7th Nov 2006, 10:38

I love my Buicks. I own 2 Buicks, (My first new car that I bought at the age of 23), a 1993 Regal with approx. 380,000 miles now, and it still is awesome and never has had any work on the engine or transmission. The only thing I have replaced was the lower radiator hose and a dog-bone style motor mount. Altogether, this has proved to be a very reliable car. Last month, I took this car from Pittsburgh, P.A. to Washington D.C. then to Santa Rosa, California then to Texas and Florida and back. On the whole trip I was getting gas mileage in the upper 30s, and my average speed was about 80-90 MPH. I had absolutely no problems. If it was possible, I would drive this car to the moon and back without fear of having any problems. Anyways... my other Buick is a 1988 Buick Electra Park-Avenue, which is what I use for business trips with multiple people at a time, as it is much more luxurious and roomy than the Regal, but when it is just me or me and one other person, I use the Regal because of it's better gas mileage. I also love the factory Bose sound system in the Park Avenue. My friend has a 2001 Honda and it has only 60,000 miles on it and it is already giving him crap. He is now trying to sell that, and is looking at a 2004 Buick Regal GS. I am concluding, saying that I will keep my Buicks forever. Also, here is a quote from my friend who owns the Honda: "Buicks rule, Imports suck"

14th Nov 2006, 21:19

Although just reading through, I fear I must comment on the Buick-Toyota discussion. I have owned two Buicks and three Toyotas. On my Buicks I NEVER had a scheduled service that came to $500+ which all of the Toyotas REQUIRED... every 30,000 miles or so. Ouch. Two of my Toyotas, but neither of my Buicks were laid up at the dealer for over a week... in the case of one, over a MONTH... and I had to fight with Toyota to get money for my rental car as the warranty only covered a rental car for a week. In addition, I am not at all happy with the Toyota Service writers-their main goal is to extract money from you. My experiences with American cars service departments has been much better... and MUCH cheaper for scheduled maintenance. My old boss used to see bills of $2000 for maintenance of his Toyota, but like many of the responders here, loved the car and kept buying them.

22nd Nov 2006, 21:06

Buick cars are the best, because they are the most safe cars in the market. Look at iihs.org, the static shows the Toyota Camry is 110%, the Corolla is 159% and the Honda Accord is 123% above average to cause injury or death, and the Buick LeSabre, is only 55%, the Buick Century is 85%, well under average. Pay attention to these facts, then you'll know whether America cars or Japanese cars are safer. If you still argue for Japanese cars, someday if a crash happens to you, you will have no chance to say "I should drive a Buick", and you lose forever.

2nd Dec 2006, 17:15

Japanese cars have, from the beginning, lagged far behind most domestic brands in safety. The reason is very flimsy construction of the bodies. Japanese cars don't have heavy steel frames, as many larger domestic cars do, and the smaller domestic cars using the unibody construction techniques use much more (and heavier) bracing in critical areas. You are far more likely, as the previous comment states so well, to be killed in a Japanese car than in a domestic.

The Buick is an especially safe car (as the previous commenter points out) and is very solidly built. American auto manufacturers have for decades put much more emphasis on safety than Japanese companies.

If I have a choice between protecting my family in a crash or putting them in a car that is TWICE as likely to kill them (again, refer to comment 21:06) you better believe they are going in the Buick.

2nd Dec 2006, 17:21

Comment 06:52 says that "if everyone in America drove a Toyota it would be a better place". In one sense that might be true. Since you are TWICE as likely to be killed in an accident in a Toyota as compared the much safer Buick, I guess it might serve to help control the population and make our roads a little less crowded.

24th Feb 2007, 16:55

I agree that Buicks are very high quality, reliable, and over all very comfortable cars. I personally own a 1999 Park Avenue which I am very pleased with. I work with someone who owns two Buicks (a 1993 Roadmaster and a 1995 LeSabre) with over 200,000 miles each! It is interesting to note that Buick is rated above Honda and Toyota in the J. D Power & Associates initial quality rating, second only to Lexus. I think it is unfair to slam either manufacturer, Toyota and Buick are both fine manufacturers of automobiles. I personally would never buy a Toyota, maybe a Lexus, but it is simply rude and unfair to demean someone who would. And the same goes for Toyota buyers who so often times think their cars are next to gods.

28th Apr 2007, 14:12

Let me make this painfully clear; the Kaizan or the five S are simply what pasty CEOs can do to make themselves feel on top of things. Most failures are theirs, not the worker as they cost cut products and insure the demise of the company such as the big three. I fail to understand how some business degree holding goof can possibly think that making the product worse is good for business.

Back to the Japanese work ethic; well I use to work for one of these North American plants. It was under Japanese supervision. May I say those hard working managers left around five every day.

Secondly, they did very little to see what was happening on the floor.

Third, they had very little programs to do preventive maintenance. Heck I have pictures to prove this. In fact it took them a month to replace parts to a robotic welding arm that was seizing and jerking as it attempted to weld. Instead of shutting down, they kept on running. On my own line the robot was getting stuck once a container; that is one out of sixteen parts. Every time I had to go into the booth and do what I could just to get another container. When making between 400 and 500 parts a day, that gets pretty old.

However the best part is that despite your best efforts, they want to blame you. No no, it can't be the Motoman robots, they're made in Japan, so it must be the workers. Yep, it was a real slap in the face.

The mechanics would try their best to fix the robots, however to be honest, they are under qualified to work on those machines. While the workers and the mechanics are trying to squeeze as much as they can out of pathetic equipment, the engineers, both Japanese and American, sit on the butts playing solitaire or something.

So in the end fed up with this lackluster operation, and the fact I was so mad that some nights were sleepless. I decided to take my revenge. I began to take photos of many things so that when I had sufficient proof I could mail them to the media and possible damage the name of the company, especially since they are public. Unfortunately during one Saturday while things just got worse and worse, I finally snapped in part due to the lack of sleep and lack of sugar in my system. And I couldn't even take my breaks, and get some candy as the line was worse than ever before. So I ran as slowly as possible so that the production would be in the red. When lunch break came and my supervisor had to take over, I left without a word. I am sure that he got intimately aquainted with the horrible line, but I doubt that was sufficient to make a difference.

So there is your quality.