This is a car that I used to really hate on. I even did a QOTD, Which Car Would You Most Hate To Be Forced To Drive For A Year?, and my pick was the poor Rendezvous. It was the combination of its dorky minivan-SUV-wanna’ be looks and the resultant demographic that invariably drove them that instigated such loathing.
But they’re getting thin on the ground, and when I saw one the other day in traffic, I felt myself smile a bit, like seeing an old grade school “enemy”. And when I saw this terrific shot of one against a massive brick wall, shot by JC, I decided it deserved a moment here at CC. But if you still hate on it, that’s ok too.
While I may not place this Buick at the top of a “Most Hate to Drive” list, it certainly is a candidate.
My career involved a lot of air travel, so I was a very frequent car renter. I never specified a car beyond a generic “mid-size,” but pretty much always was upgraded due to user status.
Over a period of about 25 years, a Rendezvous held a rare distinction… other than a Monte Carlo that reeked of pot, it was the only car that I immediately returned before even getting out of the parking structure. A few turns toward the exit, the steering feel, bad sight lines while maneuvering… I did an about-face and asked for something else.
The Rendezvous was a bit misshapen, but the general consensus at the time was that at least it wasn’t as hideous as its platform-mate Pontiac Aztek, making the ‘Vous look good by comparison. The Buick also offered a third-row seat and was thus more practical. I don’t find it significantly dorkier than many other CUVs, and there are so many dorky-looking ones being made now that the Aztek and Rendezvous are getting some credit for being ahead of their time.
“At least it’s not as bad as an Aztek” is not exactly a resounding endorsement.
I remember when GM got Tiger Woods, back when he was at his peak, to hawk these. I wonder how many were influenced to buy one based on that, alone.
Likewise, I’m sure it cost GM a truckload of money to get Tiger Woods as their Rendezvous pitchman, too.
By contrast, Genesis got a major unplanned boost almost for free when Tiger Woods survived a gruesome-looking rollover crash almost unscathed in a Genesis GV80; sales leapt after that incident ( https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a35825258/genesis-brand-sales-breakt-hrough ). Woods was lent that car for the Genesis Invitational last year, and that has probably helped boost Genesis’ name recognition more than any of their advertising.
Oh, and the GV80 looks way better than the Rendezvous did.
At least the Aztek was ugly and interesting though. It had the novelty add-on tent. Even then I preferred the Aztek over the Rendezvous. These are not thin enough on the ground yet for fond feelings from me.
At the time, it was an unwritten rule that my employer’s management drove GM, as the company was started by a GM engineer and they were initially a big customer. The president drove a swoopy Aurora, but another executive drove a gold/brown rendezvous just like this. I hated the back of it, how tall and SUV like the back was but you could see the rear subframe and silver control arms down by the ground. Like it was wearing a too short skirt and you really didn’t want to see all that.
Agree. That back end looked terrible. I test drove one and almost left it on the side of the road and call a taxi back to the dealership. I felt like my Nana driving it.
To be fair to Buick, a lot of SUVs and crossovers show off their rear suspension to the public. It’s easy to see which brands spent the money in IRS, as Buick did, vs a cheap beam or live axle.
One can even use the opportunity to pass judgement on the buyer. Too cheap to pay for four wheel drive on your Escape? Everyone can see the large viod in your rear subframe where the rear differential housing would be in the pricier 4wd models.
Hah, I guess I’m not the only one here e we go always (perhaps not even consciously) checks on this when I’m behind a crossover. Honda CRV axle shafts are glaring in their frequent absence; the Element is a bit more discreet.
It’s easy to see which brands spent the money in IRS, as Buick did, vs a cheap beam or live axle.
I’m quite sure only the AWD Rendezvous had the IRS and that the 2WD version had the minivan rear torsion beam axle.
Not that I or Wikipedia remember: “In order to provide a luxurious and responsive car-like ride, all Rendezvous came equipped with a fully independent rear suspension system regardless of optional content or trim level.”
Righto. Did the Azrek come with a beam axle in 2WD? I can’t be bothered to look it up right now. I seem to remember one of them like that.
I believe you’re correct about the Aztek.
It did indeed, same as the FWD minivans. Here’s the diagram straight from GM:
It wasn’t even torsion beam. It was a straight axle, coil springs and a Panhard rod. The U vans used the same setup as they were very similar. While this is not exactly cutting edge, the Dodge Caravan had a tube on leaf springs its entire run of three decades or so.
