The IT Nerd

The technology in the Buick Regal Turbo is very interesting and some of it is unique. Let me start with driving the Regal. You get a proximity key with push button start. Thus all you have to do is press a button on the door handle. Press it and the car will unlock. One thing to note is all the door handles have buttons. That way nobody has to wait for the driver to unlock the car. That’s a nice touch. When you get in the Regal, the seat slides forward to the last position that it was set to. Hit the start/stop button and drive away. When you’ve reached your destination, press the start/stop button to turn off the car. Then get out of the car. The seat will slide back to give you room once you open the door. Though I will note that the person behind you will have almost no legroom once that happens. Thus you should wait until they are out of the car before opening the door. You then close the door and walk away. You’ll hear a honk to tell you that the car has locked itself. At no time do need to pull out the key fob to do any of this. But the key fob does have the ability to lock and unlock the doors as well as pop the trunk, plus it has the ever useful panic button. As an added bonus, it has a backup key should you need it.

Now over to the safety systems:

• The Regal has Forward Collision Alert technology which helps to prevent frontal crashes by sensing when you are approaching a vehicle in front of you too quickly and alerts you with both an audible and visual warning.
• You also get Adaptive Cruise Control which senses vehicles in front of you and continually and seamlessly adjusts speed to maintain your preferred following distance. I must admit that I loved this when I was on long highway drives.
• Besides having a backup camera (which is exposed to the elements by the way) you get Rear Cross Traffic Alert technology which uses radar to detect vehicles or even people in some cases approaching the Regal when you’re backing up and alerts you when one comes within 20 metres of either side of the Regal. I really like how Buick has implemented this as it alerts you with a red exclamation mark on the side that the object is approaching from. Plus it has sensors that are used to help you to avoid objects while reversing, such as a parked car that is behind you.
• You also get Side Blind Zone Alert which issues a visual warning when a vehicle coming alongside enters your blind zone. And when you’re changing lanes, Lane Change Alert uses radar to watch for and warn you of vehicles approaching quickly from behind.
• The Regal warns you when you’re leaving your lane with audible beeps on the side of the car that is drifting out of the lane.

That brings us to the infotainment system. Called Buick IntelliLink, this system has a number of things going for it starting with the 8″ touchscreen that was clear and easy to read in any lighting situation. Other highlights include:

• The user interface is clear and easy to pick up, plus it has redundant buttons below it for things like radio and media.
• Paring my iPhone 6 via Bluetooth was a trivial process that didn’t require opening the manual.
• The fact that I have an iPhone 6 was handy because I got to leverage a feature called Siri Eyes Free. This allowed me to use Siri to read and reply to text messages, start and stop music, choose playlists, or anything else I wanted to do.
• Audio was great thanks to the 9 speaker Bose system. Audiophiles will love being in the Regal.
• One really nice touch is that when you make a phone call, the HVAC system drops the speed of the fans so that you can hear the other person. The second that the call is over, it returns the HVAC system to normal. I love that! 

One note that I have to make is that I tried to plug in my iPhone 6 into the supplied USB ports and other than charging the phone, it did not load my music into IntelliLink. I then tried my wife’s iPhone 6 and got the same result. From there, I tried my iPhone 5s and a Samsung Galaxy S3 and got the same result. That’s when I reached out to Buick USA tech support via a chat service that they have on their website and they suggested trying different cables as well as taking a thumb drive formatted using he FAT32 filesystem with a few songs on it to test the USB ports. Neither worked. Thus I have to conclude that the ports were defective, this is expected behavior, or I am doing something wrong. I have reached out to GM Canada for feedback, and if I get something back, I will update this post.

One really unique feature is that the Regal came with OnStar 4G LTE WiFi. This feature allows you to use your car as a WiFi hotspot for up to seven devices. I only got up to four in my testing but I had zero complaints. I was able to connect easily and the speed was pretty good. I should also mention the RemoteLink app that allows you to unlock the car and get status updates about the health of the car from the smartphone. Plus you get all the usual features of OnStar including:

• Remote diagnostics
• Navigation
• emergency help including automatic crash response
• Security in the form of tracking your car if it is stolen and helping law enforcement get the bad guys who took it.

I’ve written a bit more in depth article on OnStar 4G LTE here that you might want to read if you want to know what this system is capable of and what it will cost. But if you have a family, you might want to consider getting it as it will keep the occupants of the Regal happy during long drives.

In the final part of my review of the Buick Regal Turbo, I’ll tie up some loose ends and give you my verdict. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on April 16, 2015 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Products with tags GM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.