To all of you who replied, you have my most sincere gratitude. Another car is not needed, at this time, but when the time comes, I’ll test drive a Buick, or two. I’ll keep my mind open, and not put them off because of the transmission. And, by that time, most Buicks on the used car lot will be Opels in disguise. I loved Opel’s Manta, but not the Isuzu-based Opel, it was boring.
I have been driving on the road since 1957. I used to prefer a vehicle with manual transmission, no power steering or brakes and minimal other equipment. I owned cars without back-up lights or windshield washers. Those features were options back in the day. In fact, my first car, a 1947 Pontiac, didn’t come equipped with turning signals.
Today I like having antilock brakes, traction control, and the tire pressure monitor. If I have a tire that starts losing pressure, I get a warning. I do check my tires every other week, and I have an electric air pump to inflate the tires, but I like the safety of the tire pressure monitor while I am on the road.
I didn’t think I wanted power sliding doors on a minivan, but the 2011 Sienna I bought off the lot came equipped with this feature. Since I often have older passengers with me, it’s great to be able to open the doors for them.
One feature that I would like is a full set of gauges. An oil pressure gauge and a voltmeter or ammeter, when monitored, give an indication of potential problems. I remember when I was a kid and my family was on a vacation, I noticed that the ammeter gauge in the 1949 Dodge my parents owned was reading at the top of the scale. The next morning, the car wouldn’t start. The battery had a shorted cell even though it was only a year old. A warning light would not have indicated a high charge condition. Another time in the same car, I noticed the oil pressure gauge fluctuating while we were on a trip. I pointed it out to my dad who immediately pulled into a service station. The engine was 2 quarts low on oil even though it had been full when we started the trip. A low oil pressure light wouldn’t have come on until the pressure dropped to under 10 psi.
As I said, I owned cars with few features. I did add aftermarket backup lights and windshield washers to cars. One car I owned didn’t have interior lights that came on when the doors opened. The car was a stripped down model. I didn’t see it as a problem, but I was single at the time. When I got married, my wife didn’t like not having the dome light come on when the doors were opened. For her, having the interior illuminated when door was opened, particularly at night, was a safety feature.
Me too… but I’d bet they’d all be faux gages computer-generated and hidden in some sublevel menu somewhere. Frankly, as much as I like my tC, the gages that do exist are extremely difficult to read, impossible under many lighting conditions. I’d like to talk to the idiot that put black numbers on a silver gage face. Didn’t anybody teach this kid about contrast? 
Oddly, my Corolla of the same year had great gages. Not all the gages I’d like, but the ones they had were very easy to read under all lighting conditions.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
In case you weren’t aware of it, GM sold all of their money-losing European operations–including Opel–to Peugeot a couple of years ago. Because GM has no business relationship with Peugeot, I wouldn’t automatically assume that some Buick models will continue to be Opel designs.
They are far more likely to be designed and possibly built in China or South Korea. The Envision SUV is assembled in China and GM has a large design studio in South Korea.
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Exactly. Hell, the nav screen on my 10 year old, 120,000 mile Acura is still working fine. When I was a kid and my dad’s Corolla turned 100,000 miles, the neighbors came out to stare because none of them had ever managed to get a car to last that long.
I’ll take modern more-can-go-wrong reliability over the old it’s-a-good-thing-there-isn’t-more-to-go-wrong-because-everything-already-broke cars any day. 
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The last Buick I drove was in the late 90’s. We got wiped out on I-35 Low in Austin, and rented a Buick V-8 Le Sabre to drive to the Snow zone. Great car, and got over 30 mpg at Interstate speeds.
1985 was the last year for the V-8 LeSabre sedan, 1989 for the V-8 station wagon. In the 1990’s they were all front wheel drive cars.
I stand corrected. I found a review of a 1997 Le Sabre and it said it had a V-6. Strange that I remembered it as a V-8. Thanks.
The review also rated it at 30 mph highway.
That gas mileage was real, too. I had a 1998 Regal and my father in law had a similar vintage LeSabre. Both routinely got 30 mpg on highway trips.
Until very recently my wife drove a 2008 Ford Ranger 4x4. Clutch, no electric anything “because it just breaks” and no carpet - just vinyl flooring. She knew exactly what she wanted, and would brook no debate. This is a woman who only used the AM side of the radio.
This year our other truck, a Mazda B3000 - that inexplicably was more problem-prone than the Ranger of the same year - gave up the ghost and was due to be traded in. We had no reason to have two trucks, so went shopping for a small car.
What caught her imagination was a Fiat 500. The Turbo, not the gutless normally aspirated version. Red, lovely Italian red, of course. She tried the manual transmission, then the automatic, and quickly realized that the slush-box was way more fun to drive. Needless to say nothing on the Fiat lot was available without power windows, power sunroof, “premium” audio, and all of the other bells and whistles. Carpet was the only option.
Two weeks later she was singing the praises of automatic transmissions, had fallen in love with the bluetooth phone system, and had read the manual front to back and had mastered every button in the car.
I knew she had gone over to the Dark Side when last week she borrowed the Ranger back from me and wound up calling me in another city to inform me that the truck just refused to start. She got real quiet when I reminded her that she had to depress the clutch before it would do anything.
Long story short, don’t rule out an automatic - you might find that you like it.
I have a 2005 Lesabre that gets mid 20’s on my daily commute. About half highway, half interstate at 75-80 mph. It will approach 30 mpg on a highway trip. I was pleasantly surprised that it gets similar mileage as my wife’s 4 cylinder 1999 Camry used to get. The best I remember the Camry getting on a long highway trip was 32 mpg.
“Stop talking and test drive”, a lot has changed in 10yrs.
Take a look at the Mazda 3 - it’s responsive, nimble, its 6sp. MT is satisfying and the 6sp. conventional AT is right up there. The loaded version also has some of the best driver assist features, including a selection of steering wheel rumble or two different sounds (with three volume levels) as lane departure warnings. There also are a number of other good cars available - they just might convince you to ditch the Vibe and get something fun to drive.
Modern AT’s frequently post better numbers but are worse in real world practice, especially if one drives for economy. As an example, our 06 Civic MT gets comparable hwy mileage and far better city mileage than the 06 AT version that a number of friend and co-workers own. All that heat that the transmission cooler dumps into the radiator comes from somewhere.
Point well taken - we taught our kids on MT partly for this reason, but they liked and bought them for their own and on long trips with friends often can’t get relief because the others don’t know how. We keep one AT in our stable.
I got carried away and said something that may have offended your Vibe. When shopping in 2006 we almost bought a Vibe/Matrix, would have had we been able to get the features we wanted, and several coworkers with Matrix/Vibes love them.
Having test driven a number of cars in the past month (wife wants all the modern driver assist features) I feel that, driver assist and communications features aside, there’s not a lot of improvement - slightly better mileage, better ATs, quality improvements in some brands, etc. - but maybe not enough to justify a change unless yours is run out or you just want something different. There are some good electrics now and more hybrid choices than in 2006, maybe you’d like a Tesla.
That’s the kind of customer every mechanic likes 
Spares a lot of unnecessary phone calls and trips to the shop 