The Buick Verano Turbo Just Slapped Your Grandma In The Face

General Motors is making it a performance Buick and it will be available later this year. It's no Grand National or GSX, but this Buick is not the stodgy old people car the marque has been known for over the past three decades.

Buick announced today that its 2013 Verano sedan — a Cruze in chromier clothing — will be available with a 250 hp turbocharged 2-liter four and a six-speed manual transmission, a combination that will move the compact sedan from 0-60 in 6.2 seconds.

For some reason, the General decided not to slap the mill into a Chevy Cruze with an SS badge on it. Apparently, they wanted to breathe real life into Buick through the Verano Turbo, which will dust the Audi A3 Turbo's 0-60 time buy a full second.

This changes Verano's classification altogether. It was a compact luxury sedan, but now its a compact performance sedan, too. Now it's in competition with cool performance oriented cars like the Ford Focus ST, the Mazdaspeed3 and the new for 2013 Dodge Dart.

Besides reasserting that Buick isn't for old people anymore (as the Chinese realized years ago), this also goes a bit of the way towards helping differentiate platform twins in a way that's more significant than just luxury touches and leather.

Suddenly all those Cimarron jokes seem less funny.

Photo credit: General Motors