Acura seems to be having a moment lately, with big revivals in styling, driving dynamics, and interior design in their latest generation of vehicles. And while they’ve come under some fire from commentators and potential buyers alike for their Type-S performance variants being unable to outdrag Kias–much less Audis–down the quarter mile, horsepower isn’t everything, and their lineup is the best it’s been in 10-15 years. The prior generation of Acura struggled to stand out and reflect the brand’s respectable heritage, and by 2015 the midsize TLX sedan had become a bit bland and cheap-feeling like the Accord it was based upon. This new TLX appears to be a sharp about-face.
Look at it sitting there with its flaring hips and NSX front end and shining blurple paint. It’s an edgy thing that appears fast while parked, and I’m fully rooting for it. Go, Acura, go! Promises of a functional and engaging midsize sedan are made here; it is larger than its predecessor and comes with a standard 272-hp engine on a new chassis not shared with the Accord. This example had a mere 16,000 miles on it. Keys in hand and genuinely interested, off I go to see if it’s the complete all-rounder we’re looking for. Will promises be kept?
Um. Well, let’s say that Acura still knows how to cook up a batch of their signature special sauce, and they used a large bottle of it on the TLX. But they poured it into the steering and chassis, without leaving much for the rest of the vehicle. The transmission is mediocre, it’s useless as a sedan, and it compromises itself by posing real hard as an RWD platform while doing a poor job of acting like one.
The car immediately impressed me as I drove away. I think the steering and suspension tuning are astoundingly good, and that impression hit me very quickly. After the numb, pavement-pounding BMW and years of our own crudely-tuned Camry, it’s easy to forget that a car can be responsive, feel light on its feet, and still deliver good ride quality. The TLX shines here, with a natural lightness and progressiveness to steering effort, a quick ratio that turns the front in quickly, chassis and suspension tuning well matched to that steering, and a compliant ride that dances with quiet grace over the winter-blasted pavement that rattled the BMW. It is an ideal blend of response and comfort for an enjoyable daily driver for me. Road noise is kept quite low, and they put a reportedly best-in-the-biz ELS sound system in the car to take advantage of that. This car could eat up some interstate miles in comfort without getting remotely sloppy where the road bends. It’s fully undermined the case for the F30 BMW; nicely done so far.
Autoblog image
The engine is the equal of the BMW’s, which means it’s another flat and joyless two-liter which puts up some decent numbers. It received a sprinkle of sauce left from the bottle, but no one should be writing sonnets about it. About six seconds to 60; mid-upper 90s in the quarter. It’s quick enough, but the cheaper and lighter Accord with this same engine will easily jog away from it–which is probably why the Accord don’t get that engine no more. There is less turbo lag than in the BMW from a stop when single-foot driving, so it’s a bit more responsive when pulling into traffic; that’s a big plus. But the BMW lets you remove the lag through light brake torquing, and the Acura doesn’t. At least, I couldn’t get it to. If you exert the two-footed effort to make the BMW step out very quickly, it will. The Acura always hesitates. Outside that, they deliver very similar power and passing times, and the same kind of bland, indifferent buzziness overlaid with digital sound augmentation attempting to make it seem like something other than a small four.
Hey there, teeny engine. You’re no V6, but you do a pretty good job moving this hefty car.
The BMW’s ZF transmission is superior, however, to the Acura’s transmission, which feels like it would be happier in a Pilot than a sports sedan. It’s a 10-speed which is a bit slow to downshift, perhaps because it has about four gears too many. Its indecisiveness makes sense to me; if you had a wide turbocharged powerband to divide across 10 close ratios, would you know what the hell to do with a given throttle input? I wouldn’t.
The paddle shifters are of little use, because they’re slower to react than those in our Camry, and rapid-clicking through so many close ratios to achieve a meaningful change in engine speed gets old quickly. It’s a letdown, but not a dealbreaker, given the chassis and steering. The Acura is acquitting itself well enough, and still has my full attention. There’s life in this car, a tangible purpose and character to the way it moves.
Mine didn’t have the AWD, but still managed torque steer rather well.
In poking around the build-‘n’-price feature on Acura’s website, I found this sporty looking A-Spec has no mechanical upgrades over the two lesser trims. It’s an appearance and frosting package providing a few racier styling flourishes and access to luxury features like the big audio system and ventilated seats. Only old people want wood interior trim, so it’s all severe metal in here to appeal to the serious driver, and there’s a flat-bottom steering wheel to further make you feel like Lewis Hamilton even though it turns the same rack and same wheels beneath the same suspension. You can opt for a truly garish red interior that’ll activate your Type-A personality’s competitive side before the seatbelt is even buckled. I’d personally go for a Technology or Advance trim, with their more mellow and tasteful attributes, because I’m now old and boring and willing to embrace it.
