The Car Connection Expert Review
Likes
- Unique, upscale look
- Tech-rich cabin
- Great passenger space
- Power folding seats and flat cargo floor
Dislikes
- Luxury price, not a luxury car
- Noisy engine
- No hybrid powertrain
- Poor rearward visibility
Buying tip
features & specs
The 2025 Buick Enclave steps up to fully modern cabin tech, more comfort, and more than a taste of luxury, but the powertrain isn’t so charming.
What kind of vehicle is the 2025 Buick Enclave? What does it compare to?
The 2025 Buick Enclave is a three-row SUV that sits in the premium segment between mainstream and luxury. It competes against the Kia Telluride, Toyota Grand Highlander, Lincoln Aviator, and Acura MDX, among others.
Is the 2025 Buick Enclave a good SUV?
The 2025 Enclave is roomy and comfortable, with a soft ride paired with reasonably deft handling that puts it in the sweet spot for the daily commute or family vacation—though not off-roading. It has expansive cargo space and loads of tech . It earns a TCC Rating of 6.0 out of 10. (Read more about how we rate cars.)
What's new for the 2025 Buick Enclave?
Just about everything is new, including the design, platform, engine, cabin, and the large screen for the front occupants. It also gets a completely new, far more futuristic interface, and it’s the first Buick to get GM’s Super Cruise hands-free driver-assist system.
The design adopts the new Buick look inspired by the Wildcat concept car from 2022. It consists of a large, low-set trapezoidal grille, high-set thin headlights with integrated daytime running lights in a reverse checkmark design, and a theme defined more by shapes than lines. The grille, front fascia, and hood vary by trim level.
The profile is a traditional two-box SUV shape, and the surfaces are broken up by subtle creases more than defined lines. At nearly 208 inches long, about 80 inches wide, and 71 inches high, riding on a wheelbase about 121 inches, it’s bigger than the previous Enclave in all the key dimensions.
One thing that doesn’t get bigger is the engine. Under the hood a vastly downsized 2.5-liter turbo-4 replaces the previous 3.6-liter V-6 and actually ups the horsepower from 310 to 328. It sends its power to the front wheels as standard, with all-wheel drive optional. The Enclave also loses a gear, with an 8-speed automatic subbed in for last year’s 9-speed. In all, it’s a perky enough combination with good drivability—but the engine’s noisy and coarse, especially in the lower gears, harshing this almost-luxury model’s otherwise premium mellow.
The Enclave can tow 1,500 pounds as standard and 5,000 pounds with an available towing package.
Inside, the Enclave features a new 30.0-inch screen that offers curved, continuous display space seamlessly flowing from instrument cluster to infotainment touchscreen; a head-up display is available. The gear shifter moves to a steering wheel stalk, making more room for a standard wireless smartphone charging pad, and a floating center console has room under it for a bag or purse.
The Enclave seats up to seven with second-row captain’s chairs and a three-passenger third row (really wishful thinking, and we’d call it a six-seater). It’s generally well appointed, with contrast stitching on the upholstery and well-chosen materials.
GM has bolstered the Enclave’s active-safety suite with an improved version of active lane control with lane centering, blind-spot monitors with steering support, reverse automatic emergency braking, and more. All versions now get pedestrian and cyclist detection as part of their automatic emergency braking system. Super Cruise is also optional, and it comes with a rear camera mirror on the Avenier model
How much does the 2025 Buick Enclave cost?
Including the $1,395 destination fee, the 2025 Enclave starts at $46,395. The Sport Touring (ST) model starts at $48,795, and the top-trim Avenir starts at $59,395. Each of those comes with front-wheel drive with all-wheel drive on offer for $2,000 extra. All models come with Google Maps, wireless device charging, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. The ST dresses up the look with gloss-black details and 20-inch wheels, while the Avenir loads on the luxury features, including adaptive dampers, memory seat settings, quilted leather upholstery, cooled front seats, heated second-row seats, and premium audio.
Where is the 2025 Buick Enclave made?
In Lansing, Michigan.
2025 Buick Enclave Styling
The new Buick Enclave looks a little edgier on the outside while stylish and more minimalist-savvy on the inside.
Is the Buick Enclave a good-looking SUV?
The Buick Enclave gets completely new styling with its redesign for 2025, as part of a repositioning of Buick design. The edgy yet curvaceous look on the outside plus the relatively stylish and minimalist look on the inside both earn a point here as attractive and cohesive, for a total of 7.
The 2025 Enclave has a lower trapezoidal grille mated to a hoodline and leading-edge lip, with the Buick emblem mounted flush at the front rather than on the grille or as a hood ornament, and it gives this model a completely new face. Narrow headlights flow into the fenders. The amount of brightwork has been diminished across the lineup, although all three trim levels have different grille and trim details, with the Sport Touring (ST) getting blacked-out trim on the outside and gloss-black details inside.
