mmarshall

Agreed it's not Tier One...but it's close enough to Cadillac, particularly with the Lacrosse and Enclave, to grab a fair number of sales that otherwise would either go to Cadillac or other Tier-One brands.

What the Avenir will do, at least to some extent (though in a somewhat smaller size), is bring back some of the luxury that Buick used to have with its former flagships like the Electra, Riviera, Park Avenue, and Lucerne. Those, of course, were (foolishly, IMO) dropped.

Anyhow, I think we're getting off-topic with the Lexus CT.

Trexus

Agreed Buick is more like Mercury which is more of a tweener between mainstream and luxury. Tier 1 luxury is Audi, BMW, Lexus and Mercedes. Tier 2 is Acura, Cadillac, Infiniti and Lincoln. Tier 3 could be Buick and Mercury...

mmarshall

The way I look at it, Tier-luxury-status depends more on the individual vehicle than it does the brand-name as a whole. For example, I don't see much so-called "luxury" in several low-line Mercedes products, the Lexus CT, the BMW 2-series, the Acura ILX, or the Audi A3. And I see quite a bit of luxury and plushness in some vehicles from what some consider lower-tier models like the Lincoln Continental/MDX/MKZ, Cadillac CT6 and Escalade, Buick Lacrosse/Enclave, and Acura RLX.

drgrant

Yes..... There's this bizarre discrimination in the US against hatches and minivans. They can't churn out the small SUVs and crossovers fast enough, even though a large proportion of these things are just junk/margtinal and basically make my Camry look like an exciting car. I think in a lot of cases even Sedans are getting discriminated against. There seems to be this weird obsession with slow, poorly handling vehicles that sit higher off the ground. Every time I see tons of these things in traffic I start
thinking "this is like, the epitome of the reason why we still have 55 mph speed limits in a lot of places."

One thing that stuck out at me- awhile ago savagegeese on youtube had a video about what was wrong with the performance car segment, a big reason cited was that the production numbers of SUV/CUV/hatchbacks-pretending-to-be-suvs-to-attract-morons was basically dominating the car markets- production numbers of these things are like exponentially higher than everything else- and as a result manufacturers are focusing a lot of their efforts in those departments. I mean don't get me wrong, some of them are pretty nice (eg, like the RX-350) but not every one of us wants to drive one of those things.

-Mike

BrownPride

Good article. The powertrain and hatchback styling were undoubtedly the CT's achilles' heel. Lack of marketing and a dated interior played a role, although the A3's interior isn't that impressive either.

I remember when I was looking for a DD two yrs ago, Lexus was offering incredibly good lease deals on the CT. However, there was nothing compelling me to that car because it was a lame slow hybrid and a hatch too. Had it been a little compact sporty sedan (like the A3, CLA) I would've considered it. I instead opted for a used IS.