Photos General Motors Corporation

The Buick Bengal
by T. L. Stone

Pontiac head honcho "Bunky" Knudson, when he decided to remove the distinctive center stripe ("silver streak") of the fifties Pontiacs, defended his actions by muttering, "You can sell a young man's car to an old man, but you can't sell an old man's car to a young man."

This is a polemic that General Motors has sometimes remembered and sometimes forgotten.

So here we are. Once again, the folks from Detroit are having trouble selling "old man's cars" to more affluent, upscale young buyers. Only Pontiac, Chevrolet, and Saturn have managed a slight impact on this market - they sell a mere 20% of their cars to customers under age thirty-five.

More bad news: Olds goes. Seems that as the customer base for Oldsmobile became older and older, they all died, and there's no younger generation to replace them. Isn't it a sad state of affairs when innovative, well-engineered products like the 250-hp Aurora and the smartly appointed Intrigue are outsold by Pontiacs whose engineering merit concerns how swoopy they can be made and how much decoration can be hung on the outside of the cars?

"This ain't your father's Oldsmobile!" So sad. If you're not buying a boxy Bravada, a ho-hum Alero, or the sadly defanged Aurora (now an unassuming corporate clone) this year, it ain't anybody's Oldsmobile.

Dismay at GM. The nation's largest automaker has an entire stable of cars that miss the 20 to 35 mark. As AP reporter Justin Hyde points out, "The youth market as GM sees it isn't teen-agers hoping for a Chevy Cavalier when they graduate high school. Ed Wellburn, the director of GM's Corporate Brand Character Center, described the market as more diverse, urban, female and affluent than GM's current customer base." (Source: Younger Drivers Wanted)

Enter Buick. At the 2001 Chicago Auto Show, Buick unveiled their new concept car - the Bengal, which is pictured above. This car represents a nod, a hope, and a test. This roadster is the car that Buick and GM hope will appeal to a new generation of rich Stanford graduates -- like Tiger Woods.

Have you seen Tiger's adverts for Buick? As Buick's spokesman, he's been a popular and credulous (and young) focal point for the company.

Is it any marvel then that the concept car is called the "Bengal?"

Not to be too subtle about it, Buick also left room for two custom-designed golf-club bags!

As can be seen from the picture above, the interior instrumentation and control set of this roadster are minimalist. Instead of conventional controls, this concept car uses "voice recognition" technology provided by Visteon Corporation.  An onboard computer listens for spoken commands (in 6 languages and dialects) to operate over a hundred interior and exterior controls.

Powering the prototype is a version of Buick's SC 3400 supercharged V6. This is mated to a forward-mounted automatic 6-speed transmission. Leveraging GM's inestimable experience with transmissions, this transmission is called the Hydromatic X (for "experimental")T-6.

Since the transmission weighs more than the engine, hanging it out front allows for a longer wheel-base and less frontal overhang. This improves the car's weight distribution, offering a more neutral central of gravity than even Pontiac's true mid-engine car, the Fiero. This forward mounting of a transmission on a transverse engine is also reminiscent of the original 1967-68 fwd Toronado. It had a rearward mounted 3-spd Hydromatic. (Readers, do I remember correctly?)

GM calls this a "wheels forward" design, which, of course, is also suggestive of Chrysler's "cab forward" moniker.

Copyright © 2003 T. L. Stone
All rights reserved

Images: General Motors Corporation

About the Author

"T. L. Stone" is the pen name of Kudzu Monthly's publisher, Lamar Stonecypher. He hopes that you enjoyed this article.

Flights of fancy, rendered in fiberglass and steel. Concept cars capture our attention and, sometimes, our imagination. Thanks for reading this, and come back in March for another article in this series.