2006 Buick “Cross Over” Terraza
Wednesday, November 15th, 2006
General Motors is trying its best to hide the fact that the new Buick Terraza and Saturn Relay are minivans. In a press release in 2006 about the vehicles, General Motors calls the Terraza a “crossover sport van,” and follows with the abbreviation “CSV” in parentheses, as if this were a recognized expression.
The company repeatedly describes the Terraza as a “truck,” and replaces the apparently gauche “minivan” label for both Terraza and Relay with the curious, less-known moniker of “mid-van.”
Hopefully not, even if these photos of GM’s new vans show the company’s efforts to import more styling cues from trucks and sport utilities into its minivans. Patrons of the Los Angeles auto show, which will begin later this month, will greet the minivans as they make their first public appearances.
The Terraza will extend Buick’s new identity, in which upscale trucks are playing more of a role in the brand’s fortunes. Buick’s Rendezvous sport utility turns in a fat profit margin for GM, and the new Buick Rainier sport utility vehicle offers a fancier alternative to the Chevrolet TrailBlazer. GM expects the Terraza to make money because it will “attract the attention of affluent married couples with children.”
The Terraza, like the Saturn Relay, will use a 3.5-liter V-6 engine, which in this application will provide 200 horsepower and 220 lbs.-ft. of torque. Stability control is an option, but more importantly, both vans offer optional four-wheel-drive something that is available on upscale competitors like the Town & Country from DaimlerChrysler’s Chrysler division and Toyota Sienna, but absent from otherwise-excellent minivans like the Honda Odyssey and Nissan Quest.
While the Terraza will try to woo a more affluent clientele with things like leather seats and a steering wheel of wood and leather, the Relay minivan requires a different strategy due to Saturn’s more value-conscious nature.
Their two vans are siblings, but Saturn is hungrier for new products than Buick. Without the Relay, Saturn’s hopes might cling to the Ion coupe and sedan, and the Vue sport utility; the Detroit Free Press reported in November that Saturn is planning to kill its slow-selling L300 sedan and wagon, but GM officials declined to verify the report.
As the first seven-seat Saturn vehicle, the Relay could open a new sort of customer base to Saturn by offering more passenger and cargo utility. The road, however, will be difficult; according to GM, import brands command 40% of the market among first-time minivan buyers (about half of minivan buyers have never bought one before).
While General Motors, like the other American automakers, is a cost-driven brand, it has watched from a distance as Toyota has methodically, year after year, reduced and reduced the amount of waste at its factories and dealerships. GM is working hard to make itself more efficient, and the new minivans are designed to conserve materials.
In a statement about the Relay, Saturn says that new, longer-lasting brake linings in the vehicle “reduce servicing” and will “save the disposal of tens of thousands of brake parts yearly for every model year of production.” The electrical architecture of the vehicle “requires approximately 350 feet less wiring per vehicle and will save tens of thousands of pounds yearly in disposal.”
The wiring of Saturn’s cars is in some ways more sophisticated than that of the average American vehicle. Saturn’s dealers, for example, need to have easy access to their vehicles’ guts so that, in keeping with their mission as industry leaders in service, they can diagnose problems quickly and easily.
Tags: 2006 buick, 2006 terraza, terraza
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