General Motors, along with the rest of the American car industry, has been busy burying the sedan with the kind of smug certainty usually reserved for fashion critics and political commentators. Auto executives strutted around as if it had finally achieved enlightenment, declaring that what people really needed was altitude, bulk, and a vague promise they might someday drive over a shrub. Showrooms became a parade of tall wagons with delusions of grandeur, each one heavier, bluffer, and more self-satisfied than the last.
But here’s the thing about the automobile business: it has the attention span of a caffeinated sparrow and the memory of a goldfish with a head injury. Because while everyone was busy climbing up into these rolling observation decks, …
NEW AMERICAN SEDANS
General Motors, a company that now seems to ignore its own legendary past, is reportedly preparing to foist a new Buick sedan into American showrooms, cobbled together on the same architecture destined for the next Cadillac CT5 and whatever form the Camaro reincarnation takes when it rises again in fall 2027, according to online reports. This would be the first Buick sedan here since the Regal was quietly escorted out the back door in 2020, leaving behind a showroom full of crossovers with names that sound like bargain colognes: Enclave, Encore GX, Envision, Envista. All of them are competent and about as emotionally stirring as a bargain dishwasher.
The new sedan will reportedly roll out of GM’s Lansing Grand River plant that’s currently juggling the production of the Cadillac CT4 and CT5, and is the former home of the Camaro, whose production ended with the 2024 model year after a long, slow fade into irrelevance. The CT4, not long for this world either, is expected to exit by June to make room for this latest exercise in brand resuscitation.
Whether this results in a triumphant comeback or just another mildly interesting footnote will depend on whether anyone remembers what Buick is supposed to be.
SEDANS WERE WELL-REGARDED IN THE PAST
The finest Buick sedans ever built didn’t chase Nürburgring fantasies. Instead, it carried itself with a quiet confidence that defined the marque and its well-healed clientele.
Cars like the Riviera, Electra 225 and the Park Avenue weren’t trying to outgun BMW. They delivered an experience so comfortably composed that the outside world felt irrelevant. These were automobiles for people who appreciate long hoods that stretch towards the future, seats that resemble well-worn club chairs, and a Buick V6 or V8 under the hood.
They weren’t about flash. They were about knowing exactly what they were and delivering it with a kind of effortless, dignified authority that’s largely vanished from the modern road and modern society.
SEDAN’S FATE IS DIFFERENT IN CHINA
While Buick walked away from the American sedan with quiet finality six years ago, it’s still very much in the game in China. There, the marque continues to offer four-door sedans like the Electra L7, Regal, Verano Pro, and the latest LaCrosse among them.
Then there are the concept cars like the Electra Orbit that dips heavily into the brand’s midcentury playbook, being low, sleek, and just theatrical enough to remind you that Buick once marketed desire as much as transportation. Whether any of that spirit makes it back into a showroom remains to be seen. But the capability clearly hasn’t vanished.
A DEEP LOVE FOR SEDANS
But there are millions of American car buyers who never stopped thinking that the sedan was the right idea. No, it was abandoned by an industry that got distracted chasing more profitable SUVS, which were bigger. Bigger meant better, higher meant safer, and complexity could be disguised as capability. Sedans required discipline, proportion, unquestionably good looks and refinement, all qualities currently lacking in corporate boardrooms.
Of course, this story came from GM suppliers. So not much is publicly known about what may appear.
Then there are naysayers, who point to the sedan’s 18% 2025 new vehicle market share as proof of its continuing irrelevance.
THE UPSHOT
Yet when a brand like Buick stops offering sedans, it doesn’t just respond to demand. It helps erase it. Loyal customers who might have stayed in the fold are pushed to brands still building four-doors. Over time, the absence of choice trains the market as much as the market trains the automakers. So, while the audience for sedans has undeniably shrunk, it hasn’t evaporated. What’s gone is the critical mass and the corporate patience to keep building them for a smaller, more selective crowd.
And as automakers sketch new sedans and speak in reverent tones about aerodynamics and center of gravity, you can almost hear the ghost of common sense quietly and smugly clearing its throat.
Editor’s note: This is an updated version of a column that first appeared on The Car Collective Substack. To subscribe to The Car Collective, click here.
