2010 Buick Lacrosse - Review

By Nelson Ireson

Nelson Ireson

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Nelson is an Editor at High Gear Media focusing on reviewing cars and covering the hottest topics in luxury and performance cars, car culture, and... More

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Buick LaCrosse four-cylinder drive

Fuel efficiency or power? Does it have to be an either-or proposition? At some point, it definitely does, but when it comes down to it, many, if not most, modern cars are overpowered for their daily use. Proof: the 2010 Buick LaCrosse four-cylinder. It gets by just fine with 182 horsepower from its 2.4-liter direct-injected four-banger, and it does it with a highway rating of 30 mpg.

If you read our first drive review of the 2010 LaCrosse back when it came out last summer, you know that the car itself, which is essentially unchanged for the four-cylinder version, is a solid, well-built, roomy and attractive vehicle. Not everyone will love it, but then that's the sort of reaction a more dramatic exterior styling evokes. And that's something most Buicks have lacked, since, oh, about 1958.

Disclaimer: Buick flew us out to Washington, D.C. and put us up for a night before a whirlwind one-day program behind the wheel of the new four-cylinder and HiPerStrut versions of the LaCrosse.

Going Green, But At A Price? Not so much.

Packaging all of that value with a more efficient four-cylinder engine sounds like the best of both worlds, right? Save the earth, meet the CAFE regs and deliver a great mid-luxury car, too. On the whole, yes. The new four-cylinder replaces the 3.0-liter V-6 of the current LaCrosse for the 2011 model year, coming up 73 horsepower short of the smallish V-6, but with just 45 fewer pound-feet of torque.

It's not all sunshine and green hills for the four-cylinder LaCrosse. Rated at 19 mpg city/30 mpg highway, the LaCrosse exhibits the usual real-world variation from those marks. While we observed mpg ratings in the high 20s up to the mid 30s cruising at constant rates along rolling two-lane blacktop, when we slowed things down and began the start-stop of more traffic-heavy driving, the efficiency began to slip--occasionally below 20 mpg. That's not excellent for a large midsize sedan, especially not a four-cylinder. It turns out physics is still at play here, and hauling that much weight around has a minimum fuel cost, no matter the engine. The LaCrosse is still on par with or ahead of the competitive cars from Toyota, Honda, and Nissan.