2005 Acura Rl Base Sedan 4-door 3.5l on 2040-cars

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Acura Integra Type S briefly teased with wild anime-style video

A year ago, Acura introduced the world to a new anime car-racing protagonist named Chiaki who featured in a series of shorts called Chiaki's Journey. The mini films were a celebration of the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Japanese anime, the automaker's fuller Type-S lineup, and the new Acura Integra. A year on, Acura is presenting sponsor and official vehicle at Sundance for the 13th year in a row, so Chiaki's back with new friends and a new ride. As part of a multi-platform ad campaign called "New World. Same Energy," the Japanese luxury brand takes viewers on a tour of "the Acura multiverse" of Type S models set to the soundtrack of Motley Crue's "Live Wire" from 1982.  As with anything set to a Motley Crue song, the video is wall-to-wall fever. Here's Acura's quick map of the kaleidoscopic cosmic terrain traversing six worlds:  Future-verse: The 2023 TLX Type S and the all-new, next-gen 2023 Integra compact sport sedan challenge a hyper-futuristic tech world. Joneses-verse: The 2023 MDX Type S accelerates through a world of similarity – it is so much more than keeping up with the Joneses. Lunar-verse: The 2023 RDX prepares for launch. Anime-verse: AcuraÂ’s favorite anime racing hero, Chiaki, and the 2024 Integra Type S charge up a snowy Pikes Peak Hill Climb.  Racer-verse: Powering through the live-action racing universe is AcuraÂ’s new ARX-06 electrified race car that debuts in competition later this month at the 24 Hours of Daytona. EV-verse: The campaignÂ’s multiverses converge and their Acura energy culminates in a spark that unlocks the futuristic world of the Acura Precision EV Concept. Because the Integra Type S in the ad (at 0:38) is a Pikes Peak hill climber, it's bolted up with some equipment we definitely will not see on the options list when the production version arrives this summer. The Acura Precision EV Concept is treated more like something from this universe, previewing the styling of the 2024 Acura ZDX and ZDX Type S we're going to meet later this year. Acura says the "New World. Same Energy" campaign will run through March Madness.  Related video:

Acura Type S Concept looks even better in the Monterey sun

A few days ago, Acura showed its Type S Concept in an album of dramatically lit press photos. It is our extreme pleasure to report that the Acura Type S Concept on display at The Quail, with no shadows nor Photoshop to hide in, is even more pleasing to the eye than it was in those photographs. This is the sedan the brand said "sets the stage for re-introducing Type S performance variants to the Acura line-up after a decade hiatus, and will heavily influence the character of the upcoming, second-generation TLX Type S." Our hope is that the phrase "heavily influence the character of" is code for the word "be," and Acura's simply not ready to admit it yet. From the new rectangular "Jewel Eye" LED headlights to the front fascia that could double as an Orc weapon, the flanks with a pentathlete's balance of muscle and leanness, those Halo beam rifle taillights, and the mortar-launcher quad-pipes, this concept is the bee's knees. Acura calls the design language "Chicane," and this expression of it is everything a fan wants to see from the brand. The Double Apex Blue Pearl paint, forged carbon accents, and functional vents only make the sculpture better. We're promised two new Type S offerings in the next two years, an RDX Type S presumed to follow the TLX version. They can't come soon enough. We encourage you to check out the gallery and enjoy every angle of the preview for Acura's coming attractions.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.