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NEW YORK – Creeping through midtown Manhattan during rush hour in the quiet confines of a Buick Verano, it is easy to forget the more than 1.5 million other vehicles also plying the streets.

Then we crack the window. Ah, yes, now that’s the New York City soundtrack we know – a cacophony of taxi horns over droning diesel engines and the occasional obscenity.

On this rainy Wednesday, which for the record is the busiest traffic day of the week for the borough, we’re trying to get out of town and test how the Verano’s 2.4L 4-cyl. engine and racing-derived suspension might position it in the nascent compact-luxury segment.

Instead, we’re stuck at a red light on 9th Avenue, sandwiched between a throng of over-caffeinated cabbies and a Class 5 postal-delivery truck, marveling at how the sedan blocks out everything but the view.

To make its cabin library-quiet at any speed, General Motors engineers blanketed the new-for-’12 Verano in a dozen different noise-damping technologies, including the triple-sealed doors and extra-thick laminated windshield and side-window glass masking the city’s discord in our traffic back-up.

Slipping onto the Henry Hudson Parkway and getting the 5-passenger Verano up near highway speeds, items such as thicker carpet, isolated chassis components and acoustic insulation in the doors, hood and dash panel muffle the sound of the wet roadway.

The Verano also owes some of its quietness to the liberal use of high-strength steel for its body structure, as well as hydraulic suspension bushings and an isolated engine cradle.

In short, the car is put together tight as a snare drum but refuses to transmit into the cabin thuds from a pock-marked Hudson Parkway or those loud ticks inherent in high-pressure injectors of its direct-injection engine.