It starts, like most things, with good intentions. The Buick Encore, a pint-sized crossover that somehow retains all the fittings of General Motors vehicles twice its size, was a good and smart gesture on paper.
After all, there is a sizable contingent of boomers and entry-level luxury consumers looking for crossovers smaller and better on mileage than your cruiser-class battleship. With a 100-inch wheelbase, one inch shorter than a Volkswagen GTI hatchback, and at 33 mpg, six better than a Ford Escape, the Encore easily ticks both those marks. Plus it’s a younger-feeling crossover that feels out of place with a large portion of the Buick fleet.
But that’s on paper. And like Bert Sugar, the world’s best raconteur and boxing writer, would have told you, they just don’t fight on paper.
The Encore is a small luxury crossover fighter here, against the likes of the BMW X1 and upcoming Audi Q3. While the Buick name might not carry the cachet like the German monikers do, the $24,950 starting price is prodigious — I’m unsure how many German rear-view mirrors you can buy under $25,000 these days.
Unlike bigger Buicks, there are no direct Cadillac competitors to the Encore. Chevrolet makes the Equinox, from which the Encore is based, but smartly caps the upgrades as not to intrude on the Buick offering. The Encore comes standard with a 7-inch entertainment screen, leather-wrapped steering wheel and 18-inch wheels. Available options include leather seats, blind spot monitoring systems, Bose audio, heated front seats and heated steering wheel. But even the Equinox is hulking compared to the Encore, the only thing they share is relative price and audience, but the Buick’s architecture is actually based on the subcompact Chevy Sonic, which is oh so cute.
And much like the small stature, the Encore has an equally small engine. Powered by a 1.4-liter Ecotech four, the engine is the smallest ever offered in a Buick. Raise the hood and you’ll see yourself: this certainly isn’t your grandfather’s Buick with a 6.2-liter aluminum brick. The 138 horsepower produced by the mill may not be eye-watering fast, but considering the cute ute only weighs 3,190 lbs. — or about as much as small heavy hatchbacks — it’s adequate. The real reason for packing such a small engine under the hood and mating it to a six-speed automatic transmission was to print poster-sized “30 mpg” signs to plaster everywhere.
Outward appearances aren’t exactly where the Encore excels. The first impression most people have when they see the tiny Buick is wonder at how GM could forget that the Enclave is tumble dry low-only. It doesn’t look bad in person, and it looks much better on the inside.
Between the doors, the Buick is comfortable up front. Despite using switchgear from every other Buick — which is to say 1.5 sizes too big for the Encore — the layout is smart for such a small car. The chrome accent around the bottom of the steering wheel and mimicked in the center console stack is good looking in person. The symmetrical instrument dials, bathed in ice blue lights, look ripped from a 1950s flying saucer movie — I actually like them. It’s cozy, comfortable and a little classic kitsch.
Where the Encore really succeeds in the interior is Buick’s attention to noise, vibration and pleasantries usually associated with such a small engine. Buick engineers canceled some of the small engine’s drone by using Bose’s interior noise cancelling acoustics. While it’s not whisper soft, the ride is unusually quiet. The Encore soothes bumps in the road, on par with every other Buick ever made — a throwback to the Buick land yacht days.
But the Encore’s existence in the Buick garb is a bit of a surprise. The small ute doesn’t pretend to be an SUV, or even a fully capable crossover. Interior space is cozy — but not cramped — and cargo capability isn’t where it excels. Compared to it’s competition, Mini Countryman and Volkswagen Tiguan, the Encore doesn’t pretend to be much of a carryall. Instead it seems the Encore plays to the crowd looking for good gas mileage and an elevated driving position, and doesn’t mind paying around $30,000 to have both. Our test model, which was fitted with all-wheel drive and premium group trim package clocked in at $32,230. The Encore starts at $24,950 with front-wheel drive.
The Encore is one of the few post-bankruptcy vehicles GM promised would change the direction for the then-flagging brand. While the Encore is certainly a departure for the Buick brand, it may be too jarring for some consumers. Small, luxury crossovers are hot right now, and like Bert Sugar used to say, “There’s a lot of money to be made by somebody, but I don’t know who that somebody may be.”
Aaron Cole is an automotive columnist. He’s driven hundreds of new cars, but only briefly. Send comments, compliments, complaints and supplemental income to acole@aurorasentinel.com