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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.

2019 Acura RDX First Drive Review | Boringness banished

WHISTLER, B.C. — Things have come full circle for the Acura RDX. The compact crossover launched in 2007 with an all-new turbocharged four-cylinder engine and an all-wheel-drive system that was sophisticated enough for the brand to affix the Super Handling designation to it. It was a fun, sporty vehicle in a sea of boring competitors, and we liked it enough to write a eulogy of sorts when the second-generation RDX ditched the fun turbo engine in favor of a V6, and dumbed down its optional all-wheel system so much that they dropped the Super Handling name. Acura's mainstreaming of the RDX for its second generation turned out to be a smart play. Sales jumped 94 percent in 2012, the first year that the redesigned RDX went on sale, leapt another 50 percent the following year, and have stayed over the 50,000 mark for the past three years. It may sound surprising, then, that Acura is flipping the playbook back a few pages by swapping its V6 engine back to a turbo four and reinstalling Super Handling All-Wheel Drive. We think it's a smart move. The 2019 RDX is both sportier and more upscale than the model it replaces. It does more than just check boxes. It's interesting, boasts some cool technology, and offers a strong value proposition. The 2019 RDX's all-new 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine delivers 272 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque. That's down a negligible seven ponies from the old 3.5-liter V6, but up 28 lb-ft, and it's tuned to provide the bulk of that torque in the heart of its powerband — peak torque plateaus between 1,600 and 4,500 rpm. An equally all-new 10-speed automatic transmission sends that power to either the front wheels, or, as was the case with the vehicles we tested, all four wheels. Jumping into a 2019 RDX for the first time, our main powertrain concern was that the 10-speed automatic would generate a ton of unnecessary, and distracting, shifts. This proved to be an unfounded fear. The gearbox does shift quite often under hard acceleration, but does so quickly and without any undue jerkiness. The sheer number of gearing options — the old six-speed auto had a 68 percent narrower spread of ratios — and the torque-rich engine combined to provide excellent straight-line acceleration in any real-world driving scenario we could conjure. The rest of the time we didn't really think about the transmission at all. We did, however, lament the push-button transmission interface.

Hondata's 2019 Acura RDX tune brings the mid-range torque

One of the big advantages to the era of turbo Hondas is that there's plenty of horsepower and torque left on the table for tuners to take advantage of. One of those companies is Hondata, and following its upgrades for the Civic and Accord, it's now tuning the Acura RDX luxury crossover. The RDX uses a turbocharged 2.0-liter engine similar to those in the Accord and the Civic Type R. In stock form, it makes 272 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque. With Hondata's Stage 1 tune, the company says that horsepower increases by about 10 across the rev band. Looking at the dyno graph, it also appears that peak horsepower increases by about 5 horsepower, and peak torque is up by about 15 pound-feet. Peak torque also appears to arrive sooner, and most of the torque curve seems to be up by 10 to 15 pound-feet. The increases in power and torque are available in all four of the RDX's drive modes. The Stage 2 tune increases power torque even more in Sport and Sport+ modes, and keeps Snow and Comfort modes at Stage 1 settings. Peak horsepower looks to be up about 10 over stock, but the mid-range sees as much as a 28-hp increase. Peak torque sees a huge jump of about 45 lb-ft over stock based on the dyno chart, and it's available even lower than the Stage 1's peak torque. If this all sounds good to you, you can order up a Hondata FlashPro computer for your RDX right now. It costs $695 and comes with the handheld computer for uploading or removing tunes. RDX owners in California should note that neither tune is currently CARB legal. Related Video: