2001 Buick Regal Ls on 2040-cars

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GM puts e-commerce shopping in car dashboards

DETROIT — General Motors on Tuesday said it will equip newer cars with in-dash e-commerce technology, betting it can profit as drivers order food, find fuel or reserve hotel rooms by tapping icons on the dashboard screen, instead of using smartphones while driving. GM's Marketplace technology, developed with IBM, will be uploaded automatically to about 1.9 million model-year 2017 and later vehicles starting immediately, with about 4 million vehicles across the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac brands equipped with the capability in the United States by the end of 2018, GM said. GM will get an undisclosed amount of revenue from merchants featured on its in-dash Marketplace, Santiago Chamorro, GM vice president for global connected customer experience, said during a briefing for reporters. Customers will not be charged for using the service or the data transmitted to and from the car while making transactions, he said. "This platform is financed by the merchants," Chamorro said. GM will get paid for placing a merchant's application on its screens, and "there's some level of revenue sharing" based on each transaction, he said. It is too soon to say how much revenue GM could realize from the Marketplace system, he said. The GM Marketplace will compete for customer clicks and revenue with hand-held smartphones, which offer a far richer array of applications than the GM system will at the outset. Amazon.com is partnering with other automakers, including Ford, to offer in-car e-commerce capability through Amazon's Alexa personal assistant system. For example, GM will launch Marketplace with just Shell and Exxon Mobil icons in the fuel category. The only restaurant available for in-car table reservations at launch is the chain TGI Fridays, GM said. In addition, there will be apps for parking, and ordering ahead at coffee shops and restaurants such as Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts and Applebee's. "We will be adding more vendors," with some coming in the first quarter of 2018, Chamorro said. In addition, he said GM plans to expand integration into its vehicles of music, news and other information services. GM also hopes to use its in-car Marketplace connections to expand purchases of products and services, such as additional access to in-car wifi, from its own replacement parts business and dealer network. Customers can "expect to see more service promotions coming through the platform," Chamorro said. Reporting by Joe WhiteRelated Video:

Junkyard Gem: 2000 Buick Regal GSE

Except for a break from 2005 through 2010, and an indefinite break after this year, The General has been selling the Buick Regal since the 1973 model year. From 1988 to 2005, the Regal rode on the same GM W-Body front-wheel-drive platform as the Chevy Impala and Pontiac Grand Prix, and some of the more interesting W Regals came with ever-hairier versions of GM's supercharged Buick V6 engine. These Eaton-blown Regals were big, comfortable and quick, but they've nearly disappeared from roads by now. I found this 2000 GSE, the kingliest Regal of that year, in a Colorado self-service yard last month. Some junkyard shopper had already grabbed the Eaton M90 blower from this car by the time I got here, because everyone wants a blower or nine stashed in the garage (I have five at the moment). If you're looking to junkyard-supercharge your AMC Pacer wagon race car and use a Soviet truck carburetor for fuel delivery, the Eaton M90 is about the easiest to remove from the junkyard and the easiest to rig up on the car. This engine made 240 horsepower when new, giving the Regal GSE quarter-mile times below the 15-second mark. The price of the 2000 Regal GSE started at $25,300, or about $38,640 in 2020 dollars. You could get the same engine engine and chassis with the Pontiac Grand Prix GTP sedan for $24,610, giving you near-identical performance and a sportier (but less dignified) look. Buick didn't bother making a manual transmission available in any North American W-Body Regal after the 1993 model year. This reduced the fun level in these cars, but probably spared owners a lot of broken axles, CV joints, and hubs. This car has the optional Monsoon speaker system, also found in some Volkswagens of the same era. Apparently Monsoon systems for home computers were all the rage during the early 2000s. Did the Oshawa plant lift that "One grade only and that the best" slogan from the Canadian Corps in Passchendaele in '17? It sounds like a Commonwealth slogan of an earlier era. This car looks pretty good inside and out, but most Colorado buyers seeking a powerful used four-door these days seek out trucks. It doesn't take much of a mechanical problem (or accumulation of parking tickets) to doom a car like today's Junkyard Gem. So many features!

Why Buick's future lies in China

Back in the last half of 2008 and into 2009, when General Motors was looking at too much capacity for too few customers, when it was running out of money and needing to go to the governments of the US and Canada and to the UAW for financial support, its management team was pretty much instructed by the feds to focus resources on what would create the best likelihood for a return on the investments and guarantees that it was getting. Things needed to be cut, and not just the corporate air fleet. This led to the elimination of Saturn, Hummer and Pontiac and the sale of Saab to Spyker. What remained of GM's North American brand portfolio was Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC. (Oldsmobile had been shuttered in 2004.) There were a variety of opinions regarding which brands GM should keep/lose during the midst of the Great Recession. Some thought GMC should be axed, but then it was pointed out that GMC essentially produced high-content Chevys, which resulted in fantastic transaction costs. Lots of money in the back of those pickups. Others thought Buick should be eliminated. The rationale was: Chevy was the mass-market brand, Cadillac was the luxury brand, and GMC helped leverage the company's investment in trucks. (Yes, even back then the F-Series was winning the pickup sales race, so it was always a matter of adding Silverado and Sierra sales to show that GM was solidly in the game.) So what was Buick? Better than Chevy but not as good as a Cadillac? Somehow that doesn't seem to be a particularly aspirational position to hold. But Buick's identity didn't need to be worked out in 2008-09 because there was a single compelling reason to keep it: China. According to official GM history, Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president of China, and Zhou Enlai, a Chinese premier, "Either owned, drove or were driven in Buick automobiles." What's more: "According to statistics from the Shanghai government, in 1930 one out of every six cars on the city's roads was a Buick." Which is to say that Buick got to China early and has a major presence in that market. When the Regal Sportback and Regal TourX were being unveiled at the GM Design Dome the first week of April, Duncan Aldred, vice president of Global Buick, gave a briefing of Buick's place on the automotive landscape.