2025 Buick Enclave First Look: Chiseled Looks, Lots More Tech

Four months after teasing the new 2025 Buick Enclave with design sketches, General Motors’ surging near-luxury brand took the wraps off the real deal yesterday. Buick’s largest and most traditional offering, the Enclave has long been a big roomy road tripper known for its cushy feel, solid reliability record and cavernous seven-seat interior. This latest redesign’s chiseled looks are a distinct departure from its predecessors, there’s a new engine, and lots of new tech features. It seems well-poised to help continue Buick’s comeback.

The 2025 Enclave’s intro comes after a year of strong sales from the division, which seemed a little adrift earlier this decade after shedding its car platforms (the Regal and the LaCrosse) in the U.S. In 2023, Buick was the fastest-growing mainstream brand in America, with sales up 61% from 2022 and buyers snapping up its new Envista and updated Envision and Encore GX crossovers. Sales rose again by 16.4% year-over-year in Q1 2024.

This news comes on the heels of slowing sales in China (down 20%), where Buick thoroughly dominated the 2010 sales charts, but it’s good news on the home front.

It also signals an era in which Buick’s old-fashioned image is fading and the brand is less self-conscious about it. The 125-year-old company launched a new logo in 2022 along with it’s visually arresting Wildcat concept, and unveiled a new tagline and ad campaign in February, “Exceptional by design.” These efforts are marketing speak, of course, but they’re speaking directly about the product instead of trying to paper over, reimagine or recast Buick’s heritage.

Instead, the 2025 Enclave and its updated marketing machine indirectly do what Buick’s always did best: offer a premium feel and features at a not-quite-premium price. Most often, however, Buick gets compared to mainstream brands, themselves now often edging into luxury territory with driver assist gear and high-touch materials. This Enclave seems to offer materially more than its predecessors without abandoning what previous buyers liked.

The Big Buick, Remade

While past Enclaves have evolved slowly in style, the 2025 version is almost a clean break from the past. Where the previous two Enclave generations were visually gentle, round and soft, the new one is angular. Its aggressive face was directly inspired by the 2022 Wildcat, and its fluted grille appeared on 2024’s Encore GX and Envision. It would be a stretch to call it “muscular,” but it is a more aggressive look. Standard 20-inch rims (22 inches on the top trim Avenir) don’t hurt either.

Under the skin, the redesigned Enclave wears an updated version of its predecessors’ platform and retains its 120.9-inch wheelbase, though the new shape looks a little taller, wider, and longer overall than before (exact specs are still forthcoming). It shares this “C1” platform with the other members of GM’s jumbo-sized crossover brigade, the recently remade Chevrolet Traverse and GMC Acadia.

They’re the largest unibody construction crossovers on the market, which gives them minivan-like room and dynamics in an SUV shape. It’s been a winning formula so far, and buyers can expect a familiar roomy third row. Hopefully, cargo room will also get a boost, as there are a few smaller SUVs that use their footprints more efficiently.

Such big machines (the 2024 Enclave is 204.8 inches long, just a few inches shy of a full-size Chevy Tahoe) require big engines, and they get mediocre gas mileage. Buick hopes to change that with a new turbocharged 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine. The new four will make 328 horsepower and 326 pound-feet of torque, both up from the old 3.6-liter V6’s 310 hp and 266 lb-ft. If it isn’t too much heavier, it should be more sprightly and less thirsty, but there’s still no hybrid version.

As on its platform siblings, front-wheel drive will still be standard and all-wheel drive optional. The Enclave’s tow rating will remain at 5,000 pounds.

Inside, things have taken a huge leap forward, starting with the dashboard. A giant 30-inch digital instrument panel and infotainment center sits atop the dash looking much like the ones in the Cadillac Escalade and Lyriq. BMW, Kia, and Mercedes-Benz have led the charge to these vast flat panels, but GM’s oblong units look particularly good. This huge screen is not a pair of screens under a single pane as from the Germans and Koreans, and it’s standard on all models.

Whether the Enclave feels as luxurious as Buick’s pictures look is an open question. In the past, GM interiors have often mixed and matched fine and cheap materials in odd ways, but the Enclave looks upscale in the pictures of the new Sport Touring and top-trim Avenir that the company released. There’s also newly standard ambient lighting and an auto-sense tailgate, so no more waving your foot around under the back bumper to get the hands-free hatch to open.

2025 Buick Enclave: All The Tech

Perhaps the biggest news of all is the new Enclave’s huge array of standard and available tech and driver-assist features. Buick’s already easy-to-use infotainment system will gain an updated operating system and Google built-in functionality as on many recent Chevrolet and GMC models. There will also be wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and a standard wireless charging pad.

Drivers will no doubt appreciate those features, but the list of driver-assist tech is even more impressive. Every Enclave will offer blind zone steering assist, lane departure warnings with lane keep assist, traffic sign recognition and intersection automatic emergency braking. Also included is surround-view monitoring with up to five camera views, and up to nine with certain option packages.

For the first time, Buick owners will get access to GM’s Super Cruise semi-automated, hands-free driver assistance system. Super Cruise will be optional on all of the Enclave’s trims, and while it will probably cost a fair bit (it formerly cost $2,200 on the Chevy Bolt EV and EUV), it’s among the very best of such systems on the market. Notably, adaptive cruise control (without Super Cruise’s additional functionality) was a $2,000 add on the old Enclave. If the price doesn’t rise too much, this really will be a nice addition.

2025 Buick Enclave: When And How Much?

Buick won’t finalize pricing until closer to the 2025 Enclave’s on-sale date, but it isn’t a stretch to assume that pricing will start just under $50,000. That’s a $4,000 bump from the 2024 version, but all these sensors and screens cost money, to say nothing of the inevitable price creep most vehicles are seeing post-pandemic.

There will be three trims, the basic Preferred, the sportier-looking (and named) Sport Touring, and the top-dog Avenir. The Sport Touring should retail in the mid $50,000 range, while the Avenir will likely crest $60,000. That’s considerably more than a Kia Telluride and genuinely into Genesis territory. That said, you won’t fit seven people comfortably into a Genesis GV80, and similarly-sized rivals from other premium brands, like the BMW X7, are much more expensive.

It’ll be up to buyers to determine whether the bill is worth it, but the 2025 Enclave does appear to offer many of the toys that premium buyers want at something less than a premium price. GM’s famous “ladder of brands” may not look like it did 90 years ago, and its vehicles (now all SUVs) may not look like they did even 30 years ago, but this was always the brand’s core strength.

Buick says orders will open late this summer, and 2025 Enclaves will likely arrive at dealerships in the fall.