Buick blew the doors off the Detroit Auto Show the day before it even started when it dropped the news that it had created a sports coupe with 400 horsepower, and more style and substance than the new Corvette.
The car looks a bit like a mix between a Z4 and an Aston Martin Vantage, and it makes me feel all weak in the knees. That long hood, domed greenhouse and short overhangs give it the perfect proportions for a sports car, and GM made it sure had the proper motivation under the hood to match that sexy shape. Powering this creation is a 400 horsepower twin-turbo V6. It’s a new 3.0-liter unit, and it is mated to an 8-speed automatic transmission. Its RWD, as all sports coupes should be, and it even features GM’s magnetic ride control suspension system.
The Avista has the recipe right to become an incredible luxury sports coupe that could take on things like the BMW M4, and that is the problem with it. GM already has a luxury company making cars that are built to fight the Germans; Cadillac. With the new Cadillac ATS-V, GM already has a two-door, RWD luxury coupe with a turbocharged V6 to fight with the M4.
As beautiful, powerful and interesting as the Avista is, it would eat into sales of Cadillac, a brand that General Motors has spent the last decade rebuilding into a luxury powerhouse here in the states. Why would they risk undoing all that progress by releasing their own competitor?
Still, there has been a lot of positive press about this new car, so maybe GM will let Buick make it anyways.
Please. Pretty, pretty please?
