2024 Buick Encore GX Targets Female Shoppers

• The refreshed ‘24 Encore GX has a new hood, grille, and fascia, redesigned LED lamps at the front and rear, and a new font for the Buick name. The brand’s new long-standing tri-shield badge appears for the first time.
  

• The new Virtual Cockpit System places an 8-inch digital gauge cluster and an 11-inch central touchscreen behind one sheet of trapezoidal-shaped glass.

• Buick identifies the Mazda CX-30 and Honda HR-V as rivals. Other popular small crossovers are the Subaru Crosstrek, Ford Bronco Sport, and Jeep Compass.

When Buick killed off its Regal sedan and Regal TourX wagon in 2020, the brand was left with nothing but utility vehicles, and now there are only three of those crossovers: the small Encore GX, the midsize Envision, and the three-row Enclave.

While the product picture might not look very rosy for Buick, the product and design teams think otherwise: The brand is growing increasingly popular with women, and its vehicles populate a sizeable niche in between mainstream and luxury brands.

Today, Buick reveals midcycle updates for its smallest crossover, the Encore GX, which was all-new in 2019 as a 2020 model, arriving about the same time as its platform mate, the popular Chevrolet Trailblazer. The Trailblazer outsells the Encore GX about two to one, but the refresh of the current Trailblazer is coming later. Before the Encore GX, Buick sold the smaller Encore, but that vehicle was discontinued in November.

The refreshed Encore GX has a new hood, grille, and fascia, redesigned LED lamps at the front and rear, and a new font for the Buick name. The brand’s long-standing badge consisted of three “strike marks” in the colors of red, silver, and blue, staggered in height and surrounded by a chrome ring. The new Buick logo, appearing first on this Encore GX, eliminates the chrome ring, aligns them evenly, and looks sleek and modern.

The updated Encore GX is the first of five new or refreshed Buick models arriving over the next 18 months, and most of them will show hints of the road-hugging, futuristic Wildcat EV concept unveiled last year. The new front end of the Encore GX gets its trapezoidal grille and the leading edge above it—referred to internally as the “shark nose”— from the Wildcat.

Previously, the trim levels for the Encore GX started with Preferred, then Select, then Essence, and a sporty ST package could be added to any of those.

But the revised model brings a new trim walk, from Preferred (starting at just $26,895) to Sport Touring (starting at $28,095) to the range-topping Avenir, a luxury-leaning trim appearing for the first time on the Encore GX and starting at $33,195. Buick’s two larger crossovers, the Envision and Enclave, also have Avenir versions.

The new Encore GX Avenir has more standard content than the previous Essence trim offered.

“We’ve reordered some of our packages to be more consistent with what we think the customer would want in terms of price point—and some simplification for dealers as well,” Buick Marketing Manager Jazzy Teen says during a recent media preview.

Two models were displayed at the media preview at the General Motors Design Dome in Warren, Michigan: a sporty ST in Cinnabar metallic red with glossy black 19-inch alloy rims (18-inchers are standard) and a premium Avenir in a new shade of Ocean Blue with 19-inch Pearl nickel alloy wheels replacing the previously favored chrome rims.