Regal TourX: Buick station wagon turns heads for all the right reasons

If you were wondering about that Buick station wagon you may have seen the other day, it really has been more than 20 years since you saw the last one, the huge Roadmaster was an iconic wagon that held on much longer than most station wagons.

The U.S. car buyer that fell in love with the family-hauling station wagons after World War II, slowly abandoned the segment choice as the rise of the minivan and SUV flooded the landscape.

Twist of Fate

The thing was, while American car buyers shunned the wagons, the rest of the world still loved them – and built them with great popularity. In Europe, many buyers regard a station wagon as a step up from a traditional sedan.

In the U.S., Subaru took its Legacy wagon up a few notches by adding better ground clearance and calling it a crossover SUV. It created another category and Subaru benefitted from the transition. Currently, the only automakers that still offers wagons are Sweden’s Volvo, Audi’s allroad and Jaguar.

Introducing TourX

Buick Regal TourX follows in the tracks of the Regal Sportback, a four-door hatchback with fastback styling that resembles the Audi A5 and A7. The trend in globalizing vehicles is a financial necessity and the Regal TourX is no exception. Based on the Opel Insignia, it’s built in Germany with a U.S. engine and a Japanese transmission. Only about a quarter of its components come from the U.S. and Canada.

The Regal TourX offers significantly streamlined styling with a rear that pushes out to 16.5 feet long. At 3,745 pounds, the TourX is a middle-weight boxer that sits somewhere between the family hauler’s biggest and smallest.

Offering 33 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seatbacks, which expands to 74 cubic feet if you fold the seatbacks down, the TourX can handle a much of what a minivan or SUV can handle.

Tour X is offered with standard AWD, though TourX is definitiely not an off-roader.

Power

Look for a capable 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine at the center of the TourX power profile. Offering 250 horsepower with 295 lb.-ft. of torque, delivered to all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic transmission with a manual-shift mode, the TourX looks and feels capable in any weather situation.

The city/highway/combined fuel consumption is 21/29/24 miles to the gallon.

With a base price of $36,015 for the upscale Essence package, the TourX can be had with all the bells and whistles, including adaptive cruise control, forward pedestrian alert, automatic braking and collision alert, rear cross-traffic alert and park assist, blind-spot warning, premium audio, HD radio, and navigation and infotainment systems.

This auto review was researched and written by SteinPro Content Services and provided to the Sun-Times for publication