She just wants to show off her irs.
A while back, I saw a Jaguar SUV at a stop light, from behind. I was looking it over, and I saw the unmistakable view of the gas tank sitting there below the back bumper, all dirty and unfit for viewing. Since then I have been informally looking at SUVs from behind on the road, and rarely have i seen one that shows as much of its underneath hardware as did that Jag. Quite surprising. if i see another, I shall snap a photo if I can.
The Rendezvous was at least uniquely styled and not a simple rebadge like the Rainier and Terraza. More importantly, it sold well enough to keep Buick alive until the Enclave was introduced.
This is one of the most flattering shots of the Rendezvous, one may find. The lighting nicely highlighting the often not noticed fender top swashes. And the darkened lower bodysides, downplaying its height.
Their tall and narrow proportions were their greatest aesthetic shortcoming. Something you detected immediately. Combined with the overstyled grille/headlight area, and the busy rear hatch styling, it made these a visual mess. Overdone. I found their design reflective of the smugness popular in a lot of late 90s/early 2000s advertising.
I saw a similarly proportioned 2006ish Suzuki SX-4 the other day, and as you described, their design now leaves a smile on my face. As they are safely in the design relic past.
Oh, pifflechips to you and your Sx-less views. I’ll allow that ‘Sex For’ sounds a bit like a question one might be asked upon arrival at a brothel run upon restaurant lines, but these little machines are quite alright, I say. And besides, a vastly over-ambitious or otherwise distracting bit of nomenclature doesn’t mean nothing is good. For example, in a French restaurant and waited upon in English, ‘coq au van’ rather demonstrates that (Really? Wow. Where’s the van?)
I reckon they fall into the category that’s more French quirk than Detroit berk. I quite like them, maybe because I owned and liked the aesthetics of an ’03 Renault Scenic – absolutely no-one else did – and subconsciously thought the Japanese car might be a properly built version that worked whenever asked, which the Billiancourt product most certainly did not.
I sat in one when they first came out, and it was so easy to get in and out (high seats and low floor) and so roomy, that I later went so far as a test drive. Bus-like is an apt description. I actually liked the cloth with the Buick logo and the holy head rests of the first year.
In 2007, seriously annoyed with my Intrigue (except for the engine), I drove a lightly-used one with the 3.6 DOHC. Completely different animal. If it had had a third seat and the Ultra’s cloth/leather instead of all leather, I’d have bought it. I found a rare Ultra, but the engine sounded harsh–it had a tow hitch, the likely culprit. Ended up getting a 3 y.o. Deville with cooled seats for less than a third of its original list price. Thanks, Northstar reputation.
These cars simply fade into the general cloud of CUVs that have been cluttering the highway for a couple of decades now. I can appreciate the utility and appeal of the format but dorky? They all are aesthically hideous. The basic 2-box shape is fine, but many examples are slathered in gingerbread, angular trim pieces and abstract shapes all over making them quite the assault on the eyes. Japanese brands are the worst offenders, while European brands are somewhat less offensive but trying hard to catch up.
This Buick was mid-pack in this pursuit to the bottom, and barely worthy of note.
Fortunately there’s a bit of light at the end of the tunnel The latest models show a hint of styling restraint, nothing quite likable just yet, but, like a break in bad weather, it suggests the storm of automotive ugly may be coming to an end
My BF’s aunt drives one, and a last-gen LeSabre. Their reliability, general quality, styling, handling and crash performance leave much to be desired. I’d say itd be a close match between this and the Encore for “Buick I’d least like to drive”.
Thr GM diehard’s Lexus RX alternative.
Gracious me, the styling department – if indeed it was them – was in a hurry for lunch when they signed-off on this. Rendevous – meeting at an agreed time and place. Clearly so.
These looked much better in darker colors. In light colors the rear end looks like a dog dragging its ass on the carpet.
Actually, this could have looked much worse….
Oh, for goodness sake sir, there are children who might be reading this site.
Wow! That is a modern interpretation of a 1957 Buick Caballero wagon, but it is either half cooked or over cooked. It just ain’t right.
I suspect the failure of the ovoid Taurus killed that version.
It’s like all the worst styling cues of early ’00s French and Chinese cars coming together in one hot mess.
Rear flank reminds me mostly of the Dodge Charger.
