1997 Acura Cl 2.2 on 2040-cars

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Hands-on with Acura's novel touchpad infotainment interface

After Acura's Precision Cockpit was unveiled here in LA, I sat in the, uh, driver's seat of the wheel-less interior mockup to get a feel for how this new touchscreen-free touch interface works. There are a lot of good ideas inside. Here are 11 things you should know. It's less like a trackpad and more like a remote-control tablet. So instead of letting you move a cursor relative to its last location like the trackpad on a laptop, each point on Acura's trackpad is mapped to a corresponding point on the center display. If you want what's in the upper right corner of the display, you touch and click in the upper right corner of the trackpad. Simple. I figured it out in two minutes. Maybe less. The whole thing is surprisingly intuitive. The ease of use is helped by the fact that the targets on the screen are pretty big – no tiny "buttons" to fiddle with. The clicks are real. The trackpad actually moves when you press down, so no need for simulated haptic feedback. In their research, Acura engineers found that accidental touches and presses are a real issue. We could have told them that – hit a bump while using a finicky remote interface like Lexus's all-but-abandoned joystick thing, and you select an item half-way across the screen from the one you intended. The placement of the trackpad in this concept interior also helps avoid unintentional inputs – it's not in the middle of the center console where it might get brushed or bumped, but instead in its own little cave at the base of the center-stack waterfall. (Acura's low-profile button-based transmission selector suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.) View 13 Photos Lots of cues cut down on distraction. You hover over the option you want before positively confirming the selection with a hard press. There's no cursor to find and reposition like in the Lexus trackpad system The red highlight gives the necessary visual cue that you put your finger in the right place. The pad is slightly dished to give you a tactile cue of where the center and edges are. It allows you to build up muscle memory, sort of like how you know generally where the "keys" are on your smartphone or tablet's virtual keyboard by now. Or at least I do on mine. You look at the screen, not what you're touching. The problem with touch screens is that they have to be low down in the car so you can reach them. That means you have to look down from the road to stab at what you want.

Acura ARX-06 race car revealed with V6 hybrid powertrain

There’s a new Acura race car on the block, and itÂ’s called the ARX-06. It replaces the ARX-05, and Acura plans to race it in the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar GTP Championship. Unfortunately, Acura makes no mention of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in all of the details provided with the reveal. That said, it sure looks like a race car that could be made to meet all of the regulations to race in the new LMDh Hypercar class. Acura engineered a new 2.4-liter twin-turbo V6 engine that is paired up with a standardized electric system for hybridization. Acura says the 2.4-liter displacement is the smallest displacement engine the HPD team has made for endurance racing yet. It features a 90-degree V-angle, and itÂ’s designed to run on more sustainable low-carbon fuel. "We've gone in a new direction for HPD in the design of the ICE,” said Pierre Descamps, HPD's powertrain design leader for the ARX-06. “It is still a V6, which of course for Honda is well-known, but we have incorporated several new elements which we believe will make best use of the electric MGU and battery pack. Our new engine will rev to the maximum 10,000 rpm set by the rules, so it also makes a wonderful sound!" The new bodywork penned by the Acura Design Studio in Los Angeles sits on an ORECA chassis (one of the four chassis options required by IMSA and the WEC). Acura notes one big change versus the outgoing ARX-05 is found in the rearview mirrors. Designers were able to move them lower on the car, which improved both aerodynamic performance and visibility for the drivers. Similar to years past, these new ARX-06 race cars will be run by Wayne Taylor Racing and Meyer Shank Racing. TheyÂ’ll make their debut at the Rolex 24 at Daytona next year, where the Meyer Shank Racing team took first place earlier this year. Related video:

Junkyard Gem: 1988 Acura Integra LS Liftback Sedan

Years before Toyota and Nissan brought the Lexus and Infiniti brands to North America, Honda created its Acura luxury division. When the first Acuras showed up here in 1986, there were two models: the Legend midsize luxury sedan, developed in partnership with Rover, and the Civic-based Integra. Today's Junkyard Gem is one of those first-generation Integras, found in a Northern California self-service yard recently. The 1986-1989 Integra was available here as a liftback with two or four doors (Japanese buyers of the Honda Integra could get a sedan version). It was based on the fourth-generation Civic chassis but got a more powerful engine and snazzier interior. The U.S.-market 1988 Integra got a 1.6-liter DOHC engine rated at 113 horsepower and 99 pound-feet. This was eight more horses and one more pound-foot than the most powerful new Civic available here that year. The first-generation Integra was quick for its time, especially with the base five-speed manual transmission. This car appears to have been bought as a comfortable commuter machine, however, because it has the four-speed automatic. Note the Hondamatic-inspired D4/D3/2 shifter positions. The emissions sticker tells us that this is a "49-state" car, not originally sold in the Golden State. It drove 293,237 miles during its career, which is decent for a late-1980s Honda but nowhere near as good as others I've found from the same era. At the moment, the highest odometer reading I've found in a discarded Honda product was 626,472 miles in a 1988 Accord. The highest-mile Acura-badged Junkyard Gem so far is a 1995 Integra with 342,768 miles. This car is a high-zoot LS model, and its MSRP with the automatic transmission would have been $13,144 (about $34,966 in 2023 dollars). The 1988 Civic LX sedan with automatic listed at $10,205 ($27,148), and it had the same excellent build quality. The Integra got a bunch of standard comfort and convenience options that cost extra on the Civic, however, and of course the 1988 Civic sedan had a trunk instead of a hatch. Air conditioning was not base equipment in this car, but the original purchaser opted for it. That was a wise move for those long Central Valley commutes during summer. Formula 1 technology… aaaand it's street-legal. Soichiro Honda's love of racing paid off in the showrooms. Not bad for a guy whose first couple of factories were destroyed by B-29s and an earthquake. It was known as the Honda Quint Integra in Japan, at first. Michael J.