While the showrooms featured tired LeSabres and Regals, auto shows featured exotic swoopy concepts such as the Signia, Cielo, Centieme, and Velite.
Now Buick has come forth with a new concept car which hearkens back to a very familiar name: the Riviera. First produced in 1963, and continuing through 1999, the Riviera was a personal luxury coupe designed to compete with the Ford Thunderbird. In recent years, coupes have fallen out of favor with the buying public, so that spelled the demise of the Riviera.
GM's Pan Asia Technical Center has designed a new Buick concept car with the Riviera name that will be unveiled at the upcoming Shanghai Auto Show. (Buick is one of the big Western brands in the Chinese auto market, as compared with its smaller percentage of the North American auto industry.) The good news is that the Shanghai show is just the first auto show at which the new Riviera concept will be appearing; it will also make its way to other auto shows around the world, so there's a chance that it may make it to North American shows next year.
Our take? It will be interesting to see audience reaction to a new Riviera concept--will the public be so taken with the design that GM might actually produce it, and revive a historic nameplate in the process? We'll have to wait until next year (if they indeed show it here) to find out.
Via Autoblog