2003 Buick Centieme concept
by Gary S. Vasilash

So what do you do when you’re 100 years old and there is a not-so-happy sense that many of your customers may be somewhere in that category? Well, what Buick has done is to create a vehicle that is contemporary yet which raises the ante, thereby qualifying as one of those concepts that is potentially real.

The Centieme is a crossover vehicle. Gary Mack, the exterior designer for the concept (which, incidentally, was made by Bertone), says that a goal was to go further than the Buick Rendezvous (a vehicle, incidentally, which has brought a lot of non-Buick owners into the showroom). While the Rendezvous is visually SUV-like, the Centieme is more station-wagon like (think of the Nissan Murano, for example).

From the front, the Centieme is all Buick, with the oval shapes in command, both on the grille as well as at the rear of the vehicle, with twin oval-shaped exhausts in an oval-shaped surround in the rear fascia. The four-door with a hatch has its 22-inch wheels pushed out to the corners. A 400-hp, twin-turbocharged V6 propels those wheels; as it employs the Hydra-Matic 4T65-E transmission and the Versatrak system, all of those wheels can be powered (as this is an on-demand AWD system).

On the inside there are three rows of seats that are arranged in pairs. The third row folds flat, with a power folding mechanism, thereby providing extra cargo room. One imagines that the cargo would be fairly dear, as there is an extensive use of leather on the interior surfaces – not just on the seating, but there is actually a woven leather floor. One of the reasons behind the use of the pairs of seats is because there are center consoles for both the front and middle seats that go for and aft on a track system. On the back hatch, the three-crest Buick logo is more than an appliqué; it actually serves as the backup light for the vehicle.

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