1998 Acura Integra Type R *genuine* 800hp Turbo 1500 Miles On Build on 2040-cars

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Acura races into anime with 'Chiaki's Journey' web series

For the twelfth year in a row, Acura is a presenting sponsor and the official vehicle of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Acura created a four-part anime series called Chiaki's Journey combining the medium Sundance celebrates, Japanese anime, the automaker's fuller Type-S lineup, and the new Acura Integra hatch. Unlike most of the films at the festival, however, Chiaki's Journey runs a total of four minutes and 12 seconds, each episode lasting just over a minute. The story centers on Chiaki, a young Japanese woman from a family of racers who knows how to hustle a car around a track, but who has a temper that runs faster than her vintage Integra can rev. The villain is Erich Kang, the same rich and insufferably arrogant hotshot from every video game and car movie, piloting a non-descript blue hot rod. He's clearly the guy everyone would like to beat, and he knows he's that guy. When Chiaki gets behind the wheel to teach Kang a lesson in lap times, her uncle Noboru steps in to teach her the lessons she'll need to need to win.  Being so condensed, each installment plays like a trailer for a longer episode. Acura managed to fit in all the cars, though: Spot the 2022 MDX Type S, NSX Type S, TLX Type S, and 2023 Integra. The car brand got the obligatory Japanese rock anime intro as well, thanks to the all-female metal band NEMOPHILA doing the song "Raitei.” You can see the first episode above and the rest at Acura's dedicated Type S site.  Related video:

Inside Honda's ghost town for testing autonomous cars

On the edge of the San Francisco suburb of Concord, California sits a ghost town. Dilapidated buildings and cracked roads are framed by overgrowth and slightly askew street signs. The decommissioned five acre portion of the Concord Naval Weapons Station that once housed military personnel and their families is now home to squirrels, jack rabbits, wild turkeys and Honda's mysterious testing lab for autonomous vehicles. This former town within a Naval base – now dubbed "GoMentum Station" – is the perfect testing ground for Honda's self-driving cars. An almost turn-key solution to the problem of finding somewhere to experiment with autonomous vehicle inside an urban area. Thanks to the GoMentum Station, the automaker has access to 20 miles of various road types, intersections and infrastructure exactly like those found in the real world. Just, you know, without all the people getting in the way. While the faded lane markers and cracked asphalt might initially make it difficult for the car to figure out what's going on around it, that's exactly what you want when training a self-driving system. Many roads in the real world are also in dire need of upkeep. Just because autonomous vehicles are hitting the streets doesn't mean the funding needed to fix all the potholes and faded lane markers will magically appear. The real world doesn't work that way and the robot cars that will eventually make our commutes less of a headache will need to be aware of that. Plus, it's tougher to train a car to drive downtown than to barrel down the highway at 80 miles per hour. A company is going to want to get as much practice as possible. While semi-autonomous driving on the everyone-going-the-same-way-at-a-constant-speed freeway is already a reality, navigating in an urban environment is far more complex. If you've driven on the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago or Seattle you know that driving downtown takes far more concentration than cruising down the interstate. With all that in mind, Honda's tricked out Acura RLX did a good job during an (admittedly very controlled) hands-free demo. It didn't hit either of the pedestrians walking across its path. It stopped at stop signs and even maneuvered around a mannequin situated in the middle of the road. The reality is, watching a car drive around the block and safely avoid stuff is boring. Not to metion, Google has been doing this for a while in the real world.

2014 Acura MDX goes for a camouflaged cruise

While the often misunderstood (and infrequently purchased) Acura ZDX may be going the way of the dinosaur, the company's far more conventional and successful MDX SUV is evolving. In fact, the 2014 MDX seems to be coming along rather nicely, if this latest set of spy images is any indication.
In the camouflaged prototype we see here, it is evident that Acura designers are going for a beefier look for the MDX front end. The current car's pointed and beaked nose are nowhere in evidence on this tester, though some version of Acura's prominent shield grille does seem to remain.
It's a bit difficult to tell if the shape of the glasshouse is much revised on this new car, as the camo is applied in such a fashion as to obscure the post C-pillar design. But it does seem as though, when we look hard at the full-profile shots of the MDX, that the wheel-arch bulges and side character lines of the current vehicle have been replaced with much simpler surfacing.