What’s most noteworthy on the inside is the huge, 30.0-inch curved display panel sitting atop the dash, with the area just ahead of the driver serving as a reconfigurable instrument panel and the area to the right a touchscreen. Although Buick has carried over all the customary switchgear for turn signals, shift lever, and other adjustments, and there’s an available head-up display, it leaves the instrument panel looking leaner and more sparse, with more of a Volvo vibe, perhaps, in the top-lux Avenir version where some gold and matte-metallic lighter trims brighten the look.
The center console doesn’t quite meet up with the dash, allowing a vast space beneath for storage plus space for phones on top, including wireless charging. Materials look and feel premium-quality for the most part, and the Avenir’s quilted leather remains a standout.
2025 Buick Enclave Performance
The 2025 Enclave takes a step forward on grace and athleticism but backtracks on engine refinement.
The 2025 Buick Enclave retains its soft, refined ride but shifts to a different turbo-4 engine. We give the Enclave a point for its well-tuned ride and handling, but take one away for its coarse engine that really doesn’t fit the personality of the vehicle—and feels like a placeholder until hybrids return to GM.
Is the Buick Enclave 4WD?
Front-wheel drive comes standard on the Enclave, although any of the versions can be optioned with all-wheel drive for $2,000.
The Enclave offers Tour, Sport, Snow/Ice, Off-Road, and Tow/Haul modes, which affect accelerator sensitivity, transmission behavior, and how the all-wheel-drive and traction systems respond.
On a steep gravel trail, we noted that the Enclave’s AWD system needs to have wheelspin at the front wheels before it sends enough torque to the rear wheels.
How fast is the Buick Enclave?
The Buick Enclave throws out the V-6 for 2025, but the 2.5-liter turbo-4 that replaces it provides both more power and torque—328 hp and 326 lb-ft. It offers decent passing power, although off-the-line launches in the 4,713-pound all-wheel-drive version require a deep-breath pause and lack the verve we’ve come to expect from V-6 rivals, amounting to a 0-60 mph time still in the vicinity of 7.5 seconds. At lower speeds it’s also noteworthy—especially amid the Enclave’s “quiet tuning”—that this is a loud, raspy engine, and its idle is sometimes lumpy.
The Enclave rides smoothly and relatively quietly otherwise. While we haven’t yet driven the top Avenir, which employs adaptive dampers a drive in the ST showed that Buick has tuned this big SUV’s steering for a sharp, precise feel and has managed to extract a sporty personality out of what’s fundamentally a softly sprung vehicle that prioritizes ride comfort.
The Enclave can tow 5,000 pounds with an HD Trailering package, or 1,500 pounds without.
2025 Buick Enclave Comfort & Quality
The cabin of the Enclave is comfortable if not downright plush, and versatile for combinations of people, kids, pets, and cargo.
The Buick Enclave is deceptively big on the outside, but delightfully roomy on the inside, allowing enough space for adults to use all three rows, or to easily fold them flat for cargo in a way you wouldn’t be able to in, say, a GMC Yukon.
With this year’s redesign, the Enclave gets a step larger on the outside, and it definitely carries over in even more passenger and cargo space. At 207.6 inches long, the 2025 Enclave is nearly three inches longer than last year, which means it may have issues fitting into some American garages. It’s wider and taller, but it rides on the same 120.9-inch wheelbase, and with a revamped cabin, it has more passenger space, though. The Enclave gets points for accommodating adults in all three rows, for its back seats, and for its vast cargo space, for a total of 8.
All three trim levels of the Enclave include power seats for the front row, and in the top Avenir cooling and massage are added for the front, while the second-row positions can be heated. Versions with the panoramic sunroof (included in Avenir, optional in others) reduce headroom by about an inch and a half for those in the first and second rows.
Base Preferred and ST models have manual folding seats, but surprisingly quick power actuation is available on those, and standard on the Avenir. The third row folds flat, expanding its 22.9 cubic feet to 57.1 cubic feet. Flip the two second-row seats forward with two other buttons, and you get 97.5 cubic feet, also flat. And there’s an impressive cargo well underneath.
Across the first and second rows, the seats are supportive but soft, and feel like they could be all-day comfortable. The third row in the Enclave is relatively easy to get to, compared to other third rows in similar-sized vehicles, and it has enough headroom for adults to fit—although they’ll be seated very low, in a knees-up position that’s quite familiar in all but the roomiest waybacks, and without much of a view out, so claustrophobes take note. Buick points to up to 32 inches of legroom for the third row.
The Enclave boasts active noise cancellation for the cabin, enabled by the standard Bose audio system, as well as acoustic side glass, engine-noise barriers, and other additional noise insulation. It results in a cabin remarkably free of road noise—although all these measures don’t appear to do much to mask the coarseness of the engine.
2025 Buick Enclave Safety
The 2025 Buick Enclave is too new and different for safety ratings, but it gets some noteworthy tech.
How safe is the Buick Enclave?
