Fast data in the Buick LaCrosse
It's big and roomy, rides easy, and comes with a 4G data connection.
Let's check the tech in the 2015 Buick LaCrosse.
If it weren't for China, the Buick brand probably would not have survived GM's 2009 bankruptcy.
But last year.
GM sold 800,000 Buicks in China.
That compares to 200,000 in the United States.
So you wouldn't have the LaCrosse if it weren't for the Chinese market.
Now, the LaCrosse is Buick's full-sized sedan.
It's got a very high roof line, and a big cabin.
There's a lot of head room and leg room inside, it's a very comfortable car.
[MUSIC]
But it's not precisely a luxury car.
It's actually a front wheel drive, which really isn't a luxury market thing.
So what they call it is premium or near luxury.
Now for 2015, they've added a head-up display, adapt and cruise control.
And they've added the active safety seat which buzzes your **** to warn you about things such as.
If there's traffic ahead that you're about to hit, or cars in your blind spot.
So the center stack, we have what they call Buick Intellilink.
And we've got this home button here, which brings up, this is our basic home screen with these icons.
We've got audio, phone, navigation, a settings icon, Pandora icon, weather, a text messaging thing if your phone works with this system, and an On Star icon.
My usual audio sources here.
I'm actually on Bluetooth streaming, but I can also plug in my iPhone or USB drive to a USB port in the center console.
I can also switch to radio and that would get me FM, AM and satellite radio.
Navigation actually looks pretty good on this system.
in 3D perspective, these, these maps look really good.
There's a lot of nice detail, and if you're in a downtown area like the middle of San Francisco, you see all these buildings rendered, too.
There's traffic for your major roads, but there isn't a lot of traffic coverage.
This doesn't have as extensive coverage as I've seen on other cars.
So that's a little strike against this system.
I've also noticed that the system is a little bit sluggish.
When I push the various icons, sometimes things don't happen right away and I have to push it a couple of times or it's just a little slow to work.
The Pandora function will work if I have Pandora running on my phone and my phone is connected to the system.
For weather, this actually comes through satellite radio.
And, here it's showing me the local weather for San Francisco, an hourly pattern.
I can also switch it to a 36 hour, or a, a daily one.
Which will give me a, a five day forecast.
When I go to OnStar here,
[MUSIC]
Actually this is the real party trick of this car.
The LaCrosse is one of the first cars to come with a 4G data connection.
That's, that's part of OnStar.
And they use that to enable a wi-fi hotspot.
So to test this wi-fi hotspot, I, I've got a Nexus 7 tablet here.
And I've got a, a bandwidth app here to tell me how fast this connection runs.
Looks like it's actually an average speed of 12 megabits per second.
So that's really fast.
You might wonder why you'd want a wi-fi hotspot in your car if most of your devices are connected out of LT anyway.
Well it's good for tablets if you have wireless only tablets.
And actually the wi-fi connection in this car is gonna be, have a little stronger signal than the one on your phone because this car has a more robust antenna.
So you might get a connection further out than what your phone might, might drop.
This car will actually have a connection for a longer amount of time.
This intelli-link system.
Is pretty good, a little sluggish on response and I would actually like to see more apps on here too and I would also like to see the 4D connection power more things in this system.
[MUSIC]
I'm pretty comfortable in the cabin of this, Buick Lacrosse.
It's very roomy, I've got a lot of elbow room and.
If there was a passenger in the back, they'd have a quite a bit of room, too.
It's, it's nice in here.
Under the hood, we're running a a Direct Injection 3.6 liter V6.
That is 304 horsepower, 264 pound-feet of torque.
Direct Injection is a pretty efficient technology.
It means that it's.
Mixing the fuel and air in the cylinder instead of in an intake manifold.
That leads to fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon city, 28 miles per gallon highway.
That highway number's pretty good, but the city number kind of kills you.
My total average has been about 20.
6 speed automatic transmission, that's the only transmission you get with this car.
It's not really a driver's car.
It's, it's very comfortable.
This doesn't have an air suspension, or anything like that, like like a real luxury car would have.
But, Buick did a really good of tuning the suspension.
For comfort.
Now there is another engine available with this car.
Buick does a 2.4L direct-injection 4-cylinder.
I've driven that one before.
I liked it actually, and that'll raise your fuel economy quite a bit.
Fuel economy on that model is 25 city/36 highway, so you probably average about 30 with that.
That's a pretty big advantage over this.
So we have adaptive cruise control.
I can set that with buttons on the steering wheel and a radar looking forward will slow this car down to the speed of slower traffic ahead.
I've got blind spot monitors too so that'll flash an icon in the side mirror that there's a car in my blind spot.
If I were to turn the signal on while a car was over there.
To give me a little warning about it.
The active safety seat that this car has will actually buzz my ****.
It also uses that for the forward collision alert.
If I'm approaching stopped traffic or slow traffic too quickly and the car thinks, you know, this could be a potential collision situation.
But it'll also buzz me like that to give me a warning.
[MUSIC]
So let's price out our 2015 Buick LaCrosse.
The example we have here has the Premium II trim level.
That puts the base price at $40,895.
That also comes with the direct injection V6 engine.
We add the driver confidence I and II packages, that gets us adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, and that active safety seat.
That adds $3,370.
For a total of $44,265 for this car.
Now personally, I would actually scale it back.
I would start with the miles hybrid version with that 2.4 liter, four cylinder engine, up the fuel economy and also save about $5,000 on the total price.
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