Next Buick Midsize to be much like Invicta Concept

Buick’s Invicta Concept, which was shown just a few weeks ago at the Auto China show, was a landmark for the brand in many ways. Like the Riviera Concept, the Invicta is a true Chinese-American collaboration, which no doubt is attributable to Buick’s success in the Chinese marketplace. However, unlike the gullwinged Riviera, the Invicta has been earmarked for production.

Now, official news is coming in from GM’s product guru Bob Lutz that Buick’s next-generation midsize sedan, the successor to the LaCrosse will look very much like the Invicta – a good thing. The handsome sedan was designed by GM’s studios in Warren, Michigan and Shanghai, China, and features a combination of classic and modern styling cues. The relation between the concept and the production car is a good thing and should serve to hype the projected launch of the car, which is expected to arrive sometime by the end of the decade. The news should bolster the fact that test mules have already been spotted on the road.

But there’s more positive news than just styling. Lutz also commented that the production version of the Invicta will be more than just a badge engineered vehicle. Although it will share powertrains, architecture and other components with existing GM vehicles, a lot of attention will be paid to disguising this fact. As such, the production version of the Invicta should avoid any similarities between, say, the Saturn Aura and Chevrolet Malibu, in the same way that the Enclave, Acadia, Traverse and Outlook look different from one another, giving Buick’s new car a completely different flavor. This should help distinguish the brand further upmarket in China, and help to revitalize the Buick name here in North America.