Category: Buick

Let’s not pretend this 2011 Buick Lucerne Super unicorn is an enthusiast’s car. Yes it’s extinct, with 2011 being the last year (the car suffered the humiliation of having it’s successor come out a year earlier), and it has the “venerable” 4.6l V-8 Northstar pumping out only 292hp to the front wheels. But the Super has the Magnetic Ride Control, an adaptive damping system that helps this 4,000 lb car wallow less , Bluetooth, seat heaters, heated steering wheel, and lots of room in the front, rear, and trunk. And it has the only-in-a-Buick telltale ventiports in the front fenders, four on each side for a V-8. These go back over 70 years – read here for a fascinating history of the ports in Buicks (long before stick-on ports were sold at K-Mart and added to Civics).

And to go way back on the nostalgia trail, this Buick has the rare (?) landau roof – the fake convertible vinyl that takes us back to the 1920’s and 1930’s when automobiles hoped to replicate the style of horse and carriage coach builders. While you probably think I have a deep knowledge of these automotive topics, I stole this vinyl top background too from an eBay Motors blog. Odd it has a sunroof in the fake convertible roof. No shame.

You won’t see yourself coming and going on the road in a Buick Lucerne Super – as best I can tell from the Buick forums, there were 20,000 Lucernes sold in 2011, the final year, and less than 10 percent were V-8 Supers. And I can’t imagine too many had the landau roof. Maybe this car appeals to me conceptually as a lazy, comfortable highway cruiser since I’m writing from a hotel room in Chicago, near the end of a 7,000 mile road trip in my S600 – the subject of an upcoming piece. There’s something about a living room on wheels.

For the record, I’m certainly not bad mouthing Buicks (my wife owns and Encore!), and I learned long ago that there is an ardent enthusiast group out there for every single vehicle and SOMEONE wants this car. If that someone is you, this single owner, accident free 2011 Buick Lucerne Super is here in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. And to think you can add MaxCare and protect the car for five more years, and probably another 25-50,000 miles!