I never thought these looked attractive in the least. In my community of school kid families, these seemed to find a niche of people who 1) liked GM and 2) didn’t like minivans but who needed extra seating. Also, there was a Buick dealer nearby.
I still harbor the belief that there is at least one GM car from that general era that I would like driving, but that I just have not found it yet.
Maisto did a 1/24 scale diecast of it, with opening hatch and foldable rear seat in metallic purplish-maroon or black (both over gray 2-tone).
Per Maisto’s early-’00s house style, the taillight lenses were simply painted solid red, despite the fact they could’ve done transparent lenses over authentically shaped reflectors with the exact same parts count and number of tampo hits being that the taillights are contiguous with the rear windows.
Very much in the spirit of early ’00s GM, then.
The “Vous” became a victim of the bean counters. Originally design to go on an S10 platform. Pics of these proto units were quite nice actually. But then the rules of the project changed and the engineers were forced to put it on a cheaper front wheel drive chassis, ( I think J car platform??). So the length and width had to be shaved but it was too late in the program for complete new body panels. Rare Classic Cars did a very well informed video on the Rondez Vez as he called it.
The Rendezvous (and Aztek) was just a somewhat remodeled and shortened GM U minivan (Chevy Venture, etc.). That’s why it’s so tall and narrow and doesn’t have typical SUV proportions.
Later higher-trim models got body-colored cladding, which made the tall and narrowness even worse. But inside, it felt too wide, compared to a sedan, because of the volume.
I don’t see how it would’ve been any more expensive to make as a body-on-frame, indeed it would’ve been dirt cheap to develop, being yet another Blazer/Jimmy/Bravada rebadge.
I’ve often wondered what might have been if GM had compromised the proportions in the other direction and used the W-body sedan platform to make the Aztek/Rendezvous something much more like an Outback, or indeed if the U minivan project itself hadn’t been dimensionally compromised by being shared with Opel and having the European market in mind.
I rented one for a day – a quick in and out trip so I didn’t take it back for a replacement – and it was memorable in it’s sheer wrongness from looks to driveability. That was many years ago and I still vividly remember it out of the many rentals I’ve driven. I was always puzzled about why anyone would buy one.
Biggest problem I’ve had having to rent these on occasion is if it isn’t AWD, you can’t floor it without the front wheels spinning and screeching. A problem all FWD SUVs have actually.
If it had 19” wheels and some LED running lights and an iPad taped to the dash it would pass as a modern crossover. Don’t kid yourselves, this isn’t much different than most of what currently sells in the catagory.
The shape is quite awkward, but it seemed to sell in relatively high numbers or at least high enough to make them a fairly common sight for a good decade and a half. Nowadays I see more in the junkyard than on the streets but that’s likely more a function of their age range, they’ll mostly pass through the system soon enough as well, it’s the rare vehicle (especially family haulers) that isn’t pretty much disposable, it’s not like you see hundreds of fifties and sixties station wagons every day anymore either, and those are from when “they knew how to build a car that lasts”; these were never destined for forever lives.
I’m waiting for the sporty Buick SUV EV proudly wearing the Grand National GNX-E label to bring the fight to the Mustang Mach-E! 🙂
I got bored and looked it up, these actually sold quite well compared to the Aztek, with about 320k sold vs 120k in total for the Aztek, but conversely you’re probably about 3x as likely to notice an Aztek (oh, my eyes, my eyes!).
Perhaps still a loser at the end of the day but it probably stopped the program from being a total fiasco.
These were new when my kids were of prime carpool age and in our kid-centric area, they were rare, with most of our neighbors favoring Honda Odysseys, Toyota Siennas, Chrysler Town & Country’s, early RX 300s, Suburban’s, or in our case, Volvo V70s or XC70s. The one Rendevous that I can remember was owned by a proud daughter of Detroit, who loudly defended the Big Three, but also admitted that an employee discount obtained through a family member made this an easy decision for her.
We bought one of these new in 2006, it was a bland beige color inside and out. We never had any drivetrain problems but it had electrical gremlins from day one that the dealer could never figure out. Sometimes all the gauges (does GM still call them “gages”?) would just go dead, the radio might be on a different station the next time you started it or it might be playing a CD instead of the radio, and the power windows would quit working sometimes. We traded it after 2 years for a 2008 GMC Envoy that was a great vehicle and my son just traded a few months ago.
I remember on Edmunds that the early years needed a lot of BCM replacements, but it sounds like they never completely got it right. Were these the first cars GM assembled in Mexico?
