automotive News has a statement from the company:
This seems short-sighted to me as auto shows, even in this increasingly digital world, are one of the few places for consumers to get into vehicles.
Ford’s F-150 Lightning Pricing To Get Big Changes
We’ll get F-150 Lightning sales soon, but overall the sales will almost certainly be up over 2022. So what’s Ford doing for 2024? Simplifying.
Prices for entry-level models in 2024 will go up for lower-level models and down for higher trims, with the higher-level XLT and lower-level Lariat trims eliminated entirely.
Here’s The Detroit Free Press with a nice breakdown of the changes:
- Pro (240 mile EPA-estimated range) from $49,995 to $54,995
- XLT 311 A (240 mile EPA-estimated range) from $54,995 to $64,995
- XLT 312 A (320 mile EPA-estimated range) from $69,995 to eliminated in 2024
- Flash (320 mile EPA-estimated range) is a new offering for $73,495
- Lariat (240 mile EPA-estimated range) from $69,995 to eliminated in 2024
- Lariat (320 mile EPA-estimated range) from $77,495 to $79,495
- Platinum (300 mile EPA-estimated range) from $91,995 to $84,995
- Platinum Black (300 mile EPA-estimated range) from $97,995 to $92,995
I just want to point out that Lightning Flash is a great trim-level name.
What I’m Listening To As I Write This
The New Pornographers debut “Mass Romantic.” Dig the Neko Case action.
Buick is cool. Their recent concepts are drool worthy. The Regal TourX was fantastic (I know it’s an Opel, but it was sold as a Buick and none of GM’s 43 other brands). I dig what they’re doing
Hopefully they bring back the Roadmaster Wagon with a giant electric powertrain.
I can only assume that the header image creation is outsourced to Adrian in Torch’s absence!
No comments yet on the use of Cilla ‘Surprise Surprise’ Black in the header image.
Made utter sense to me as a UK born Gen X but I’m guessing it’s just bypassed everyone else?
What will the long term reliability be on all these tiny turbo engines?
a luxury automaker with a 5 car lineup just barely beating sales to chysler who only sells a minivan is no real feat. also the fact that acura almost got outsold by Chrysler is laughable to me.
Besides that, how did Infiniti move nearly 65k vehicles?
they gave them away obviously? Also I think the QX80 is the official vehicle of Jackson Mississippi. I have NEVER seen so many concentrated in one city before of my life.
I’m curious to see if Buick can sustain this. If I’m remembering right, they had a similar bounce back when they debuted the Enclave.
From what I’ve observed, American car companies have the bad habit of benchmarking a competitor’s current offering, falling just short of actually being better than the vehicle they benchmarked, releasing that new model to headlines like “they’re back!”, and then getting completely blown out of the water in a year or two when the model they benchmarked is replaced. Also a hindrance: cost cutting just as they’re gaining traction, reliability, the dealer experience and mid-cycle refreshes that turn interesting looking cars bland or even ugly.
Why is Buick being compared with luxury brands. Even Fancy Honda is way more of a luxury brand. Buick is essentially just a style/trim package for Chevy.
“Buick sold a total of 167,030 cars in 2023”
But where? I’ve seen exactly two Buicks in the last 3-4 years: a 2018 Regal sedan my neighbor owns and one with the new grille on a GM dealer floor. Where are they selling?
Further, at those prices, aren’t they directly competing with Chevy products?
They are invisible. I wouldn’t have seen any Buicks except the small crossover parked in my next-door neighbors’ driveway has a Buick badge. That had me thinking, weird, I didn’t know Buick had small crossovers.
Neko Case rules. I like her solo stuff better than her work with the Pornographers, but it’s all good shit at the end of the day. I wonder what she thinks about Buicks? I bet she’s not surprised that affordably priced vehicles are selling well in today’s market. Still, I would guess she’s not putting a ton of stock in the percentage growth, let’s see if they can keep it up whilst transitioning to purely electric.
That’s well and good. What do you think Neko’s opinion about Macy’s stock is? My company has (I think) 17 shares from a settlement some 40 years ago and I’m wondering if Neko advises a hold or sell at this point?
Just kidding, we’ll never sell at this point as long as I get to make the decisions. At the end of last year I think our holding was worth around $1,500. We get dividend checks for around $8.00 each quarter, which is nice.
I mean, she’s got that song where she goes ” hold on, hold on, hold on” so there’s that.
So Buick sold less than 200,000 units in all of last year?
That was something that caught my eye, too. as well as this:
It’s so weird to hear that called a “good year” for Chrysler. They sold more LEBARONS in 1987 than they sold total cars in 2023… wow.
Hell, even Chevrolet with 1.7 million sales, all vehicles combined – at one time, they sold 810,000 Citations alone, and that was one of like 12 models
Even with the 1980 Citation being an extremely long model year (almost 2 years) that’s over 400k a year, which still blows the Buick numbers out of the water. And that was over 40 years ago. Economic growth?
I recalled many more Celebritys sold per year too. So I looked, and every year 84-89 sold over 200k, with 86 being over 400k. And that’s just one model in one division, and there were many models per division, and we still had Olds and Pontiac as direct competitors.
Sounds like new car sales don’t hold a candle to what they used to.
The market is a lot more fragmented than it used to be, there were 10.5 million new cars and light trucks sold in 1980, vs nearly 13.8 million in 2022, but GM’s market share has crashed from 46% to about 17% over that period. Remember, the Corvair was considered a disappointment with peak sales of 337,000 cars a year, but the Cruze topped out at 258,000, and the Cobalt before it peaked at less than 213,000. Both of those latter figures are pretty good for a compact car now, but would have been mediocre numbers in the ’60s by GM’s then standards.
For what it’s worth, they had more versions of the LeBaron than they do current models.
Chrysler sells two vehicles. The 300 which dates back to the Daimler era (ended in 2007) and the Pacifica which was very competitive when it debuted in 2016/17, but I’m sure has been surpassed by the competition. The minivan is also a moribund segment because people want to pay more money for less capability in a three row crossover.
I’m actually fairly surprised they managed those numbers.
A coworker bought an Encore (non-GX) a year or two ago, and she likes it a lot. I like it too, with its little short wheelbase.
The Envista came out with little fanfare – I saw a few in the wild before reading anything about them. The Envista is a surprisingly good looking car (or at least it has a personality other than the typical CUV that requires a brand logo and name tag to know what it is), the problem is the tiny, low-powered 3-cylinder engine in it. Give me a GNX version (or even a regular high-end trim) with a V6 or I6 and AWD and Buick may get my cash….
Wait…why does it feel like it wasn’t that long ago there was an article about how bad Buick was doing? (Or was that just in China?)
kind of, it was about dealers not wanting to sell EVs and ditching the brand: Nearly Half Of Buick’s Dealers Choose To Drop Buick Rather Than Sell EVs – The Autopian
That’s right, Buick sold 393,500 vehicles in China through the end of September, vs 460,000 in the same period of 2022, they’ve been trending downward the past several years.
Oh yeah, it was that article…Thank you
A friend of mine bought a fully speced Envision over the summer. I found it very nice, comfortable and reasonably peppy in by admittedly limited exposure. He’s been a GM guy for a long time, huge fan of the full sized 3800 V6 sedans of the 90s and then had a Saturn Aura with the V6 for over a decade before the new Buick. More to the point, he loves the car. Didn’t really enjoy the dealer experience because they took forever to correct a defect on the car after he agreed to buy it, but the car itself is right in his wheelhouse. Good size, decent power, comfy.
Yes. They bore me. I am not surprised they sell well—those little crossovers are seemingly everywhere—but I am not the target customer here.
This is basically the vehicular equivalent of asking if that shade of Landlord Grey excites me. Pretty much the opposite effect, bro. I need a nap just thinking about these things.
Why not? They bore me. Don’t tell me what to do. I need a nap. I am so stretched thin this week that naptime is going to happen on the first soft surface I reach, and if that’s a Buick, so be it. I will sleep on the Buick, and no one’s going to stop me.
Comparing Buick to landlord grey is an incredibly apt and hilarious comparison
An older guy at my old workplace had one of the tiny Buick CUVs. Whatever they are, Encrudo, Enslave, something. His reasoning was simple, it was just a car to go to work and back and as a lease, it was by far the cheapest monthly payment he could find. He just wanted it to be transportation and nothing else and give it back after three years of rust belt salt.
It was hard to argue against his logic, though I still always want my daily driver to be interesting because it’s what I spend the most time in.
+1 for Enslave.
Ha! Yeah, that checks out. These things are all over rural Texas, for what I’d imagine is similar reasoning. They’re cheap and they’re available, complete with dealership support that exists out that-a-way.
I’ve been a fan of what Buick has been doing for a while. They’ve made above average cars that generally look good. If they’re also competitive on price these days I’m not surprised they’re selling well.