As with everything now, there are ‘drive modes’ to fiddle with, but with fixed dampers and only the throttle, shift, and steering assist mapping to work with, there isn’t much of a difference. Unlike the BMW, the steering remains appropriately light in Sport, but the transmission then clings onto low gears for way too long once the throttle is released. That’s annoying and unintuitive, so I’d just leave it in Normal.
There are a few neutral peculiarities. I found the infotainment track pad a bit fiddly. The transmission button array is an answer to a question no one asked, given by someone bent on solving problems that don’t exist and reinventing wheels that already roll. I’m not sure if it is accomplishing its intended mission because I’ve no idea what that mission is. Doesn’t look like it saves much console space over a traditional lever. But if this is your car—not one of many press loaners you are bouncing among—you’ll get used to it in short order, no big deal. We’re surviving here, this car is still in the running. C’mon, Acura!
I still prefer a shift lever with fixed detents, but there are worse push button arrangements out there.
The rest of the interior is where this car falls down, and it falls hard. Really hard. We’re talking Red Alert, taking on water, call 911, brace-for-impact levels of problems here. Simply put, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a poorly-packaged sedan. It is five inches longer than our Camry and a certified blue ribbon porker at 3,800 pounds in FWD, two tons flat with AWD. Despite this, it has the functional rear seat legroom of my Fiesta. My knees are up against the nasty hard plastic backing of the driver seat, the headrest is rather close to my face, and my head is brushing the ceiling. Shoes catch in the footwells on exit.
This is a long car. Where on earth did it all go?
Not believing I could be the only one caught so badly off guard by the cabin space, I perused video reviews and the general conclusion was that it’s small but livable, which is a rather generous assessment. Most of those folks weren’t tight up against the seatback. Most of them weren’t five-eleven, either, so there’s the dividing line. An average or shorter adult will fit behind an average or shorter driver, but if you’re a driver approaching six feet, the spot behind you is only for five-foot-nothings or kids old enough to be out of rear facing car seats but young enough to have not sprouted towards teen age. That’s a poor showing for a 195-inch car. It’s a poor showing for a 180-inch car.
The stubby little back doors don’t lie; it’s tight back here
Multiple reviewers went to strange lengths to justify or ignore the cramped cabin space of the TLX. One thoroughly demonstrated the difficulties of getting child seats into the back of this car, writing he had to move the driver seat 5.5 inches forward from his normal position. Five-point-five inches! I expected an excoriation for this, but he waved it off as a mere trifle: “This wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for me because…minor discomfort isn’t a terrible thing…I can still drive an hour or two at a time like that…It’s navigating parking lots that’s a little awkward with that steering wheel right in my lap and my legs more confined.”
Good grief! All tied up and contorted in sycophantic apologetics so as not to offend. “Hey, yeah! I mean, sure I’ve got to sit right up against the wheel and drive using the cruise control buttons since my legs are now non-functional origami stuffed into the footwells and cannot operate the pedals, but you know–that just gives me a chance to test the awesome automatic emergency braking and conveniently lean forward an inch to gnaw on that steering wheel which Acura so thoughtfully made of leather so supple and rich that I no longer crave filet mignon. Thank you, Acura. Thank you for the privilege!”
That’s automotive “journalism” for you. Rant over, I guess.
Actually, no, because the cargo space is compromised as well. There’s no spare tire. Acura bolted the car’s battery right to the middle of the trunk well and surrounded it with a giant chunk of styrofoam to raise and level out the trunk floor. The resulting space is a bit shallow and restrictive regardless of the rated capacity, which already barely exceeds that of a Corolla. I didn’t know the company responsible for the brilliant Fit could make such astoundingly stupid packaging decisions.
You can order—i.e., pay and wait for—a complicated kit that slings a donut spare and jack tools over and around the battery (developed post-hoc by Acura to address complaints, if the owner’s forums are correct). It’s a rather clever looking gizmo, if I’m honest, but it should be standard equipment, and it wouldn’t be necessary at all if they’d put the battery under the long hood where it belongs.
Square peg in a round hole! This was obviously shaped to accommodate a spare, so this battery squatting there is a bit insulting.
The problem here is that Acura sacrificed the advantages of a front wheel drive platform to create an aesthetic. The stretched hood evokes the classic RWD proportions, but this car has a small transverse engine forward of the axle rather than a big longitudinal one aft of it. This chicanery steals length from the passenger cabin and results in the tiny back seat, yet 58 percent of the car’s mass is still resting on the front wheels. I thought the BMW’s weight distribution shenanigans were a bit much, but they achieved a 50:50 balance and a usable back seat in a RWD car a full foot shorter. So what’s Acura’s excuse? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know–buy an RDX if you want space. But I don’t want an RDX. I want this big sedan to fit adults in the back seat.
