Taurus, LaCrosse mark return of Detroit sedan

Dan Carney • E-mail

“Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?” and “Have you driven a Ford lately?” These are advertising slogans from the days when Detroit brands dominated the market for four-door sedans that were the industry’s mainstay for decades.

But in the last few years Detroit’s automakers haven’t placed a strong emphasis on the basic midsize passenger car, preferring instead to focus on building more profitable trucks and sports utility vehicles. They paid the price as gasoline prices soared and car buyers turned to popular and dependable names like the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry.

Now Detroit is mounting a strong comeback. Both Ford and Buick are introducing new sedans at this year’s Detroit auto show that they hope will carry those companies back to the future, with cars that could again serve as the foundations of the industry rather than the mainstays of the Enterprise rental car lot.

“The domestics are going to make more of a play here because this is still the highest-volume automotive segment,” remarked Jim Hall, managing director of automotive research company 2953 Analytics. “The midsized segment is going to be a bloody battleground.”

While no one expects drivers to return en masse to the classic Roadmasters of the 1940s and 1950s, or even to the one-in-every-suburban-driveway jellybean Taurus of the 1980s, a combination of a desire for reasonable fuel economy and SUV fatigue could set the stage for Buick’s LaCrosse and for Ford’s redesigned Taurus, both of which are making their debut in Detroit this year.

The oft-overlooked market for midsize and large sedans still represents 22 percent of the overall vehicle market, and those cars account for 43 percent of all U.S. car sales, according to Russ Clark, executive director of product marketing for Buick.

And while Toyota’s Camry and Honda’s Accord have topped the sales charts in recent years, they’re only topping sales charts for individual nameplates, Hall noted. In aggregate, domestic automakers, with their greater number of brands and models, have sold more sedans in the midsize and large segments, but those sales have been divided among numerous nameplates, he explained.

“On a cross-name basis, the domestics outsold Camry and Accord,” Hall said.

Just as in the days when drivers wore fedoras and clenched pipes in their teeth, Ford and Buick aim to impress with an array of gadgets meant to make both cars feel more personal to the driver.

Back in the 1950s, Detroit’s heyday, new car buyers were wowed with air conditioning, power windows and automatic transmissions. Now manufacturers hope that a new array of goodies will be the new must-haves: Ford’s Sync iPod integration system, adaptive cruise control, cross traffic alert, GM’s remote starter, heated steering wheels and heated windshield washer fluid (for defrosting wintry windshields).

“This particular buyer is tech-savvy and interested in using the technology,” explained Mike Crowley, North American car and crossover marketing manager for Ford. “We think Taurus is going to be a beacon for change for Ford. You have to have a flagship sedan to signal that.”

Buick points to the runaway success of its Enclave crossover model, launched in May 2007, as evidence that the Buick brand, which has lost some of its luster in recent years, can still attract customers when the product is appealing. 

“A big part of the Enclave’s success was (interest) from ‘conquest buyers,’” said Clark. “Its design, level of premium-ness and its execution of details attracted them. All of those same themes are how we chose to execute the LaCrosse.”

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So, even if the Buick name conjures images in some drivers’ minds of grandma’s car or or generic rental wheels on their last business trip, head-turning style still draws them into showrooms.

“It is a difficult name to get over,” observed Rebecca Lindland, director of industry relations for consultancy IHS Global Insight, adding that Buick could attract buyers in the Generation Y demographic — a famously fickle generation of about 75 million people loosely defined as those born between 1978 and 1994.

“If they continue with this product theme, there is potential.” she predicted. “But it’s the one part of their life their Baby Boomer parents won’t ever copy.”

Both the Taurus and the LaCrosse boast eye-catching style, which is in stark contrast to these models’ predecessors.

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