Buick Regal TourX

Buick has quietly been enjoying winning season after winning season with strong sales over the last five years, and it currently ranks as General Motors’ second-best-selling brand globally. Customers aren’t complaining either, as the premium brand has garnered J.D. Power awards in customer service and sales experience. This is in large part thanks to the seemingly never-fading popularity of crossovers and SUVs, of which the brand sells no fewer than three.

However, Buick hasn’t given up on cars yet, as evidenced by the introduction of its all-new 2018 Regal. But the company is, however, distancing itself from staid sedans by launching the model initially in Sportback and wagon forms. More precisely, station wagon form.

And Buick will say so using its outside voice.

Following the Regal Sportback and its performance GS version is the Regal TourX, which is pronounced “Tour X” and not “Tourx” because, I don’t know, Tourx sounds gritty and rugged. Which, regardless of how much gaudy black cladding the vehicle wears, the TourX is not.

What the TourX is – as the corporate talking heads will say – is a crossover before the crossover. Yes, that’s as cringe-worthy a statement as “station wagon” is spat with disdain but, honestly, count me as someone who couldn’t care less about the stigma of the wagon, the minivan, the any-vehicle-that-isn’t-a-crossover. All I ask is that you do you, but you do it well.

And the 2018 Buick Regal TourX does do the wagon thing quite well.

We test drove e...