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Buick Swings and Misses with a Sport Touring Trim for the 2017 Cascada
The Cascada hasn’t been nearly the success that Buick was hoping for, but the American sub-luxury automaker is not giving up on it just yet. Today, it whiffed on an attempt to enhance the Cascada lineup with a new trim level that adds very little beyond a few grand to the bottom line.
This new Sport Touring trim level starts off with an exclusive paint color known as True Blue Metallic and finishes the outward look with a three-layer black soft top that opens in just 17 seconds at speed up to 31 mph and 20-inch five-spoke wheels.
Inside, Buick adds in Black Magic trim pieces, sport pedals, and a flat-bottomed steering wheel.
Like every other Cascada on the road, this convertible model uses a 1.6-liter turbocharged engine that produces 200 horsepower and 207 pound-feet of torque. This power heads to the front wheels by way of a six-speed auto transmission. This powertrain results in a not-so-hot 9.1-second crawl to 60 mph.
What’s worse is that this slow sprint time is not even rewarded with great fuel economy rating, as the Cascada gets just 27 mph on the highway and 20 mpg in the city.
This new Sport Touring model will set buyers back $37,885, which is whopping $4,820 more that the base 2016 model. Nearly $5k for a set of wheels, a new color, and some very minor interior changes seems a tad ridiculous to me. I read and re-read the press release hoping to find something else that justified the price hike, but this seems to be it…
C’mon Buick…
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