2022 Acura Mdx Technology on 2040-cars

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2021 Acura TLX A-Spec Long-Term Wrap-Up | Not-so-long-term car

Been wondering what ever happened to our long-term 2021 Acura TLX A-Spec test car? Wonder no more, for we have answers to share with you in our long-term wrap-up. Last we updated you on our bright Apex Blue sport sedan, it was experiencing electrical gremlins aplenty. We weathered odd issues — random shifts into Park while stopped, infotainment glitching — the car simply decided to not start one day. This led to it being flat-bedded to the Acura dealer where it stayed for an abnormally long time. It was just over two months to be exact. The problems were ultimately determined to be from water intrusion to the fuse box, and some of the wait was for parts that had become corroded due to water being where it absolutely shouldnÂ’t be. Of course, our first question was, how did water get into the fuse box? Acura didnÂ’t have an obvious answer for us at first, but donÂ’t worry, we eventually got one. So, once the parts were in and installed, Acura gave the car a clean bill of health, and we took it back with only a month left in our year-long loan term. Unfortunately, our TLX would not make it that long. Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore took the TLX for this final stint. Two weeks of regular driving went by without any issue, but then the electrical gremlins returned. One afternoon he went out to the car and the dash lit up like a Christmas tree, sending the car into what Migliore said felt like a limp mode. The car technically ran, but it was not drivable. This meant yet another trip on the flatbed to the Acura dealer for another diagnosis. The days came and went, and eventually our original year-long loan term with the TLX expired. Approximately a month after this, Acura finally had answers for what had befallen our poor TLX.  Why so long, you ask? Acura actually called in engineers to try and sort out what had happened with this particular car. The answer? Water in the fuse box, once again. Apparently, the water intrusion issue from before hadnÂ’t been fully solved because the original source of leakage wasnÂ’t found in the first go-round, and water was still making its way into the fuse box. Acura tells us that trying to find the source of the intrusion is quite challenging, and thatÂ’s why it took the dealer and engineers so long to diagnose and sort out.

The original Acura NSX: Development history and driving the icon

The original NSX, introduced in production form in 1990 by Honda and to the United States market under the Acura brand in 1991, is now officially 25 plus years old. Generations of car enthusiasts grew to love the original NSX over the 15 years it was in production and beyond, but as an fan and owner, I think it's important to fully realize just how monumental a shift the introduction of the NSX was in the art of making cars. So, retold 25 years later, this is the abridged story of the NSX, Honda's supercar. The Idea The NSX was an extremely risky project for Honda, a company that in the late 1980's was nowhere near the corporate juggernaut that it is today. Honda's eponymous founder, Soichiro Honda, was still involved in decision-making at the company during this time under the role of "Supreme Advisor," and it is debatable whether the NSX project in its infancy would have gone forward at all had he not still been pushing the company towards the spirit of technical achievement it had been known for in the prior decades. Mr. Honda was still so involved during this period, in fact, that when the first batch of 300 production NSXs were made with a version of the Acura badge he didn't like, he ordered all of the cars stopped at port in the USA, the new badges applied, and the offending incorrect badges sent back to Japan to be systematically destroyed. This was clearly a man who paid attention to the details, but I digress. Honda as a company devoted $140 million dollars to the NSX project ($250 million in today's money), half of which would go to developing the car, and the remainder of which would go to building a new state-of-the-art factory to assemble it. Honda's own goals for the NSX were actually exactly as most media stories portray the car today: to build a bona-fide exotic supercar, but one without the ergonomic and reliability penalties associated with that type of car. They didn't want to sacrifice the needs of the driver to the supposed demands of performance, demands that they felt didn't have to be there in making a truly top-level performance machine. The R&D team wanted a car that could hang with heavyweight exotics in a straight line, play with smaller and more lightweight sports cars in the curves, and cruise in serenity on the freeway. Essentially, they wanted it all, and the brief was to have a car that could do everything without compromise.

2020 Acura NSX Suspension Deep Dive

The Acura NSX has been a special car as long as I’ve been in the business. The first one came out in 1990, the same year I started my career in automotive engineering. I vividly remember driving one briefly back then when we brought one in for benchmarking. I'd drive it again 22 years later when my previous employer bought a used 1991 example for a long-term test. Reader interest was sky-high and the car was still gorgeous, but the march of time and automotive engineering had clearly left it behind. Then, in 2016, a second-generation NSX emerged, and it was packed with bleeding-edge thinking. It has a 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6, but this new NSX is a hybrid with an electric motor-generator sandwiched between the engine and its nine-speed DCT transmission. Two more electric motors – one for each wheel – power the front axle. There they can add traction, regenerate electricity under braking and dole out hyper-accurate levels of torque vectoring. The carÂ’s tire package was changed from Continental SportContact 5 to SportContact 6 tires in 2019, and numerous suspension re-tuning tweaks came along with them. The result is a lively and well-balanced car that is relentless when driven hard and a pussycat around town. LetÂ’s see what theyÂ’ve got going on under there.   At first glance the 2020 Acura NSX appears to have dual wishbone front suspension. But we canÂ’t tell for sure because that big two-piece brake rotor is in the way. The coil-over shock looks obvious, but a few odd details are apparent even from here.   This view also seems to indicate double wishbone suspension. But the pivot axis (green arrow) between the upper and lower ball joints looks wrong – itÂ’s far too vertical. WeÂ’re missing something. But I would be remiss if I failed to point out a few other things before we moved on. For one, the front drive axle confirms this to be an all-wheel-drive machine. Second, the forged aluminum damper mounting fork (yellow) that envelops the axle is mounted to the lower arm about 75% out from the armÂ’s inner pivot. The spring and damper motion ratio would be 0.75-to-1 relative to wheel movement, with a tiny reduction due to its lean angle. Lastly, just look at the huge cast aluminum upright (white). Beautiful. Normally these are called hub carriers or steering knuckles, and I use the terms interchangeably. But the motorsports-derived term upright is normally applied when the piece is tall and, well, upright like this one.   This explains everything.