Buick LaCrosse

The 2005 Buick LaCrosse replaces both the Regal and the Century as Buick's midsize sedan, representing 50 percent of Buick's annual car sales.Buick says it has the competition, specifically the Ford Five Hundred, Dodge Intrepid, Honda Accord, and Toyota Camry, beat on a number of fronts, including quietness and overall refinement.This is a car that was well on its way to completion when GM vice-chairman and product guru Bob Lutz joined the company, and charged the Buick team to delay the program one year, get the car right, and then introduce it.It's pretty clear that the wait, and the extra effort and money invested into the program, were worth it.

LaCrosse is not an all-new car by any means.It's built in Canada on GM's W-car intermediate platform, one of the oldest in the GM chassis inventory.But about 80 percent of the parts and systems underneath are new, along with new interior and exterior designs.

The LaCrosse has a rich, high-quality looking interior with attractive woodgrain trim, nicely presented instruments and controls and available leather seats with nice-looking gathered stitching.Buick's Quiet Tuning has made the new LaCrosse one of the quietest, most pleasant cars to ride and drive in among the entire class.

The LaCrosse rides smoothly and quietly, but its steering is much more precise than previous models and it turns into corners crisply with little body lean.The V6 engines offer good power, growling under acceleration, but smooth and quiet when motoring along, and the transmissions work flawlessly.

New features make a well-equipped LaCrosse a safe, all-weather family car with nice conveniences.Among them: a remote starting system that will work from up to 500 feet away, great on cold winter mornings; OnStar, which will dispatch emergency crews to your precise location if you have a wreck and don't respond to operators' calls; XM Satellite Radio to pick up FoxNews, CNN, ESPN and other broadcasts; and StabiliTrak, which can help keep you from skidding off a slippery road.