Back in the late 90s and early 00s, when you thought of Buick, what probably came to mind would have been images of giant landyachts with supremely-comfortable (ohh those pillowly leather benches…) but outdated interiors being driven 20 below the limit by some old Geezer holding you up in the left-lane. In China though, things were a little bit different.
You see, in the mid 90s, General Motors entered secret negotiations with the Shanghainese-government to try to enter a market segment that it rightfully saw as about to blossom in China – the mid-size executive sedan . Why secret? Well, by the mid-90s the automotive-market was now heavily-regulated by the central government – this in response to a crazy, free-for-all period that resulted in all sorts of crazy manufacturers “producing cars” from imported spare parts. To put it simply – the Chinese government would select local manufacturers (either Chinese OEMs or foreign-partnered JVs) to produce different types of vehicles according to segment and positioning.
China’s most successful and influential foreign-invested venture, Shanghai-Volkswagen (SVW), had been selected to locally-produce a mid-sized executive-sedan to slot in below the FAW-Volkswagen built Audi A6 which was favored by high-ranking government officials and state-owned company executives.
The SVW Passat B5 would feature an extended wheelbase, a state-of-the-art powertrain, and of course the enviable reputation that the Volkswagen-brand had established for itself in China since introducing the iconic Santana back in 1986 – a car that influenced the Chinese car market like no other.
Anyways, as Volkswagen was developing and preparing through its JV SVW the launch of the Passat into the Chinese-market, suddenly news broke that GM had successfully negotiated with Volkswagen’s formerly-exclusive partner Shanghai-Automobile the establishment of a new Joint-Venture, Shanghai-GM (SGM) – the Chinese central government had approved the venture at the request of the Shanghainese government, likely as a concession to the US-government supporting China’s eventual path to WTO membership in 2001.
And guess what – their first product to market would be a mid-size executive sedan, the Buick New Century, and it would be launched a few month’s before the Passat in mid 1999, carving for itself a nice slice of this soon-to-be-booming segment. From 1999 onward, Volkswagen found itself no-longer the only choice in the premium-volume sector in China, and the Passat and Century began a bloody rivalry which would result in the strange situation of Buick pioneering several key in-vehicle technologies and innovations with the Century-platform and Volkswagen instead focusing on trying to lead on powertrain and mechanical-innovation with the Passat.
As this model-level rivalry evolved between the two Joint-Ventures, both General Motors and Volkswagen had their eyes set on scaling and introducing into China more new models across more segments, and so basically handed over the responsibility for further-developing the B5 Passat and the New Century to their Joint-Ventures – remember the early noughties in China was a time where model life-cycles were extremely long and models would keep evolving with seemingly never-ending updates and facelifts.
This development localization strategy was a key opportunity for the Joint-Ventures to show local Chinese engineering ingenuity, which is how we then ended up with the final evolution of the SGM Buick New Century, now known as the Regal, released in 2005 and built up until 2009.
Why was this such a significant step? Well, the local Joint-Venture development-team started integrated some pretty significant technology to try to keep this old platform competitive with the Passat, which was far-superior mechanically, resulting in a couple of pioneering innovations for the Chinese automotive industry. Let’s start with the first locally-developed and produced digital Heads-up-Display (HUD), something never seen before in this segment even in imported models:
Then, let’s talk about the first In-Vehicle Infotainment system fully developed by a Joint-Venture in China, featuring navigation functionality with in-built localized map-data. Again, remember this is 2005, and you weren’t able to get working in-vehicle navigation functionality with your imported W211 E-Class at that time in China!
And finally, to top it all off, SGM integrated dual Rear-Seat Entertainment systems into the front head-rests of it’s flagship Regal, something that put it ahead of the W220 Mercedes-Benz S-Class which only offered a single center screen in the rear, mounted awkwardly low above the rear air-vents.
The real significance of the locally-developed SGM Buick Regal was that it gave confidence to local engineers and development teams – it showed that what the Chinese automotive industry lacked in powertrain-development competency, it could more than make up for in areas that the Chinese consumer really cared about, namely in-vehicle technology.
The result is something we can see today, with Chinese OEMs such as BYD, SAIC, and Nio leading the field globally in terms of innovations in Digital-Cockpit displays, embedded end-to-end Connectivity-systems and other digital systems that even some established premium OEMs are struggling to get a grasp of. I’d like to think that the Chinese-localized Regal played its part in this result.