It’s excusable if you don’t remember that today’s Nice Price or No Dice Buick ever existed. To its credit, it does represent the marque’s first (and last) convertible since the Reatta of the ’90s. Let’s see if this car’s price makes it any more memorable.
It’s long been imagined that the typical Corvette owner is someone who wears clunky white sneakers below their Jorts and considers getting the first rotisserie chicken of the day out of the local Costco a competitive sport. Based on casual observations, I’ve found that not to be universally true, and even if it were, the handsome Polo Green over camel leather 1994 Chevy Corvette coupe we looked at yesterday would go a long way toward countering any owner’s fashion faux pas, nice as it looked. Well-kept and featuring low miles, and with a new clutch and tires, the ‘Vette also offered a lot of appeal on the mechanical front. A $13,500 price tag sealed the deal for the classic C4, earning the two-seater Chevy a solid 83% Nice Price win.
Global trade
In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a big trade war going on right now. It hasn’t devolved into a ‘shootin’ war’ yet. After all, who can afford guns and ammo with these crazy-high tariffs imposed on all the imports? Where stuff comes from is probably not a source of intrigue to the average consumer: they just want low prices and the ability to one-up their snooty neighbors with their purchases. It does matter to global companies, though, with today’s 2016 Buick Cascada Premium as a prime example of how General Motors used to stuff the sausage.
Buick sold the Cascada—the division’s first convertible since the 1991 Reatta and its first two-door after the 1999 Riviera—beginning with this model year. The car, however, started life in 2013 with sales in Europe as the Opel Cascada. The car was originally developed by Opel, then GM’s German arm, and was based on that division’s Astra platform. That was the extent of the German connection, however, as the Cascada was built at GM’s assembly plant in Giliwice, Poland, with engines sourced from another plant in Szentgotthárd, Hungary, and transmissions from Coahuila, Mexico. Assembled cars were sold across the globe under the Opel, Vauxhall, Holden, and, the object of our attention today, Buick brands.
Don’t go chasing waterfalls
They didn’t sell all that many, though, making the Cascada a fairly rare car, especially here in the States. The model’s final death knell in 2019 wasn’t due to sales numbers, though. It was GM’s offloading of its European operations—including the Opel and Vauxhall brands—to France’s PSA Group that killed off the car.
Named after the Spanish word for waterfall, the Cascada offers a fairly compelling package, albeit one that has a fairly limited appeal to the modern SUV-lusting consumer market. Here in the U.S., Buick fitted the car with a turbocharged 1.6-liter Ecotec four and six-speed automatic as the sole drivetrain offering. That makes a reasonable 200 horsepower and 227 lb-ft of torque, providing adequate performance for the nearly two-ton car, along with mileage in the mid-twenties.
As far as styling goes, aside from an aggressively angled windscreen, the design is fairly mundane. It’s not exactly a crowd-pleaser, nor is it something a hipster would ever claim to have glommed onto before it was cool. The Cascada will likely never be cool.
Not new, but like new
That’s not to say that it wouldn’t be reasonably comfortable and fairly fun to drive. The top does go down, after all, and there are plenty of bells and whistles in the cabin to play with, including a modest-sized center stack screen that offers navigation and satellite radio. Other features on this “like new” Buick include cruise and automatic climate control, along with power windows, locks, and top.
According to the ad, the car has 119,283 miles on the clock and will come with new tires, brake pads, and oil in the engine. It also has a one-owner history and a clean title. Aesthetically, this nearly decade-old car looks like it just rolled off the lot. The black paint looks gangster-good, and the factory alloys feature both a funky design and a mar-free presentation. The interior presents just as nicely as does the canvas top. The real issue here is the dealer advertisement that has been stenciled below the Buick badge on the trunk lid. I imagine removing that would be the first item on any new owner’s to-do list.
Buy the Buick?
This all comes with a $13,875 price tag and an interesting opportunity. Consider that, while sold as a Buick (yawn) here in the U.S., the Cascada was sold elsewhere as, variously, an Opel, Vauxhall, and Holden. It could be fun to source the necessary badging and turn this Buick into one of its sister brand cars. Or not. After all, the typical Buick buyer is probably more interested in whether their golf bag will fit in the trunk with the top down than the car can bamboozle passersby with its badging.
Considering that, we now need to consider whether this dealer-offered Cascada is even worth considering at all when its $13,875 price tag is taken into consideration. What do you say? Is that a fair price for a forgotten car? Or is that too many bucks for this Buick?
You decide!
Nice Price or No Dice:
Indianapolis, Indiana, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Jim Keener for the hookup!
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