Beyond question, GM’s Buick brand is extremely successful in China – a huge country with an enormous population and a healthy economic. However, Buick has zero presence in other Asian markets outside China, despite Asia presenting many other opportunities. In particular, we at GM Authority wonder why there has been no serious attempt to sell Buicks in South Korea.
To show why we think this might have been a good plan, we must first briefly examine GM’s presence in both countries. In 2020, Buick was The General’s second top-selling brand in China, where Buick has been regarded as a quasi-mainstream-premium brand for well over a century, and the most successful one with an American name (or, strictly speaking, a Scottish one, since David Dunbar Buick was born in the town of Arbroath in eastern Scotland before his family moved to the United States when he was two years old).
Buick GL8 family
Within the GM portfolio, Buick was second to Wuling, but achieved more than double the sales of Baojun, while easily outselling Cadillac and Chevrolet combined. Furthermore, Buick sold more than five times as many vehicles in China (885,207 units) as it did in the U.S. (162,714).
GM’s history in South Korea is too long and complex to be dealt with in detail here. Today’s GM Korea was created in 2011, but its roots are in the Daewoo Motor subsidiary of the failed Daewoo Group conglomerate, which General Motors purchased. It is through GM Korea that the The General has been able to develop small vehicles including the Spark, Sonic/Aveo, Trax and Cruze, all of them sold globally, including in South Korea, North America and, in the past, Europe.
Alpheon
Previous to that, GM sold Chevrolet and Cadillac models in South Korea. However, there has been only one attempt to introduce Buick to the market, and that was under a different name – the Alpheon brand. Alpheon was created to sell a rebadged version of the second-generation Buick Lacrosse. The new brand was launched in 2010 and discontinued in 2015. The vehicle was replaced by the Chevrolet Impala in 2016.
It’s clear that Buick is one of the most well-established automobile brands in China that’s almost unknown in South Korea. Furthermore, the South Korean market is much smaller than the Chinese one, though it is larger than that of Canada, and that hasn’t prevented Buick from being sold there. Armed only with this information, it’s difficult to make a case for bringing Buick to the Korean peninsula.
Buick Encore GX
But it might still work, so long as GM sells another type of vehicle alongside Buick’s growing range of crossovers such as the Buick Encore and Buick Encore GX, both of which are built for local and export markets at the GM Bupyeong plant in Incheon, as well as the all-new 2021 Envision. By “another type of vehicle,” we mean sedans.
This is the view of a retired GM executive who oversaw part of the automaker’s international operations, and is familiar with Asian markets. “Buick would have worked great in South Korea,” this executive told GM Authority. “It’s a big market for comfortable luxury vehicles that don’t put a focus on a sporty driving experience. The [third-generation] Buick LaCrosse would have done very well there.”
Third-generation Buick LaCrosse
In other words, it would have done better than the second-generation LaCrosse sold as the Alpheon. But, as mentioned above, GM chose to replace Alpheon with the Chevy Impala instead. “Impala was good, but it wasn’t premium enough to compete with the likes of the Kia K900, Cadenza, Hyundai Azera,” the executive said.
Buick vehicles are extremely popular in China, and are also sold in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. That makes four markets. With only a slight change in policy, GM could still raise that number to five by including South Korea, which has the potential of being more successful than Canada or Mexico.
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Comments
GM should spearhead Buick in Europe and Australia for Opel/Holden replacements.
Given China’s heft & how poorly Chevrolet has been recieved in many markets, Buick should be GM’s Asian and eventually European EV brand.
Buick is premium so a better VW rival. It can also be used to focus on higher income cities in places like India where a national campaign would be costly.
Chevrolet is a brand for the Americas. Buick can be well-used elsewhere with sharp designs like Envision and Buick Blue being a perfect match for Australia and Northern Europe
Steve Colmar: Agree with you 100%.
My understanding is like the executive, the Chinese love Buick because a quiet cabin and cushy suspension are perfect for China’s bad roads and horrendous city traffic, particularly since chauffeur services are a lot more popular in Asian cities. South Korea is richer and has much better roads, so the appeal is less.
It would be a hard sell to koreans to sell a car that is popular in the closest ally to their nuke happy neighbor.
Man, that dark maroon LaCrosse in the pics above is such a fantastic looking sedan. I just don’t understand (actually I do………SUV’s) why that car wasn’t able to sell in the numbers needed in the USA.
FWD sedans and cotton soft advertisements. So many people hated the “its a Buick” commercials. I wonder how many people that turned off. Buick in the USA should be called “Buick the FWD CUV brand now for 20 somethings.” As they are trying to appeal to a younger demographic.
If the LaCrosse had a better platform and started life as RWD, it could lure people in from the Big 3 German car companies. China gets the best efforts from GM it seems. I am sure they actually get good commercials for the cars in Asia.
Trying this comment again.
Man, that dark maroon LaCrosse is such a fantastic looking sedan. Too bad it couldn’t sell well enough in the US to keep it in production here for our market.
Buick was chosen as the brand in China because of the difficulty of pronouncing “Chevrolet” (a problem that exits in many markets) and because Chevrolet doesn’t sound very American.
I’m not sure why you talk about the Impala, the current large sedan of GM-K is the Chevrolet Mailbu, which is basically the same vehicle as the Buick LaCrosse.
Actually, the LaCrosse is based on the same platform as the Impala, while the Malibu is a different, smaller platform. The Malibu may be the current large GM sedan in South Korea, but it’s not “basically the same” as a LaCrosse.
No time for research but thought Impala was the final Epsilon 2 (used on previous gen Lacrosse) while the current Lacrosse was the updated long wheel base Global Epsilon– a somewhat more modularized program?
Many markets have bad Chevrolet memories–crap economy boxes with sub par reliability compared to Toyota and VW.
Buick makes quality vehicle without the baggage. Buick EVs could probably be sold via EU Honda dealers due to the alliance between the companies
I hear all comments, however as a South African born and bred in Buick Super , I think South Africa is forgotten or ignored when it comes to Buick brand where it did well in black market in 50’s
We want Buick back here in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia). It was doing well back in the 70’s to 90’s but then GM phased the brand out in 1996. The last model sold was 1996 Buick Roadmaster.
If it made it back to the region, I will get the all-new Envision.
Now, we only have 3 GM brands, Chevy, GMC, and Cadillac.
Why is Asian capitalized but white isn’t?