Buick Is GM's Budget Brand Now, Not Chevy

Chevrolet: General Motors' brand for the everyman. The light beer bottle-clinking, blue-collar American who's working up a sweat to afford the next brand up the ladder: Buick. And if they work hard enough, maybe they'll follow that up with a Cadillac one day. But the world has changed since GM envisioned this brand progression decades ago. We may still see Chevy as the working-class brand, but that's a carefully crafted image for marketing's sake. Instead, some of GM's most budget-conscious buyers are flipping the script, because they're not shopping for Chevys. They're buying Buicks.

That may be a provocative claim to some, but kicking the hornet's nest isn't the point here. It's to observe that Buick's position is now that of GM's de facto economy brand. It may posture and even price itself like a premium product at times, but Buick's offerings aren't those of an upscale brand—not in the United States in 2023.

Since the 2020 retirement of the Regal, Buick's lineup has consisted entirely of crossovers, a body style whose sheer popularity makes it the archetypal modern car. Crossovers are for people who want the ability to do as much as possible with a single vehicle; take the kids to school, a Costco shopping run, and be up for a road trip. Anything more than that, from hauling a bed of wood chips to laying down quick quarter-mile times or leaving zero emissions behind are—by virtue of cost—luxuries.

They're luxuries that Buick doesn't afford its customers. Not a single vehicle in its lineup is a pickup truck, performance car, or EV. That third option might be on the way, but having an EV in your lineup isn't enough to make people covet your badge. Just ask Nissan.

"Now hold on," you might be saying. "Buicks are still more expensive than Chevys!" And you'd be right. The Trax-based 2024 Buick Envista starts at a price $2,000 higher, the Trailblazer-related Encore GX is an extra $2,500, and the Enclave is a whole $9,360 dearer than the Traverse. On its surface, Buick still looks like the upscale option. But the way Americans spend their money on new cars indicates otherwise.

For starters, let's compare the price range of new Buicks to those of Chevys. Chevy undeniably takes the title of cheapest car between the two, with the 2024 Trax starting at $21,495 against the $23,495 Envista. But not a single Buick nameplate starts north of the $48,334 that the average new car in the U.S. cost in July according to Kelley Blue Book. Chevy, meanwhile, has four above that mark: the Blazer EV, Corvette, Tahoe, and Suburban. There's simply more room to spend big on a Chevy, which people wouldn't do if they didn't think a Chevy was worth splashing out for.

There's also data from Cox Automotive about GM's Q3 sales, which gives us insight into what people actually spent on each model. Mirroring the relationship above, Buicks sell for more than their Chevy equivalents.