01
Substantial Defect
One that impairs the use, value or safety of the vehicle. Stalling, brake failure, steering and persistent electrical faults qualify. A rattle generally does not.
By Manufacturer
BUICK LEMON LAW.
Buick has the lowest recall volume of General Motors' four divisions, and almost every campaign it does get is a platform recall shared with Chevrolet. The badge is different. The defect is not.
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EXPLORE ↓What Decides It
Four facts, in this order.
Buick built it, but Buick does not decide it. These four questions decide it, and the repair orders in your glovebox answer all four.
02
Repair Attempts
Florida looks for three attempts at the same defect. New York looks for four. Recall work and visits that found nothing both count.
03
Days Out of Service
Thirty cumulative days in Florida and in New York. Cumulative, not consecutive, and the days count whether or not anything was fixed.
04
Coverage Window
The defect has to be reported while the vehicle is inside the warranty or rights period. When it was reported matters more than today's date.
Buick sits between Chevrolet and Cadillac in General Motors' range, and NHTSA records every Buick recall under the manufacturer name General Motors, LLC. Search by the badge and you find almost nothing.
The Encore GX and Envista share their platform with the Chevrolet Trax and Trailblazer, and the Enclave shares with the Traverse and Acadia. That is why Buick's campaigns are almost always shared: the 306,511-vehicle camera recall of August 2026 covered 41,323 Envistas and 30,852 Encore GXs alongside the Chevrolets.
Recall repairs count as repair attempts. That camera campaign was filed after more than 33,000 owner complaints. Every one of those owners had been making dealership visits long before the recall existed, and each of those visits belongs in the count.
Jonathan D. Schwartz has +25 years of experience handling Lemon Law and warranty matters, including claims against General Motors. Bad Vehicle offers a free case evaluation, direct access to the attorney handling the claim, and no upfront legal fee to begin pursuing an eligible case.
Recall or Claim
A recall says GM knows. A claim says they were given the chance to fix it.
A recall is the manufacturer acknowledging that a defect exists across a population of vehicles and offering a remedy. It is a public admission of the fault pattern, which makes it useful evidence. What it is not is a Lemon Law claim.
The claim arises from what happened to your vehicle: the defect was reported, the dealership was given a reasonable number of attempts to repair it, and it is still there. A GM recall notice covering the fault on your model proves the manufacturer already knew.
Buick's recent campaigns are heavily software and module based — instrument clusters that blank, daytime running lights that will not switch off, radios never set to download the owner's manual. Software faults are intermittent, which is exactly why they take several visits before anyone accepts they are real.
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Check before the next visit
Look your VIN up under General Motors, not under Buick.
A recall proves they knew. Your records prove they did not fix it.
Check My Case ↗Recurring Buick Faults
WHAT KEEPS COMING BACK.
These are the defect categories that generate the most Lemon Law and warranty claims against Buick. A vehicle showing one of these is not automatically a claim. A vehicle showing one of these repeatedly and unrepaired usually is.
Rearview Camera Failure
Campaign 26V-539 covers 306,511 GM crossovers including 41,323 Envistas and 30,852 Encore GXs, whose camera housings lose their adhesive bond and let in moisture, producing blank or distorted images.
Instrument Cluster Blackouts
Campaign 23V-744 covered 60,154 vehicles, mostly 2024 Encore GX and Envista, whose Virtual Cockpit software intermittently blanked the digital instrument panel while driving.
ARC Airbag Inflator Rupture
2014-2017 Enclaves fall inside GM's 995,085-vehicle recall for driver airbag inflators that can rupture and throw metal fragments at the driver and passengers.
Lighting Control Software
740,108 GM vehicles including 2021-2023 Envisions were recalled because the daytime running lights would not deactivate with the headlights — a software-only defect typical of Buick's module-heavy electrical architecture.
Missing Electronic Owner's Manual
Campaign 26V-114 covered 5,861 GM vehicles including the 2026 Enclave and Envision, whose radios were never set in production to download the federally required electronic owner's manual.
CVT and Nine-Speed Driveability
Encore GX CVT and Envision nine-speed owners file recurring NHTSA complaints of shudder, hesitation and harsh engagement — the repeat-repair driveability pattern that drives most Lemon Law claims.
Where It Ends Up
Four ways a Buick claim resolves.
Which one applies depends on the state, the facts and what gets negotiated with General Motors. All four start with the same free case review.
The models we see most
Recall record · NHTSA · September 2026
BUICK33,000 COMPLAINTS. THEN THE RECALL. NOT BEFORE.
01 / ENCLAVE, 2014-2017
995,085
ARC airbag inflator rupture — Shared with Chevrolet Traverse and GMC Acadia. The driver frontal airbag inflator can explode during deployment and send sharp metal fragments into the cabin.
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02 / ENVISION, 2021-2023
740,108
Daytime running lights — A lighting control module software fault means the daytime running lights may not switch off with the headlights, a federal lighting non-compliance.
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03 / 2024-2026
306,511
Rearview camera blackout — Envista and Encore GX alongside Chevrolet Trax and Trailblazer. Buick share: 72,175 vehicles. Filed after more than 33,000 complaints.
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04 / 2024
60,154
Instrument cluster blackout — Encore GX and Envista, plus the Chevrolet Trax. Virtual Cockpit software blanks the digital instrument panel at startup or while driving.
