A Question and More Points

Edited on 1/3/2013 to correct numbers.

Question posted by mike12verano on BuickForums.com, "could you give a few details? state of your car when you traded? miles etc. how much did you get on your trade. How much was the turbo? if you do not mind."

Without going into too much detail about my financial situation...

MSRP on the '13 Premium was $33,200. Due to the rarity of fully-equipped Premium's in this area right now, the dealer also had $2,125 ADM tacked on for a total of $35,325. This claimed to include paint sealer and all-weather mats, a bit of a joke.

I got my fully-equipped '12 Leather for $28,800.  I had it for 7 months (the first month which didn't include a payment) and only got $21,000 on trade.  My monthly payments were NOT $1,000 - you do the math, I carried some negative equity.

After all was said and done I got the '13 Premium for $31,000 -- this included a $500 Credit Union discount.  They also provided me an over-allowance on my base trade-in value to bring me within LTV lending guidelines for my financier (due to negative equity).

In the end, my monthly payments only went up $29 and of course renewed my finance term. No big deal.  All the additional features are more than worth $29/month to me.

This particular time I went with a Purchase deal and not a Lease. I am a huge fan of Leases and in a lot of cases they are more cost-effective than a Purchase, but when I ran the numbers this time the Lease was actually about $850 more costly over the same term and also would have required money down, whereas the Purchase order this time required $0 out of pocket.

---

Few more things I've noticed:

• SRC button now longer takes you direct to Now Playing from wherever you are, this kind of annoys me. You now have to hit HOME then click Now Playing to get back to that. SRC actually *immediately* switches to the next source (AM/FM/XM, etc.) versus before I could swear it would first pop-up the menu, then switch.
• Maybe this is an Intellilink feature and not "new", but to me it is "new" because Intellilink wasn't available with Navigation last year. You can dial contacts from your phonebook *without* having to enter them into the car first. It will do intelligent matching based on your voice commands.
• This may also not be "new" (see above), but it is new to me. You can say, "Verbose Off" as a command and it will turn off the robot-lady's long-winded explanation of things when you're doing voice commands and will drop you straight into the *beep* to indicate it is time to talk.
• I reset my Average MPG counter and did some city driving yesterday, ended up at 18.3MPG. Not terrible for City (my Infiniti got 14ish), but a tad less than the advertised 20. Then again, this was me flooring it all the time.  Highway MPG's remains 25+ and since that constitutes roughly 70-80 percent of my driving, this is fine by me!

2013 Verano Turbo Suspension

Per a variety of sources, but mainly http://gmauthority.com - the 2013 Verano Turbo's suspension is 20% stiffer.

Yes, this does change the ride in comparison to other Veranos, but to me it is a worthwhile change.  It isn't really all that substantial and the car just "feels" a lot more connected and stable.

Day 3 - A couple more pictures

Handle: http://i.imgur.com/5oyYd.jpg

Rear-end with wing and dual-exhaust and turbo emblem: http://i.imgur.com/rOHgG.jpg

Day 2 with the new 2013 Verano Turbo

Here are some pictures of XM background which I found cool (maybe the '12 Intellilink had this, but I don't know).  As well as the wireless bluetooth pulling album art and the new separately-colored ignition button.

• https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6fak96fdrojd2x/WP_20121230_002.jpg
• https://www.dropbox.com/s/g73mr12qeklnhk4/WP_20121230_003.jpg
• https://www.dropbox.com/s/5i3ivpypu65ajol/WP_20121230_004.jpg
• https://www.dropbox.com/s/5dhe4rsogh1qolv/WP_20121230_005.jpg

Some other things I've noticed both good/neutral/bad:

• Tone is no longer a dash button, but is a shortcut on the Home panel.  At first I thought, "Oh, nice, they finally centralized it".  But no, Bluetooth/FM/XM all still have separate Tone profiles, so placing that shortcut on Home is actually kind of unintuitive.
• My bluetooth driver must suck on my rooted/customized Android phone, because sometimes it either 1) stops playing, 2) disconnects, 3) gets my phone stuck in a state where the screen won't go off, or 4) forgets it's playing music and doesn't power the subs for bass.
• I am going to transfer my music over to my Lumia 920 Windows phone and try again tomorrow (I may also try the USB approach, I noticed when I plug my phone in by USB it tries to scan for music under the guise of "Windows Vista" capable phone, so maybe this would work too).
• Worst case scenario, I go back to AUX, no big deal, except I liked the album art and being able to seek tracks with the steering wheel.
• The navigation is superb, maybe it is just updated for my area, but for most of where I went today it not only showed me arrows, but showed me actual lane depictions when approaching intersections (like highway exit depictions, only more detailed).  I would love to get a picture of this for you, but kind of dangerous to do while driving so this will have to wait until I have a passenger.  A lot of this helped me prepare better for turns because I could better anticipate where to be lane-wise.  Don't kill me, but I never used the nav voice on my '12, in fact, it was the first thing I turned off.  I used it today on the '13 and I was surprised that it told me what lane to "bear" in to in preparation for the next turn, super handy (can't comment on whether the '12 did that or not, of course).
• One downside to the nav I noticed...in the '12 I could turn off the Voice Prompts in Config and with nav running my music would play just fine.  In the '13, with Voice Prompts off, it still quiets the music/makes it click when a voice prompt would have occurred.  This isn't a *huge* deal because my Infiniti's both did this as well, but I was really excited when my '12 *didn't* and was sad to see this disappear.  OTOH, this could be another oddity with my bluetooth issues, so I will report back after trying AUX, USB, and/or bluetooth with my other phone in the next day or two.
• I was expecting a significant drop in MPG's with this Turbo model.  My '12 averaged 24-26.  I drove a bit over 80 city/highway miles today (sometimes a little more aggressively because I was enjoying the turbo), and I am seeing an average of 25.2mpg right now.  This makes me pretty happy (if you'll remember, I was getting 18.7 - 19.2 on my Infiniti, so I see 25.2 as a welcome improvement).
• I think the engine is quieter when sitting idle.  It could be because it is the 2.0L turbo, though, and this isn't really a big deal because inside the car you don't hear it.  I only ever noticed when remote starting.
• Blind spot monitor actually saved me during a lane change today, I just did not see a motorcyclist, even after checking my blind-spot manually.  But the light was on, and even though my instinct was to trust my own eyes versus technology, I said screw it and stayed in my lane.  1-2 seconds later, the motorcycle zoomed into view.  That could have been bad.  If I never use the blind spot monitor ever again, ever, that one incident still made it totally worth it.
• There were a couple of complaints about the bass being too high in the '12, even when turned down, and even with the volume down.  I'd say it is much more even in the '13, and listening to the same songs as before I actually felt like something was missing.  In turn, I cranked up the bass under Tone, to each their own, but I thought some would be happy to know that has been smoothed out.  Now let's hope that rear speaker cover doesn't come lose and vibrate on this model too :P

I need to remember to check if that "running over an aluminum can" sound still happens at ~13mph. *mental note*

Traded 2012 Verano Leather for 2013 Verano Premium

I just traded my 2012 Verano Leather with nav, split multi-spoke wheels, and sunroof for a 2013 Verano Premium with nav, intellilink, all-weathers, cargo net, sunroof, and split multi-spoke wheels. Both automatic. Both diamond white tricoat.

Yup, I liked my Verano *that* much.

It was this or a Cadillac ATS. I chose this, because I would have had to pay over $50k for an ATS + more to re-do the exhaust, wheels/tires, and custom work to insulate it for road noise. With the Buick I get a personally preferred exhaust/wheels/tires right out of the box + most ATS features, for a MUCH lower price tag.

Notable additions that drove my decision, with comments:

Intellilink available with Nav
--I love being able to wirelessly play music without an aux cable.
--It pulls album art/song name and displays on-screen!
--Pandora!
--Movie showtimes (I don't know yet if this is using my phone or using OnStar).
--NOTE: The navigation is no longer loaded from an SD Card in the center console. I don't know what this means in terms of upgrades or upgrade cost. OTOH, the navigation experience loads a lot faster now, which is nice. Or maybe the SD Card slot is somewhere else on the car now? If so, I haven't found it.

Refined UI
--The UI seems...clearer. The font is nicer.
--The nav looks much more detailed.
--Options are a little better organized, only slightly so.
--Overall it seems a lot more responsive.

