The GNX is Buick’s chance to be cool again

Automakers are having a bit of an identity crisis this week. One abandons its heritage for the avant-garde future of electric cars, while the other seemingly does just wants to build midsize crossovers suddenly found herself in the spotlight of pop culture. I will not discuss who is the first, but the second Buickand it can blame (or thank) Kendrick Lamar.

Lamar, the multi-platinum and multi-award winning West Coast rapper, dropped a surprise new album yesterday titled ‘GNX’. Like the Buick “Grand National eXperimental” which was a limited production turbocharged Regal. this The great national explainer it’s a great trip down memory lane.

Some keyboard fans will argue that this is a play on Generation X, but Lamar is a tried and true millennial born in 1987. Wait, 1987 the Buick GNX was borntoo! Double meaning? Three times? Who knows? But at Lamar’s video teaser has been viewed over 2.4 million times (and counting) since its debut. And there’s no denying that the Buick GNX is an integral part of music. The vehicle — two of them — is the main focus of the one-minute teaser.

Lamar later released the audio 12 new songs and, unsurprisingly, “GNX” and “Grand National” are being sung lyrically everywhere. There are several levels of excitement here: Lamar fans have more music for their playlists, car nerds can rejoice in looking a little less, um, nerdy, and Buick is, at least on some level, cool again, which wasn’t the case before. ok the latest GNX existed.

Lamar did in 60 seconds what Buick may not have been able to do in 30 years: get people interested in Buick. A key indicator of this new interest is that one of the top comments on this teaser video is a brief explanation of what GNX is.

If it knew what was good for it, Buick should embrace this new spotlight, even if it means simply engaging with a social media moment, because I don’t see the Encore GX turning the same level of attention anytime soon. It’s a great opportunity for a brand to re-introduce itself to a generation that may not have thought about it in years, if ever.

But until now, Buick continues to sit on its tri-shield laurels rather than address the Darth Vader in the room — how dare Lamar hand Buick’s PR team that golden goose on a Friday afternoon? And that’s despite Regal GNXs, classics, lowriders and even donks making up most of the automaker’s recently tagged photos rather than the current crop of CUVs.

So what if Lamar’s nostalgic scream doesn’t mesh with Buick’s new “Exclusive by Design” tagline? Doesn’t exceptional engineering go hand in hand with exceptional design? Sigh. There’s a reason the nearly 40-year-old Regal is making waves as a pop culture talking point in the way that current Buick models one can only dream.