classic car

Though if you look at the real facts, cities like LA and Miami aren't the wealthiest per capita, but if you take a stroll down a street like Rodeo Drive or Sunset Boulevard you'd think very differently. While I object to these cars being used as status symbols by rich people who don't really appreciate them or use them on the track, it does make for eye candy when you see two Ferrari F430 Scuderias parked next to a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a Bugatti EB110.

Here in Green Bay, the most expensive new car you're likely to see on an average day is an Audi A4 or a Lexus GS350, so we freak out when we see something that would be unnoticeable in Beverly hills, like a BMW 6-series or a base-model Corvette. People in these cities are so lucky, and they don't even realize it. They just keep texting, barely registering a Ford GT or even a Bugatti Veyron Pur Sang. This is craziness for us in good ol' (and admittedly good-car-starved) Wisconsin.

One thing that Wisconsin does have though, is Buicks. About a week ago Jalopnik had an article about eastern Wisconsin, where the author pointed out that there were Buicks everywhere, which I hadn't noticed before but now I realize. He said that he had never seen a Buick Rainier SUV (A Chevy TrailBlazer in disguise) in California, yet saw five in one day while traveling through Eastern Wisconsin. I've also seen plenty of Buick Terrazas and many other Buicks that are rare in other parts of the nation. Comparisons have been made between Wisconsin and China in the way of Buicks-per-capita.

Nobody knows quite why Buicks are so popular in Wisconsin. They are known to be dependable and cushy for a GM, with even the older ones having better reliability than many modern cars such as the Toyota Camry. 3800-engined Buicks last forever and are also marginally more rust-proof than other cars of that era, such as a Ford Escort. Buicks are more stable than other average cars in the snow, making Winter driving easier than if you were in a Mitsubishi 3000GT, and modern Buicks are actually Better-looking than competition from Saab without being as flashy as Cadillac.

Though mostly known for retired-persons transporting the rest of the country, you can find Buicks being chosen by people in their twenties in the same car lot as used Nissan Altimas and Cadillacs. Maybe Buick's new Lacrosse and Regal will signal a return to the youth market for most of the nation, but it won't change much in eastern Wisconsin, as a regular kid's practical choice of car for the money is usually a Buick a third of the time, with a Chevy Cavalier or Pontiac variant making up half of the grid and the rest being whatever they saw on the side of the road with a "for sale" sign first. Photo from Strutmasters.com