Turbo and performance
--I always missed the power of my V6 Infiniti G37x. Now I essentially have it, with better MPG.
--The transmission seems more refined from 2012, it seems to shift more like when I would shift it as a Manual.
--The suspension is tighter, but not uncomfortably so, turns just seem less "floaty". I sense less body roll and I don't bottom out as easily going in and out of steep driveways.
--Steering is more responsive and I like the extra degree that I feel connected to the car. It is just enough sport edge, while maintaining the luxury-journey feel.
--The brakes seem a little nicer as well, I don't know for a fact if they are, and maybe its just the mechanisms behind the now chrome sport pedals, but they seem tighter.

Dual-exhaust
--Last summer I was going to shell out $1,000 for custom work to give my '12 Verano Leather a dual-exhaust appearance. Now I don't have to.
--It has a much more guttural exhaust note/tone now, I like it.
--It seems to have *less* exhaust "smoke" on a cold start-up, maybe its placebo. But pulling UP and out of my driveway on cold mornings I would actually have to stop periodically and let the smoke or whatever it is clear. Maybe it is just because there are two pipes and it dissipates faster.

Blind spot, cross traffic, back-up camera monitoring
--I missed the back-up camera from my Infiniti's, this is much appreciated because I suck at parallel parking and I have a long driveway that I back out of.
--I've never owned a car with Blind Spot alert, it is actually really nice. I drive on the freeway a lot each day and do a lot of lane-changes just to get where I'm going and this extra level of protection is nice.
--I've never owned a car with cross traffic alerts. At the end of my driveway, though, this should be helpful "just in case". Better safer than sorry.

Smart key
--The smart-key system is better on this. The 2012 didn't always recognize touches, it was also a white square that stood out from the door handles. It also had a bad delay. This new one fixes all that by using a chrome-color-matched button that not only has the benefit of tactile feedback, but also seems to respond instantaneously.

Misc.
--Rear-spoiler is a nice addition.
--The start button is now a silver color to give it contrast from the dash. This is actually a welcome addition, when valets or friends would drive my car, it took them FOREVER to find the start button.
--Glove box top shelf is now removable, but as such, also doesn't seem to stay put as well. Also, it doesn't hold pens the same way and for the particular pen I was keeping there, it doesn't exactly fit. Not a big deal, but again, thought I'd mention it.
--Still "Buick-quiet". As much more connected to the road as this feels, the cabin is still nice and quiet. I commute A LOT and this is a necessity for me.
--The horn sounds different...maybe its just me? It sounds more succinct.
--They gave me all-weather floor mats to go with my carpeted ones. Much appreciated, especially here in the pacific NW.
--Where the heck did my Tone button go?? Probably buried somewhere in options.
--My Verano Leather had a weird issue where lowest brightness would make the dashboard lights flicker. Seems fixed on this.
--The turn signal is a little easier to flip.
--Same split multi-spoke 18's. These are hands-down one of the best looking factory wheels on a car I've ever seen. I really like them. It's these: http://i.imgur.com/rXItb.jpg

Things I wish I still, but aren't a huge deal
--Color-keyed trunk button...on/near the trunk itself
--Lumbar seat adjustment
--Front parking sensors (I will probably add these myself aftermarket in the future)

---

All the benefits below and after trade-in and a variety of other discounts, I am only paying $29 more a month.

Totally. Worth. It

Remote Start - Love It

I know a lot of cars these days have this remote start feature on their premium models.  But this is the first car I have owned with it (neither of my Infiniti's had it).

I love it.  It was ~100 degrees today and I knew my car would be a scorcher, so while I was finishing getting ready to leave (putting on clothes/feeding the cat), I started it from my house.

By the time I got out to my car and in it, it was icy cool inside. Yay!

Furthermore, I was at the store and my friend wanted to wait in the car, despite the 100 degree heat and a warning, he insisted. Well, about 5 minutes later I got a text saying, "omg its hot". I remote started the car for fun (from inside the store!) and shortly after got another text, "ty" (thank you).

Just like to say that for future vehicle purchases, I just might have to make this a hot button feature to shop for.  I love it!

Blown rear sub :(

I have never turned the volume past 20 (which is still I think less than half of the total max volume).  I generally keep it on 12.

Just passed 5000 miles and it appears my left rear sub-woofer (up near the rear window) is blown.  Unless the song I'm listening to has very little bass or I turn the bass way down via Tune - it makes terrible vibration/buzz/rattle noises.

At first I thought it was just loose and bouncing around, but accessing it from the trunk proves that it is mounted quite solidly in there so it must be blown.

Sad day. :(