The only thing I found memorable about these is that someone turned in one during the Cash For Nice Cars program in ’09 when I was working at a Ford dealership. Nice condition. Must have just paid it off.
Ah, the Ren Dezz Vouse… I remember our local Buick dealer in Montana peddling a fair amount of these back when they were fresh, while the Spazzteks mostly stayed nailed to the asphalt at the Pontiac dealer across town. Just a little *too* weird, methinks. The Buick-ized variant was odd, too, but you can tell that the Tri-shield division actually gave a pretty good go at toning down the pissed-off-bread maker looks that were hard baked into the design.
These days, I’d probably smile if I saw a nice one of either still cruising along. The “different” now makes them a bit more memorable and likable in my little world. The last one of these I remember in regular use was an AWD Rendezvous that was always in the parking lot of a place I worked 2016-19, and was still a fixture there when I left. It was a bit tatty, repainted in purple and silver with spraybombs, but must have been mechanically sound.
I never noticed the suspension bits dangling down low for everyone to see on these rigs, but probably didn’t pay close attention… I remember many FWD Northstar Cadillacs having HUGE mufflers that you could see under the bumper when coming up on one, especially at night. They were big enough to have to be mounted diagonally under the trunk floor, and were painted chassis black when the cars were new. This made them pretty much disappear, but only until a few months of road spray and grime turned them a dirty grey color, and there you were staring up the backside of a Mufflerllac again.
Yeah, eh? Those mufflers looked like they were in the process of falling off the car.
Yessir. I’ve never liked the look of mufflers mounted in very visible locations, even though it was commonplace on many unibody, FWD cars from circa 1980’s-mid 2000’s. GM seemed to do a good job of stashing exhaust gubbins out of sight on their early front drivers, but eventually started letting it all hang down. I know most of the W-bodies switched from the smaller, out of sight muffler in 1992, to the big honker for 1993. I’d guess that this actually was a NVH thing, as the earlier mufflers weren’t particularly effective… My 1991 Lumina 3.1 has had loose baffles in the muffler since I got it with 14 kilomiles in 1997; which jangle, buzz, or whine, depending on rpm and load. This is accompanied by the slightly hoarse, blatty sound that all of those 60 degree V6’s made… which I’m fairly fond of due it just being part of the background soundtrack surrounding me growing up. The staccato fart-letting of an Iron Duke or 122 4 cylinder is not missed, however (I just had an early Cavalier wagon in front of me on my way home tonight).
Guess this doesn’t have much to do with a Buick Rendezvous, but I’m being an old man on a ramble right now. As I am in Arizona, I don’t really have a lawn to get offa, so something something or other. You know the thing!
K-car derivatives were also offenders on this—less so on the fancier versions with deeper-drop bumper fascias and bodyside cladding.
Those dumb gargle-mufflers GM installed on the Lumina/Beretta/Corsica/Grand Am/etc…echhk. As though those engines needed help sounding awful! And your description of their 4-cylinder exhaust tone is spot on.
I’m sticking with my description of what Chrysler did instead.
My grandparents bought a 2002 Rendezvous CXL AWD in dark blue, with the leather/cloth interior and no 3rd row. They traded a well used 1998 Jeep Cherokee Sport for it, and aside from having the rear diff replaced under warranty, never had any issues.
Gramps loved it because it was roomier than the Jeep with more comfort features, Granny liked it because it was easier to drive. The gauges were a lovely teal on silver at night, it had dual zone electronic climate control, and the first radio I ever saw with RDS (and steering wheel controls). The backseat was roomy, and the 2nd row even reclined – and I think 2002 was the only year for the rear footrests.
They traded it in 2006 for a GMC Envoy, as by that time GM had decontended the Buick to the point it wasn’t worth buying.
It wasn’t a sharp looker, but I didn’t find it to be as ugly as the Pontiac. Wish I could find one in decent shape to buy – would be a nice commuter vehicle with the 3400 under the hood.
Every few years, I do some searches for them, looking for a low mileage 3.6 unicorn. They were all well over 100k miles the last time, and no 3.6s at all. I suspect it did lower Buick’s average buyer age, as they intended.
I drove one for a week. It had everything I didn’t like in our minivan, but none of the room. Like the worst of both worlds. Very plastcky. Had heads up display. Our Saturn Relay had a more modern interior. Very disappointing.