Chinese cars! The once-expected flood of new vehicles from 中国 hasn’t materialized in the United States and shows no signs of arriving soon, but the first mass-produced cars built in China reached our shores back in 2016. Those were the original Buick Envisions, and I’ve found a crashed example in a northeastern Colorado car graveyard.
Today, American car shoppers seeking a mainstream vehicle assembled in the Middle Kingdom have four choices: the Envision, the Lincoln Nautilus, the Volvo S90 ( while supplies last) and the Polestar 2. What effects will tariffs have on such cars in the near future? Fasten your seat belts!
This isn’t the first Chinese car I’ve documented in a junkyard. That honor goes to the 2006 Kandi KD-970GKE-2 I spotted here in Colorado a couple of years back. While this thing was never intended for highway use (it’s more of a ’48 Jeepster-ish utility vehicle for frugal Chinese farmers), the ones imported to the United States did get VINs starting with the letter L.
Kandis didn’t exactly conquer the American automotive marketplace, however, and that makes the 2016 Envision the first motor vehicle to fly the Five-Star Red Flag (figuratively speaking) in serious quantities in the United States. See that L leading off the VIN on the build tag? Very few ’16 Envisions were sold, so I gave up on finding one of them and held out for a ’17.
My experience driving Chinese vehicles is limited but not zero. I had the opportunity to review a Dongfeng Motor Group-built Dacia Spring in Europe last year, when it was the cheapest new EV available over there. It was a serviceable transportation appliance that reminded me very much of the very cheapest econoboxes available in the United States around 1990.
China is already a serious global player in the car business, and we should keep in mind that the #1 most-produced vehicle in human history is Chinese: the Flying Pigeon bicycle (which was based on the 1932 Raleigh Roadster).
For 2017, the top-of-the-line Envision with all-wheel-drive and turbocharged engine started at $43,640, or about $57,470 in 2025 dollars.
Our reviewer felt that the cheaper, bigger, more powerful ’17 GMC Acadia was a better deal, and that the underpowered Envision was just a ploy to make money on the Buick name.
Most Detroit (and, presumably, Yantai-Detroit) vehicles need to reach 10-15 years of age before they end up in a place like this, unless they get crashed and/or burned (exceptions to this are spectacularly depreciating machines, e.g., Giulietta-based Mopars). Most of the time, I don’t write about mangled crash victims, but I’ll make exceptions when the vehicle is of intense historical interest (there’s a bent-up Tesla Model S a few rows from this car, and I shot it as well).
The turbocharged 252-horse, 2.0-liter Ecotec got yanked by a junkyard shopper before I arrived. We can assume it now lives in a GMC Terrain or Chevrolet Equinox, though it’s possible that it went under the hood of another Envision.
The second-generation Envision debuted as a 2021 model, and sales have been generally better than those of the 2016-2020 Envisions. What happens to Buick once the new tariffs begin to bite? Perhaps GM can revive the Somerset name (with that cool radio pod).
[Images: The Author]
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