The 2025 Buick Enclave has a new body structure, so none of its safety ratings from previous years will carry over. We’ll hold back on ratings in this category until crash-test results come in. However, if recent model years were any precedent, the Enclave should earn a mix of four- and five-star results from the NHTSA and top “Good” and next-best “Acceptable” scores from the IIHS.
Standard and available safety features are expanded. It comes standard with adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, rear cross-traffic and pedestrian alerts, a rear seat reminder, a teen driver system that allows owners to set boundaries for younger drivers, a surround-view camera system, and GM’s safety alert seat that vibrates in the direction of a potential hazard.
New this year are intersection collision mitigation, an improved version of active lane control with lane centering, blind-spot monitors with steering support, reverse automatic emergency braking, traffic sign recognition, and an exit monitoring system. Buick says that the Enclave offers up to nine camera views, including an HD surround vision mode.
2025 Buick Enclave Features
The Enclave is equipped like a luxury SUV, especially in its top-trim Avenir guise.
The 2025 Buick Enclave might thread the needle between GM’s more mainstream Chevy brand and its luxurious Cadillac brand in ambience and adornment, but by the feature set it’s more decisively a luxury vehicle. Here it earns a point for strong base content and, in base versions, another for its good value overall. A fresh, quick infotainment infotainment system that does everything it should earns another point, for a total of 8.
Standard features of the Preferred include heated power front seats (yes, both of them), active noise cancellation, a power tailtgate, 12-speaker Bose audio, wireless smartphone charging, and 20-inch wheels. The ST model gets blacked out trim and a flat-bottom steering wheel. It has no tuning changes to the engine or suspension to make it sportier.
On the Preferred or ST, a Power Package can add the one-touch flat-folding second row, a power-folding third row, heated wipers, an AC power outlet, a garage door opener, and a head-up display, for $1,740.
Super Cruise is offered on all versions as an option, but the amount varies—$3,255 on Preferred, or $3,750 on the top Avenir as it includes a digital camera mirror.
The Avenir includes those features that are optional on the Preferred and ST as standard, plus adaptive dampers, a panoramic sunroof, quilted-and-perforated leather upholstery, front-seat cooling and massage, second-row outboard heated seats, expanded ambient lighting, Bose premium audio, and 22-inch nickel-finish wheels.
Technology features otherwise seen as extras are now being more widely made standard across the auto market, and the Enclave is no exception. Buick includes the huge 30.0-inch curved infotainment screen that flows seamlessly with the gauge cluster and has embedded Google Maps and the capability to run Google Play apps, as well as wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
The Enclave is also Buick’s first model to offer GM’s Super Cruise, allowing hands-free driving and even automated lane changes on more than 750,000 miles of mapped highways, provided the driver stays focused on the road ahead. We see SuperCruise not as primarily as a safety feature but as a convenience one, allowing the driver to rack up the miles with less fatigue.
Buick backs the Enclave with a 3-year/36,000-mile new car warranty and a 5-year/60,000-mile powertrain warranty.
Which Buick Enclave should I buy?
The Enclave has a feature set closer to the base feature set of true luxury SUVs. While the top-of-the-line Avenir is indeed priced more closely to luxury vehicles, the base Preferred and mid-range ST are not. The Enclave Preferred, at $46,395 including the mandatory $1,395 destination fee, seems like a great value if gas mileage or a hybrid system aren’t priorities. We’d probably option it with AWD, for a total of $48,395, but the Enclave looks its best in the lighter, airier color combinations and we’re not convinced the $2,400 higher ST and its gloss-black themes are worth it.
How much is a fully loaded Buick Enclave?
The top 2025 Buick Enclave Avenir costs $59,395 in front-drive form or $61,395 with all-wheel drive. Add Super Cruise ($3,750), the Trailering Package ($650) and you get to $63,775, perhaps topping $64,000 with premium paint.
2025 Buick Enclave Fuel Economy
Gas mileage is up this year, but a hybrid remains what this lineup needs.
Is the Buick Enclave good on gas?
The 2025 Buick Enclave has a downsized turbo-4 and 8-speed automatic transmission in place of the previous model’s V-6 and 9-speed, and the substitution for 2025 brings significantly better EPA ratings. Front-wheel-drive models earn 20 mpg city, 27 highway, 23 combined, while all-wheel-drive versions get 19/24/21 mpg. That’s 1-2 mpg better for most of these numbers versus 2024, though it’s still a 2 on our scale. Still, those numbers aren’t bad for such a big, heavy crossover SUV, with curb weights running higher than 5,700 pounds for AWD versions.
In an early real-world drive covering nearly 230 miles of widely varied road conditions—with a light load, and in nearly 80-degree weather—we saw 24 mpg overall, according to the Enclave’s trip meter. And in a 57-mile run averaging about 70 mph, the Enclave showed its most efficient side, at nearly 28 mpg.
That said, during stop-and-go city driving our test AWD version’s fuel consumption fell well below the 20-mpg mark. We recommend Buick add a hybrid powertrain to compete with the Toyota Highlander Hybrid’s mid-30s mpg.
