Automakers are having a bit of an identity crisis this week. One abandons its heritage for an avant-garde EV future while another that seemingly just wants to build middling crossovers has suddenly been thrust into the pop culture spotlight. I won’t discuss who the former is, but the latter is Buick, and it can blame (or thank) Kendrick Lamar.
Lamar, a multi-platinum, multi-award-winning West Coast rapper, dropped a surprise new album yesterday called “GNX.” As in the Buick “Grand National eXperimental,” which was a limited-production turbocharged Regal. This Grand National explainer is a great trip down memory lane.
Some keyboard warriors will argue it’s a play on “Generation X,” but Lamar is a tried and true millennial born in 1987. Wait, 1987 is when the Buick GNX was born, too! Double entendre? Triple? Who knows? But Lamar’s teaser video has been viewed more than 2.4 million times (and counting) since its debut. And there’s no denying that the Buick GNX is an integral part of the music. The vehicle—two of them—is the main focal point in the one-minute teaser.
Lamar later released audio of 12 new songs and, no surprise, “GNX” and “Grand National” make lyrical appearances throughout. There are multiple levels of excitement here: Lamar fans have more music for their playlists, car nerds can rejoice in appearing a little less, um, nerdy, and Buick is, on some level at least, cool again, which it hasn’t been since, well, the last GNX existed.
Lamar has done in 60 seconds what Buick has arguably failed to do over the last 30 years: get people curious about Buick. A key indicator of this newfound interest is that one of the top comments on that teaser video is a brief explainer of what the GNX was.
If it knew what was good for it, Buick should embrace this newfound limelight even if that means simply engaging with the moment on social media because I don’t see the Encore GX turning heads on the same level any time soon. It’s a perfect opportunity for the brand to reintroduce itself to a generation that may not have thought about it in years, if ever.
But, so far, 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 this golden goose on a Friday afternoon? This is despite the Regal GNX, classic models, lowriders, and even donks making up a majority of the automaker’s recently tagged photos and not its current crop of CUVs.
So what if Lamar’s nostalgic shoutout doesn’t vibe with Buick’s new “Exceptional by design” tagline? Doesn’t exceptional engineering go hand in hand with exceptional design, anyway? Sigh. There’s a reason a nearly 40-year-old Regal is making waves as a pop culture talking point in a way that today’s Buick models can only dream of.