Back in the day at General Motors, they used to boast they offered a car “for every purse and purpose.” Evidently the purpose of the Buick Cascada was “rental car customers who want a Chrysler Sebring now that Chrysler no longer makes the Sebring.” But that wasn’t even the worst thing about it.
I rather hated the Cascada in a way that’s hard to do nowadays, since nearly all modern cars are pretty good. But the Cascada felt cheap, limp and ugly. It had all the driving dynamics of a wet dishrag. It looked and drove like the old-ass Opel it was. Newer Buicks, specifically the Regal TourX, are vastly more satisfying.
But as anemic as this front-drive convertible felt behind the wheel, it’s the interior that was a real middle finger to its buyer, or anyone else who happened to be inside it at the time.
I mean, look at this:
How on earth was that an interior on a brand new car that you could buy in 2019? The screen is whatever. But that gigantic panel of huge, hard plastic buttons is downright offensive to my eyes. Why are there so many buttons? Why are they so large? Is this lazy design or is it supposed to be like those giant flip phones aimed at aging Boomers? I mean, buttons are generally good but come on.
And that doesn’t even cover the second panel of buttons for the seat and HVAC controls below the one you see up top. Plus, it doesn’t even have a push-button start, and you’d think GM would’ve learned its lesson with that last round of unpleasantness.
That mess of buttons—something that looks so decidedly 2000s that I can practically hear Gnarls Barkley playing in my head when I look at it. I actually think it had the worst interior of any new car you could buy right now. There’s nothing aesthetically pleasing about it. It looks like someone wasn’t even trying, and if they somehow were, it should come up in their annual performance review.
But maybe I’m wrong.
Which car, that you can buy new right now, has a worse interior?