Next Buick Regal coming in 2017, could be imported from Germany

Sun, 03 Aug 2014

The Buick Regal is based on the Opel/Vauxhall Insignia, a pair of sedans from General Motors' European and British outfits. In fact, over 46,000 Regals from model years 2010 and 2011 were screwed together on the same lines as the Insignia twins, before GM's Oshawa, Ontario factory took over production fully. Considering this closeness, rumors that claim the next-generation Regal – due for 2017 – could move back to Europe aren't terribly surprising. Here's why, according to Automotive News.

Oshawa is home to three other vehicles, aside from the Regal – the Chevrolet Camaro, Impala rental queen and the Cadillac XTS. We already know next-gen Camaro production is headed to Lansing, MI, and that the fleet-only Impala will (finally!) die in 2016. As for the XTS, as AN explains it, sales are so slow that GM will either kill it or just shuffle its production volume elsewhere.

Taken along with the fact that Unifor, the Canadian labor union repping workers at the Oshawa factory, claim GM hasn't made any guarantees about future production at the nearly 60-year-old factory, it seems fairly clear that the Regal's current factory is going to be put out to pasture.

Meanwhile, according to AN, Opel has already dropped a not-so-subtle indicator that Buick production will be returning to the manufacturer's Russelsheim factory, issuing a statement back in March that read: "The Russelsheim plant has been chosen for the assembly of a future model which will be sold in the US under the Buick brand name in the second half of the decade."

Logistically, this all makes a lot of sense. As AN says, Canada is expensive, Russelsheim has room and GM execs have said that the German brand and Buick are pretty good bedfellows. Of course, we'll need to wait and see how this plays out. All things considered, though, the arrival of a German-built Buick seems like a very real possibility.

By Brandon Turkus