Thursday, April 28, 2011

2011 Buick Lacrosse a Five Star NHTSA Winner

NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) was recently revised for 2011, and now incorporates increasingly stringent guidelines, new tests (a pole impact test, for instance, is now required), and evaluates various safety and stability programs. 


The LaCrosse’s five-star overall score was achieved after it earned five-star ratings for front and side impacts, along with a four-star rating for rollover prevention.

“Car buyers today want the peace of mind that comes with buying a vehicle they know will help protect their family,” said Tony DiSalle, president of Buick marketing. “This five-star overall vehicle score for safety shows Buick can equip an affordable luxury midsize sedan with top safety features.”

Safety equipment found on the Lacrosse helping it secure the honor include blind-spot monitoring, advanced safety belts with dual pretensioners, backup camera, and airbags including side-curtain protection, not to mention the several features found within OnStar.

Full press release can be found below. Few vehicles have yet to be tested under NHTSA’s 2011 NCAP standards, but even fewer midsize sedans have thus far walked away with a five-star overall score. Other four-door recipients of the five-star overall rating include the 2011 BMW 5 Series, Kia Optima, Honda Accord, and Hyundai Sonata. Thus far, Buick’s lineup now includes two models to attain five-star scores, as the 2011 Enclave crossover was given a five-star overall rating by the agency late last year.

DETROIT – The 2011 Buick LaCrosse received a five-star overall safety rating in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s New Car Assessment Program (www.SaferCar.gov), the agency has announced. Starting with 2011 models, NHTSA has introduced tougher tests and more rigorous requirements for its five-star ratings that provide more information about safety feature performance and crash-avoidance technologies.

The LaCrosse received five-star ratings for both the Overall Frontal Crash and Overall Side Crash. These crash test ratings are intrumental in helping prospective car shoppers evaluate the safety performance of new vehicles.

“Car buyers today want the peace of mind that comes with buying a vehicle they know will help protect their family,” said Tony DiSalle, vice president of Buick marketing. “This five-star overall vehicle score for safety shows Buick can equip an affordable luxury midsize sedan with top safety features.”

The LaCrosse offers these safety features:
  • Intelligent technologies delivering a “360-degree” field of vision behind the steering wheel for a greater feeling of comfort, control and safety
  • Side blind zone alert technology notifying the driver if a vehicle in adjacent lanes is traveling in the driver’s blind spot
  • Rearview camera system featuring a display integrated into the navigation system screen
  • Front- and side-impact air bags as well as roof-mounted head-curtain air bags that help protect occupants in the event of a rollover crash
  • An advanced front-seat safety belt system including a dynamic locking latchplate, dual pretensioners that help tighten the safety belt for earlier restraint of the occupant during the onset of moderate to severe crashes; and load limiters that help limit the forces on the occupant to help reduce the risk of injury
  • GM’s StabiliTrak stability- and traction-control system
  • OnStar (included for the first year of ownership)
GM engineers developed the dynamic locking latchplate, which is part of the front safety belt system. It locks under dynamic crash loading to help securely restrain the occupant’s pelvis, and it works in concert with the safety belt load limiting feature to control loads on the occupant’s upper torso. This safety feature helped the LaCrosse achieve the five-star frontal crash rating for both driver and front-seat passenger.

Read more: http://blogs.automotive.com/6732736/miscellaneous/2011-buick-lacrosse-a-five-star-nhtsa-winner/index.html#ixzz1Kr66oqAl

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Buick Envision Concept: Plug-In Hybrid SUV From Shanghai

The guessing games continue, with General Motors releasing more details about its Buick Envision concept car that give tantalizing hints of a concept stuffed with technology, but without the benefit of too many metrics.

Following the release of a sketch two weeks ago, now GM has released a whole set of concept photos. We'll be eager to see the actual car in the flesh once it's revealed at Auto Shanghai, which starts tonight (Tuesday morning in China).

Buick sells three times as many vehicles in China as it does in the States, so Chinese buyers--and future buyers--are the market for this swoopy concept whose styling is based on the concepts of yin and yang, according to GM's press material.

Right now, Buick has no small crossover in the Chinese market, so this is likely a styling study for a future model. Whether its plug-in hybrid powertrain makes it into production--and if so where?--is just one of the many puzzles.

The chassis is made of carbon fiber, aluminum, and magnesium (expect a variety of high-strength steels in a production version). The forward-tilting scissor doors are undeniably cool but unlikely for a volume vehicle.

It's that hybrid powertrain that has us intrigued, though. Buick says the Envision has "GM's world-leading PHEV plug-in hybrid system." That leads us to think it's not the Voltec powertrain used in the 2011 Chevy Volt range-extended electric car, but a new iteration of the ill-fated Two-Mode Plug-In Hybrid.

Read More: http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1058576_buick-envision-concept-plug-in-hybrid-suv-from-shanghai

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