1996 Acura Rl Base Sedan 4-door 3.5l on 2040-cars

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This is why Acura hasn't yet announced its EV strategy

Despite parent company Honda's green and friendly brand image, luxury marque Acura hasn't made a grand statement about electrifying their lineup. Even as brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Bentley, and Infiniti pledge to entirely electrify their lineups in the coming decade, Acura has held back. The reason, according to Acura head honcho Jon Ikeda, is that it's focusing on reestablishing itself as a performance brand. In a wide-ranging interview with Automotive News, Ikeda says Acura came out of the gate strong in 1986 and did well for the first 20 years, but when the bottom fell out of the market in 2008 the brand experienced "growing pains." That spawned a period of self-reflection and, as Ikeda puts it, "What are we about?" The decision was made to go back to Acura's roots as the performance division of Honda. "That's what Acura is. That's what I fell in love with," Ikeda says. Ikeda joined Honda in 1989, but his promotion to Acura boss in 2015 was a surprise to many, including himself. That's because Honda had a tradition of putting engineers at the helm, and Ikeda was a designer, responsible for the looks of such cars as the FSX concept, 2001 Civic Coupe, and beloved 2004 Acura TL. 2021 Acura TLX Advance View 38 Photos When asked by AN whether Acura is worried that luxury competitors are putting stakes in the ground to claim EV brand identities, Ikeda says no. "For us as a brand, we needed to kind of refocus and reestablish ourselves as a performance brand... We want everybody to understand where we are, what we're about first. Even if we go electric we will continue to be a performance division of Honda and performance will be our focus." To earn its performance street cred, Acura poured resources into the second-gen NSX hybrid supercar, which served as testbed for how electricity can work harmoniously with performance. They will continue to campaign IMSA race cars to earn trophies as proof, and Ikeda also wants to bring more Type S models to the lineup. Ikeda says Acura is still in the process of rebuilding its foundation, but when he's done he expects people to associate Acura with performance. That sure seems ambitious to us, but products like the new TLX are a helpful stepping stone. It also explains why Acura is investing in different platforms to differentiate itself from Honda. To be clear, Ikeda isn't ruling out electrification.

Acura sold all 300 of the NSX Type S, reportedly in 24 hours

If you were hoping to nab one of the last Acura NSX supercars, Acura has confirmed to Autoblog that it has already sold out the entire allocation of 300 NSX Type S models that were slated for America. However, you might still have a remote chance. "We have seen tremendous interest in the 2022 NSX Type S following its debut at Monterey Car Week. At this time, confirmed orders have far surpassed the 300-unit allocation for the U.S. market, and new orders received are being added to a waitlist," an Acura spokesperson told us. That might be an understatement, as Motor1 is reporting a Black-Friday-esque rush that cleared the shelves in 24 hours and a waiting list of more than 100. While Acura has never planned to assign the NSX to the role of moneymaker — there are RDX and MDX crossovers for that — sales of the hybrid supercar have been shockingly low. Year-to-date sales figures for July 2021 (the last metric prior to Acura's August announcement that the NSX would be canceled) crawled along at just 67 examples sold, not too far off from last year's 70. The year-to-date number for August leaped up to 98, a significant jump from last year's 73. A personal anecdote may explain why the sellout occurred so quickly. My brother, owner of a 1993 NSX, went to a Los Angeles-area Acura dealer to inquire about the 2022 Type S. The salesperson told him that the dealer was only getting one and that it had already been spoken for — by the dealership's owner. With 273 Acura stores in the U.S. and only 300 cars, if other owners are similarly minded it may be almost impossible for the average buyer to get a Type S without paying a premium over the $171,495 price tag. Hopefully, though, buyers won't have to pay more than the $1 million bid that someone made for the first NSX Type S. The Type S has 600 horsepower and 492 pound-feet of torque, a 27 pony and 16 pound-feet bonus over the standard NSX, in addition to a 58-pound weight reduction and GT3 race car-derived tuning. While that alone could compel some buyers to spring for the Type S, we're willing to bet that it's the limited production and end-of-run factors that are contributing to demand. If you miss out, though, you can always wait for the third generation. Related video:

Junkyard Gem: 1987 Acura Legend Sedan

Honda beat Toyota and Nissan in the race to bring a luxury marque to North America, introducing us to the Acura brand for the 1986 model year. Acura shoppers could buy a luxed-up, more powerful Civic (the Integra) that year, while the real high-rollers went for a smooth-looking, V6-powered luxury sedan co-developed by Rover and Honda: the Legend. That was quite a leap for a company that had been selling tiny cars with two-cylinder motorcycle engines just 15 years earlier, but the 1973-1985 period had been spectacularly good times for Honda. The early Legend sold very well in California, and that's where I found this high-mile '87 a couple of months back. While the Legend had the same underlying chassis structure and engine family as the Rover 800 (known as the Sterling in North America), the Honda-grade build quality and non-Lucas electrical components of the Legend meant that it outlasted its Rover cousins by decades and hundreds of thousands of miles. This one didn't quite make it to 300,000 miles, but 281,032 miles blows away the readings I see on most 1980s junkyard cars not made by Mercedes-Benz. It's hard to imagine a prestigious luxury sedan with three pedals these days, but plenty of the early Legends were sold here with the five-speed manual transmission. Starting in the early 1990s, though, nearly all U.S.-market Legends had slushboxes (though the manual could be had all the way through the final Legends of 1995). Every Legend ever made came with a V6 engine. This car has a 2.5-liter DOHC rated at 151 horsepower, while the 1987 Legend coupe got a 2.7 making 161 horses. Other than the worn-out front seats, the interior in this car looked fairly decent when it arrived in its final parking space. Most super-high-mile cars I see in junkyards aren't very trashed-looking, presumably due to owners who took good care of them for decades (I do see the occasional exception to this rule, of course). The body shows no rust, as you'd expect in California, but the paint hasn't fared so well over its 33 years. It's the performance sedan making European automakers uncomfortable. Unlike many of the wild Japanese-market car ads of the 1980s, Honda pitched the JDM Legend in a most dignified manner. Featured Gallery Junked 1987 Acura Legend Sedan View 15 Photos Auto News Acura Automotive History Classics Acura Legend