Tell ya what...make me an offer on my "prestigous" '02 Rendevous that's a piece of crap and I may decide not to just let it roll into Lake Erie.

 

Prestigious cars are often less reliable than mundane ones. All those extra "options" and particularly the early adoption of same.

 

Since then, GM has had to continue discounting and dump thousands of HHRs into rental fleets, which eroded the margin on the car, and badly watered down its cachet.

I bought ours after renting one on a bidness trip. Even then it was an accidental upgrade, they were out of subcompacts.

Barely drove it 50 miles but totally fell in love.

 

Well, Doc, we had an '04 Rainier and loved a lot about it. Great engine, AWD that never gave us a problem, more acutriments than I could effectively use, and more. We did have a few things replaced under warranty, so all was not quite happy . THe Nav system, the seat heater ( Twice ), a gascap ( would not hold pressure ). I also found the nose a bit loose on all Rainiers I tried as well as the envoyys. I guss they just make them to break away.
I never looked at the Rendezvous since it was too small for us and I did not like the style.

All in all, I've had a number of Buicks and my favorite was my '62 Skylark with the 215 aluminum V8. The newer ones seem to have little systems that give out and have not enough prestige to keep any real resale value. We just traded our Rainier for a Honda Odyssey ( Wanted a GM minivan, but they are canceling the line, so I did not feel good about that and they are two gens behind in important features like seats going into the floor ). We lost a TON of money on the Rainier, good thing we did not pay sticker. It stickered at 45K and 2.5 years later we got 13K in trade.
I'd love an Enclave, but would never pay real money for one. Heck we even got a reasonable discount on the new Honda.

All that said, our '06 2LT is quite a bargain, but currently only worth paying off. No sense trading it or selling it since domestics have such poor resale value. It is all our fault for that too. Decent cars should hold their value no matter their origin.

 

I was looking to purchase a daily driver to keep the miles low on my SSR. I was in Orlando and needed to rent a vehicle with some extra space to carry equipment. They offered up and HHR and that was it for me. Picked up my '08 about two weeks ago and am having a great time driving it and selecting mods I can use to personalize it. Not unhappy to get to use regular gas with good mileage either. This is going to be fun and if the value doesn't hold, so what, I will drive it until one of us drops!

 

I don't know if they were dumped or not but when we were in Hawaii last year most of the cars being rented were HHRs and Mustangs. Does that mean that popular rental cars are dumped into fleets or that rental companies buy what they think renters are going to want, I find it hard to believe that Ford was dumping Mustangs. When the Trailblazer that we had reseverved wasn't available and we were offered an HHR I jumped at the chance to drive one and when we got home I bought one. Could it be that journalist write what they think will sell.