2014 Buick Encore

But from the middle of the car backwards, the rakish and broad-shouldered stance morphs into a more traditional five-door small hatchback. An S-curve runs through the door panels and up around the rear glass. The rear-quarter view doesn't say "Buick" at all, but then the large, molded rear bumper shield ladles on more toughness again--and a spoiler at the top of the tailgate extends the roofline to make the short Encore look slightly longer.

The interior is more successful in carrying off a premium feel in a small package. If you like the monochrome look, you can have an Encore with an all-black interior. The center stack is studded with black plastic switches, knobs, and buttons--we counted 33 of them--a bit of "wood" trim, and some metal-look accents to boot. At least Buick offers conventional rotary knobs for things like audio volume. Ambient cabin lighting is provided by blue LEDs, but Buick doesn't offer the Ford trick of changing your colors on the fly--the blue stays blue.

At the other end of the scale, there's a two-tone brown interior treatment with cocoa-colored leather that will have you listening for the Starbucks jazz soundtrack and wondering about this month's special free-trade coffee blend. It's definitely an eye-opener, but for our money, it complements the Encore's quiet interior better than the austere black.

The problem is that even the lightest Encore weighs almost 3,200 pounds, and adding all-wheel drive--plus passengers, luggage, and a full tank of gasoline--can push it up to the two-ton level. That means that the little turbo four has a lot of pork to move around. And to maximize fuel efficiency, the automatic is tuned to upshift quickly--meaning that to get good acceleration when you need it, it has to downshift not once but twice. In fact, we once registered the automatic having to downshift three gears to give us the power to merge into fast-moving traffic.

You can do zero to 60 mph in about 9 seconds in the lightest, front-wheel-drive Encore. That goes up to 10 seconds if you add all-wheel drive, though the 150 pounds you add seems to improve the ride as well as adding traction. That AWD system is tuned to send power to the rear wheels on every launch, shifting the power increasingly to the front if there's traction up to 37 mph--by which time the Encore is being propelled only by the front wheels. Even if it's not really needed much, we suspect the AWD system will be a popular fitting in the Northeast and anywhere there's snow to be found.

Despite its large 18-inch wheels, short wheelbase, and economy-car suspension design--struts up front, torsion beam in the rear--the Encore rides well under almost every circumstance. Urban hazards, from expansion joints to potholes to steel plates on the road, can cause some light chop, but overall, the littlest Buick belies its size when you're in one of its well-padded seats. The electric power steering is good, too, with the right mix of centering and simulated feedback even on the least-maintained highways.

But, again, weight matters. Adding three adult men to an AWD Encore exhausts any reserve power, and we found ourselves using a heavy foot just to keep up with traffic in that case. The added avoirdupois, on the other hand, damped more rough spots in the road and improved the ride. A lone driver in a lighter front-wheel-drive Encore could make time with less effort, at the expense of a slightly choppier ride.

Inside, the driver sits high, with a commanding view and good visibility out over the stubby hood. The dashboard is low, and the roof is high, which increases the sense of interior space. Even with the optional sunroof specified, there's plenty of headroom in an Encore. But the narrow cabin limits knee and shoulder room, and even though the console's not that wide, it hems in front-seat passengers--whose elbows may touch. Some may find the bottom cushions of the front seats a little flat, but the backs are nicely shaped and well bolstered.

In the rear, the back seat doesn't look spacious, but it will actually accommodate two adults (don't even think about trying for a third). Kneeroom is adequate, with slight hollows in the backs of the front seats, and although wide people may rub shoulders, it's surprisingly accommodating in the rear. A fold-down armrest containing its own cupholders is a nice touch not found in many cars this small.

But the Buick Encore has a second personality, as a hauler for two people and their stuff. With the back seat folded down, the 18.8-cubic-foot load bay expands to a shade under 50 cubic feet. That makes it the perfect urban errand car--and if there's only the driver, even the front passenger seat can be folded down to fit ladders, long boxes, or a whole lot of peat moss into the five-door Buick.

It'll still carry cargo with refinement, though: Buick uses active noise cancellation to block out engine noises, generating white noise (or, technically, anti-noise) to eliminate the worst frequencies. There's still tire and wind noise at speed, but the cabin remains calm and soothing under circumstances that would have cheaper subcompacts howling.

Less refined is the dashboard design, a welter of mixed colors, lines, and plastics. Many of the plastics are hard, but the worst aspect is the array of buttons, knobs, and other controls in the center stack. We counted 33 separate controls, many of them near-identical rectangular black buttons with small symbols on them. It's a recipe for driver distraction--or, alternatively, drivers finding the five controls they use most often and ignoring everything else the car offers. At least Buick gets points for using old-fashioned rotary knobs for things like audio volume. But the whole design hardly continues the "premium" feel conveyed by the leather upholstery and comfortable seats.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) rated the Buick Encore a Top Safety Pick for 2013, with its highest rating of "Good" for the moderate-overlap front crash, side impact, and roof strength tests. However, the Encore suffered a "Poor" rating in the newly added low-overlap front crash test--something that Buick may attempt to remedy in this year's Encore or in the future.

The Encore comes standard with a rearview camera in every model, which is a good thing, because its side and rear-quarter vision is nothing short of atrocious. The thick door and roof pillars, rising beltline, and small rear window combine to make it almost impossible for the drive to look over a shoulder and see what's back there. The camera is a necessity.

Optional equipment includes all-wheel drive, about $1,500, and camera-based safety systems that watch the road ahead and use lane markings to alert the driver if they're drifting out of the lane or closing too quickly. Some of those systems can be overly cautious, but the Encore only occasionally offered a stray beep on steep roads. Bundled with those systems is both the premium Bose audio system and parking sensors to supplement the rearview camera. Blind-spot monitors with cross-traffic alerts are new this year.

The Buick Encore comes with Bluetooth connectivity as standard, and also includes GM's OnStar telematics system. It comes with six months' worth of free Directions and Connections service, plus access to a mobile app that enables destination programming, remote start, and other convenient features. Want to track family members and where they're going in the car? That's included too, on an opt-in basis. 

The Convenience Group package adds automatic climate control, remote start, and fog lamps. The Premium package includes the Bose audio system, parking sensors, and two camera-based safety features: lane-departure warning and forward-collision warning. The Leather package wraps heated front seats and a heated steering wheel in hide, along with the rear seats as well.

Other options include a sunroof and a navigation system that's available on all but the base Encore. The Bose premium audio system can also be specified separately on vehicles equipped with the Convenience or Leather packages.

Buick says the Encore earns the best gas mileage ratings for any crossover from a domestic carmaker. That may be true, but it leaves out the Subaru XV Crosstrek, which matches the Buick with a combined rating of 28 mpg.

Buick points to the MINI Countryman, at 27 mpg combined, or the Volkswagen Tiguan, at 23 mpg. We'd also suggest the Nissan Juke, rated at 29 mpg combined--or 27 mpg with all-wheel drive--although in our experience, the all-wheel-drive Juke returned significantly lower real-world mileage than its rating.

The Encore's numbers just aren't that high, when a Ford Escape with the 1.6-liter EcoBoost engine gets 26 mpg (or 25 mpg with all-wheel drive) in a larger, more capable vehicle with an interior just as nice.