This new Buick can shoot down Lexus

Fighter pilots call it "target fixation" when you become so focused on a single adversary that you lose situational awareness and fly into something large and obvious, like the ground.

Buick's 2010 LaCrosse -- a near-luxury, midsize-to-large sedan -- was built to put the cross hairs on a single bogie, the Lexus ES350, and I'll tell you right now, it blows the Lexus out of the sky. Pow. Parachute. Smoking crater.

Oh, you can quibble over one detail or another. The LaCrosse's roof A-pillars are huge and make it hard to look through a corner on a tight, two-lane road (it's also possible to lose sight of pedestrians in crosswalks). There are moments that the cabin, with its Aqua Velva-blue ambient lighting, thick chrome instrument bezels, luminous LCD screens and spread of glowing buttons, looks like the flight deck of some drug-addled dirigible.

But no fair appraisal of this car can conclude anything but that the Buick is as good as or better than the Lexus in every way: It's as dead quiet, as thoughtfully designed, as this-minute in its technology. My top-of-the-line CXS had a 3.6-liter direct-injection V6 under the scalloped hood, a six-speed Aisin automatic transmission, continuously variable suspension damping with Sport mode, Harman/Kardon sound system, touch-screen navigation and adaptive headlights. Out the door at $39,195.

And yet with all of the semiconductor circuitry, servos, gadgets and displays, the LaCrosse feels deeply, foundationally sound. All is hushed and serene. Everything is damped. The whole car feels packed in ermine. It is an American Lexus.

But is that enough? Born in a blizzard of pink slips and a tsunami of tears, the Buick LaCrosse -- the first new car launched by GM since it emerged from bankruptcy -- has to be more than on par with some middling Lexus. It has to be fantastic.

This is a brand in a hole the size of AIG's. Among other things, the average age of a Buick buyer is 68, and the parent company, GM, is feeling the unaccustomed disdain of Red State America on account of the Obama administration's $83.5 billion auto-industry bailout -- those who say, "I'll never buy a GM car until the government gets out of the car business."

Is the LaCrosse enough of a car for them to hold their noses past the stink of bankruptcy and the reek of government ownership? It's a pretty great car, but honestly, I think the LaCrosse would have to come equipped with naked wood nymphs to placate these dissidents.

The particulars

Time for some shopkeeping: The base LaCrosse ($27,835, delivered) is powered by a 3.0-liter direct-injection V6 good for 255 horsepower. The up-level trim package is the CXL ($30,395). Add all-wheel drive (with brake-based limited-slip differential) and the price goes to $32,600. The top-shelf model is the CXS ($33,765), with a 3.6-liter V6 putting out 280 hp. The Touring Package adds 19-inch wheels and variable-damping suspension and Sport mode, with electronics that put a sharper edge on the transmission, steering, throttle and suspension responses.

Some people have wondered why GM kept the Buick division and shed Saturn, which has the freshest and most fuel-efficient product lineup. The answer: China. Buick is a prestigious luxury brand there, and in fact, the new LaCrosse was a joint effort between GM's American and Chinese design studios. The Chinese contingent was responsible for the LaCrosse's insanely fussed-over interior. Example: The dash material is synthetic leather, but it's French-stitched with real thread.

No corners are gracelessly cut here -- no ugly cover plates, no exposed fastener buttons and the barest minimum of seams. The whole transverse sweep of the cabin, the two-tone materials bisected by a lyric bow of ambient lighting and wood grain that plays into the doors, looks great, especially at night.

Style aside, the biggest marker of Chinese influence is the car's enormous back seat. According to GM, about 25 percent of Chinese buyers will be chauffeured. If legroom is high on cross-shoppers' lists, the LaCrosse will score a clean kill.

Complaints? I had a few. The exterior styling is really strong -- masculine, well planted, with a lovely roof arch -- in every direction but the front. I can't quite fathom the headlight design, which looks like Dame Edna's spectacles, and the odd chamfering of the hood, a design detail that doesn't seem to go anywhere.

And the car is about 250 pounds heavier than it ought to be, a fact that robs the LaCrosse of some much-needed verve and agility.

Still, the LaCrosse is the car many thought couldn't be built by Buick. It's actually desirable.