'White space' is Buick's playground

DETROIT -- Buick pulled off a rare feat when the lithe, sculpted Avenir concept sedan rolled onto a stage here last week: It surprised just about everybody in this loose-lipped town.

But if recent history is a guide, it would be wise to expect the unexpected from Buick's product planners. The brand's U.S. lineup -- threadbare five years ago -- has emerged as a place where General Motors can gamble on different body styles and explore market niches that its rivals either haven't yet discovered or don't care to.

A prime example was the car sitting alongside the Avenir on stage: the Buick Cascada convertible, which will join exactly zero competitors when it arrives in early 2016 as a sporty, front-wheel-drive droptop, likely priced in the mid-$30,000s. With the Cascada, Buick is yet again targeting "white space," marketing jargon that translates as vehicle positioning -- size, body style and price -- that no rival occupies.

The term also aptly describes the last two nameplates that were added to the Buick lineup: The Verano, launched in late 2011, sits alone as a premium compact sedan that starts in the mid-$20,000s, thousands below its competitors. The Encore small crossover, which arrived in early 2013, has enjoyed a two-year head start on a slew of diminutive crossovers just now rolling out.

"You could really argue that Buick is a white-space brand," AutoPacific Inc. analyst Dave Sullivan says.

Buick executives cite Acura and Infiniti as competitors in the near-luxury or premium space. But research shows that consumers shop Buick against a wide range of competitors, from mainstream to luxury. So rather than scrutinizing the lineups of archrivals, Buick has the flexibility to experiment with entries in ways that its sister brands can't.

For example, Cadillac chief Johan de Nysschen acknowledges the "obvious gaps in our product range" relative to Mercedes, Audi others. He's not able to drop, say, an electric vehicle or convertible into the Cadillac portfolio anytime soon because he's playing catch-up on core entries, such as a small crossover.

Buick's U.S. lineup also is benefiting from GM's strategy to more closely align the brand with Opel so that essentially the same vehicle can wear either badge and be sold in Europe, China and the U.S. The Encore, for example, was developed in Korea, is built on three continents and is sold across China, the U.S. and Europe (badged as the Opel Mokka).

Buick's U.S. portfolio "has become a nice way for GM to get incremental value from their global products," Sullivan says.

That multinational persona gives designers liberty to try different things, says Andrew Smith, executive director of design for Buick and Cadillac.

"Designers love designing Buicks because it's not a paint-by-numbers brand," he says. He points all the way back to the Buick Centieme concept crossover, shown at the 2003 Detroit show as the precursor to the popular Enclave large crossover.

"That concept was quite visionary, like saying, 'Here's something different for Buick that shows the brand has this flexibility or bandwidth,'" Smith says. The rear-wheel-drive Avenir concept was done in that same spirit, "to show that we can see the runway for the places that Buick can go."

So is the Avenir a precursor to a future Buick flagship sedan? Maybe, says Buick brand chief Duncan Aldred, who commissioned the concept last March, just nine months before it rolled onto the stage.

"It was more about wanting to make a big splash on the stand and to test some of the future design language that will come on the next generation of Buicks," Aldred says. For now, he has higher priorities for Buick's U.S. lineup. But he believes an Avenir-like flagship "could play a role someday."

Mark Reuss, GM's global product chief and a guy who says he "bleeds" Buick, took it a step farther.

"I think the brand," he says, "is absolutely ready for it."