Check My Case ↗GM filed the 306,511-vehicle camera recall in August 2026 after more than 33,000 owner complaints. Every one of those owners was making dealership visits first. All Buick campaigns are filed under General Motors, LLC. Figures from NHTSA as of 23 September 2026.
Read the 15 Questions ↗Buick Lemon Law
15 questions Buick owners ask.
General information about Lemon Law and warranty claims, not legal advice. What applies to a particular vehicle depends on its records, its warranty and the state where it was bought.
Ask Us Directly ↗
Because NHTSA does not file it under Buick. Every Buick campaign is recorded under the manufacturer name General Motors, LLC, so a search by badge returns almost nothing. Search by VIN instead — NHTSA's free VIN lookup reports open recalls on your specific vehicle whichever entity filed them. It is also why no reliable "Buick had X recalls" figure exists: NHTSA publishes group totals, not per-badge totals.
Yes. Campaign 26V-539, filed in August 2026, covers 306,511 GM crossovers including 41,323 Envistas and 30,852 Encore GXs. A weakened adhesive bond in the camera housing lets moisture in, so the screen shows a distorted or blank image. GM filed it after more than 33,000 owner complaints. A rearview camera is a federally mandated safety system, so a persistent failure is not a cosmetic complaint.
Not at all. The Encore GX and Envista share a platform with the Chevrolet Trax and Trailblazer, and the Enclave with the Traverse and Acadia, which is why most Buick campaigns are shared. If anything it helps: a defect documented across hundreds of thousands of vehicles in three divisions is plainly a known pattern rather than something wrong with your particular car.
Yes. Several of Buick's recent campaigns are software-only — the cluster blackout, the daytime running lights, the missing electronic owner's manual. A software remedy is still a repair attempt, and software faults are intermittent by nature, which is precisely why they take several visits before the fault is accepted. If the symptom returns after the update, that visit counts too.
No. Buick remains part of General Motors and the 2026 US lineup is the Envista, Encore GX, Envision and Enclave. What did end was the car range — the Regal, LaCrosse, Verano and Cascada were all dropped by 2020, so Buick is SUV-only in the United States now. Those discontinued cars can still carry warranty rights if a warranty was active when the defect was first reported.
No. A recall is the manufacturer acknowledging that a defect exists across a population of vehicles and offering a remedy. A Lemon Law claim arises from what happened to your specific vehicle: a substantial defect, reported inside the coverage period, that the manufacturer was given a reasonable number of attempts to repair and did not. The recall is useful evidence within that claim, not a substitute for it.
Yes, where the recall remedy addressed the defect at issue and the fault persisted afterward. Owners frequently leave recall visits out of their own count because the work was free and manufacturer-initiated, which weakens the record unnecessarily. If the vehicle went in for the fault and came back with the fault, it was an attempt.
Florida's presumption generally arises after three repair attempts for the same defect, or after the vehicle has been out of service for 30 or more cumulative days during the Lemon Law rights period. A separate and earlier trigger applies at 15 cumulative days, when written notice goes to the manufacturer. It is a presumption rather than a fixed requirement — a defect serious enough to be dangerous can qualify with fewer attempts, and the presumption is one route to the remedy rather than the only one.
New York generally looks for four repair attempts for the same defect, or 30 or more days out of service, within the first two years or 18,000 miles. The framework is close to Florida's but the thresholds and the arbitration process differ, and a vehicle bought in one state and serviced in another needs the applicable law identified early.
One that impairs the use, value or safety of the vehicle. Stalling, brake failure, steering faults and persistent electrical problems clearly qualify. A rattle or a trim complaint generally does not. Between those extremes the answer depends on how the fault affects the vehicle in normal use, and on what the repair orders actually say about it.
State Lemon Law is primarily directed at qualifying new and demonstrator vehicles. A used Buick can still carry rights where a manufacturer or dealer warranty was active when the defect was reported, generally under federal warranty law including the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which does not carry the same new-vehicle limitation.
A leased vehicle can be covered where it meets the same substantive requirements that apply to a purchase. The calculation of any refund is tied to the amounts actually paid into the lease rather than the full vehicle price, and the leasing company is dealt with as part of the resolution rather than left to be sorted out afterward.
That visit still counts as a repair attempt. Intermittent faults are extremely common in software, camera and electrical systems, and a growing share of manufacturer campaigns are software-related. A record of repeated visits where the fault was reported and not resolved is precisely the pattern the law addresses. Ask for the complaint to be written down in your words, and keep the copy that says it could not be verified.
Three, in practice. A repurchase, where the manufacturer buys the vehicle back and refunds what was paid, less a statutory offset for the miles driven before the first report of the defect. A replacement with a comparable vehicle. Or a cash settlement where the vehicle stays with you and the manufacturer pays for the diminished value. Which applies depends on the state, the facts and what is negotiated.
Broadly: the purchase price plus collateral and incidental charges, minus a mileage offset tied to the distance driven before the defect was first reported. Registration, taxes and finance charges are frequently recoverable. The offset is the part manufacturers most often calculate in their own favour, and it is worth checking line by line.
Other Manufacturers
The badge does not decide the claim.
The law applies the same way to every brand sold in the state. What differs is the defect pattern, the warranty terms and how hard the manufacturer fights.
Get in Touch
Is your Buick back at the dealership again?
Send the year, model and the repair history. An open recall on your VIN helps, but the repair orders are what carry the claim.
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