And for all the people saying it’s not hard to grow a big percentage when you start out small, I will point out that their absolute number is also larger than the other brands comparably placed in the market, and they grew a bigger percentage. They’re winning no matter how you slice the numbers.
I keep teasing my wife that I’m going to trade in her Crosstrek on a new Buick just so I can point at the garage all day and say “That’s so you!” like they do in the commercials. She has informed me that I would develop serious health issues were I to actually try this. So has anybody compared assault rates with Buick sales to see if they correlate? That’s the only thing I can think of to explain this.
Please also make sure the Wifi password is BuickEnvision
The repulsed reaction women have to certain brands of cars is so confusing. It’s not that all women hate a specific brand, but that they all have a brand they don’t like and their hate for it is strong for seemingly irrational reasons. It’s a car.
Eh, dudes do the same thing, too. It’s like people in general are pretty passionate about cars for some reason. Like, especially on a car site. Who’d have ever seen that coming?
I appreciate all cars for what they are. They’re just cars. What’s the sense in ANYONE getting that riled up? I wouldn’t buy a Jeep but I enjoy them because they are immense engineering projects making a bunch of explosions to move me around and that’s cool. I just don’t PREFER them.
That would make a great article. “Slideshow: What automotive brand do you HATE?”
The only one I truly hate is GM. I’m sure other OEMs have done this very thing but I was directly impacted by this. My former employer bid on a project for GM; the Cruze. They got outbid by Valeo in France. Meanwhile we’re in USA. Valeo couldn’t make enough parts let alone at the cheap ass price they quoted. We bailed GM and Valeo out to make the Cruze launch. Comes time to rebid, GM goes with Valeo at some discount rate again.
Buick Up 61.4% In 2023
Let’s face it. If you were to do a story on the best new car deal for your money, the Buick Envista (along with the Chevy Traxx twin) would probably be in the number one spot right now.
They’re smart, economical, and good-looking cars for very few 2024 dollars. This is an opinion coming directly from a tried and true Mopar person too. Especially when I compare these two GM twins against the Dodge Hornet, it’s no contest. I couldn’t even touch a Hornet anywhere near that price even with my family Mopar discount applied.
Yeah, the Envista offers a lot of bang for the buck. If I were looking for a new car, it’s either the Envista or the Maverick.
Absolutely yes on the Maverick too!
I still don’t understand how I make decent money but my father was able to afford new cars for him and my mom, support five kids, and my mom was a stay at home. I just live by myself and I’m still scraping by, the only thing I have is a house. However, all my cars are used and I have a small lot (four cars).
The thing about Buick being the “hottest” brand based on annual growth is that percentage growth of a smaller brand can be significant because of the smaller numbers of units. If I sold 5 cars last year and 12 this year, look at that growth! (And it would be possible to sell that many cars to Mercedes Streeter alone if I somehow was producing new Smarts.)
As is often the case, there is an xkcd about this: https://xkcd.com/1102/
This is why I hate that most stock trackers default to reporting a stock’s daily percentage of change. If something went down by 10% yesterday and goes up 10% today that’s not the same value and is mostly meaningless.
Are you telling me Buick isn’t America’s hottest brand? They have everything, Android Auto, a center console cocaine mirror, a dealer finance manager who looks like a straight John Waters, midget seats
HOW IS THIS NOT COTD?!? Good show ol’ chap!
“So what’s Ford doing for 2024? Simplifying. …
Ford did what now? Their electric pickup (which is technically already a submodel) needs eight submodels of its own???
They’re really just 5 trim levels and two battery sizes (pretty sure the Flash is just the XLT with the big battery, but renamed), but, yeah, they might be able to cut the price if they simplified the lineup.
Also, it’s now a total of 6 trim/battery combinations, since two of them were eliminated for 2024.
“This Is Just $24,000”
Meh. Not enough portholes.
Local Buick dealer to me has “Please Call” for its 2024 Encores while the other 23 vehicles on their lot have discounts advertised. I smell markups!
If they were marking it up you probably wouldn’t hear about it until after getting in contact with them, because it would be a deterrent otherwise. More likely some kind of software glitch in their pricing or a price hasn’t sent over to the website. There’s also nothing particularly new about the Encore GX, even with the facelift, to justify a markup on only those. If you meant Envista, that might be more plausible since they’re not super common yet, but they’re too new to really have a lot of incentives piled on and likely, less margin, so probably won’t see much in the way of discounts there for a bit.