I’m pretty confident in my assessments above, but here’s where we wander into an opinion so contrary to the existing reviews of this car that it makes me a bit nervous: I found the interior materials wildly overrated. Reviewers praise and photographs flatter, but in person I thought it had a thin feel for a near-luxury product. As the trend du jour, there’s stitching everywhere, but it takes more than that to create a sense of quality to me. The busy and deep dash is made of numerous adjoining panels that have a lot of flex when pressed, and the choice of surface graining and sheen across much of the interior looks more like it came from a Kia Optima than a $50,000 Audi competitor. The very tall center console is flanked by thin and hard economy plastics, and the glovebox is a lightweight unlined Rubbermaid bin that belongs in a base Civic along with the window switches taken directly from Honda’s economy parts cache. In contrast, the BMW’s dash feels like a thickly cushioned steel girder and the padded materials which continue onto the glovebox and lower door panels give that interior a far more solid, damped, and expensive feel.
The A-Spec has a lot of faux and real metal accents that do little to hide the abundance of hard unpleasant plastics elsewhere.
Part of it may be the accent choices in this A-Spec trim, which cut toward the metallic, industrial style designers associate with ‘sporty’ but which I find chintzy. Other trim levels have real wood inlays and full leather seating and two-tone color combinations which look fantastic in photographs. This would help elevate the visual perception of quality from 10 yards out, but still won’t address the abundance of hard plastics and thinner feel of the build.
Looks impressive from a distance or through softly-lit press photos, but the high-relief pebble graining, thin panel feel, and coarse scratchy plastic at the switches and everywhere below the armrest make this feel very mainstream in person—regardless of that nice wood panel and metal speaker cover.
This isn’t going well anymore. We started out flying high and fast, but now the rudder’s kicked hard over and the yoke is buried, sending this review into an unrecoverable downward spin. So I may as well continue by saying the interior durability also gave me pause. The rubber flashing strips between the door frames and interior trim panels were rippled and distorted in multiple locations—high and low, left and right. The interior door grab on the driver side already had excess play in it, flexing and separating at the upper mounting point; something structural in there is loose or broken. The faux suede fabric on the bottom cushions of the driver seat had already stretched and become wavy as if heavy derrieres had spent years flopping down on it. That’s a lot of wear for 16,000 miles. We have the same style of imitation suede seats in our 7-year old Camry with 89,000 miles and they still look new. Now, I can accept that every car has its own life experiences and perhaps the prior owner was a hefty fella who settled hard into the seat and used that door grab as a leverage point to hoist out. However, there were multiple other TLX listings with suspicious seat and armrest wear on cars only two years old. It’s looking like a pattern to me.
Rippled seat fabric on my tester and numerous others listed online
All-leather may not solve this. About 30,000 miles on this one, listed in a hot climate. What’ll it look like at 10 years?
At this point, before this review hits the ground in a fireball, it’s fair to ask if this car is overhyped or if I simply expected things never intended by the manufacturer. My answer is, if Acura had reallocated six inches of empty hood to the passenger cabin, not done stupid things in the trunk, and spent just a couple more bucks shoring up the furnishings so a $50,000 car didn’t feel disposable at two years of age, I’d be shopping around for an AWD Advance model with the wood interior, and I’m not kidding. There are a lot of solid, hard-to-nail fundamentals done correctly in this car. The chassis, ride/handling balance, and noise control are nearly enough to make up for the interior quality and mediocre transmission, but we need a midsize 4-door to actually be a midsize 4-door. There was a time when I’d be greatly drawn to a well-styled, nimble and comfortable sedan with the space utilization of a personal coupe, and that time may come again when the kids are gone.
Presently, however, the TLX is far too compromised for us in packaging, and the interior quality just isn’t there, so it’s 430i in a landslide if forced to choose between the two. But I don’t have to choose! There are other candidates. See you next time.
Commendably done, sir. There is nothing so maddening when a company with a reputation for doing so many things right muffs easily fixable things. I will confess that I have found Honda products of recent years to be a disappointment. As an owner at the opposite end of the spectrum, I looked at each generation of Honda Fit after my 2007 model, and found each one wanting against my own aging car. When “new and improved” turns into just “new”, that should be a concern.
I am going to go out on a limb that is not well populated hereabouts and blame the packaging problems on the modern CAFE system. A vehicle must hit certain mpg targets (more and more unreasonable ones as time goes by) and nobody can ignore aerodynamics. Those semi-fastback sedans that all look alike give the maximum mpg numbers for the regulators, but leave a sub-par package for the owner with a family. And, to show the total ridiculousness of the whole thing, that family just goes and buys a far less efficient SUV so that they can fit.
I feel your frustration.
Jim, CAFE really and truly is not the universal answer to all the perceived (and real) shortcomings of modern cars. Especially in this case.
The TLX used to be Accord-based, sharing its chassis and key body hard points. But in order to differentiate this generation of TLX from the Accord, Honda developed a completely new and different body. To make it look like a long-hood set-back cabin RWD car, they pushed the cabin back. It’s strictly an aesthetic thing, to look like its main competitor, BMW.
The result is not better aerodynamics or better CAFE numbers. In fact, this TLX gets significantly worse numbers than the much more space-efficient Accord; 25 mpg combined vs. 32 for the Accord. This TLX also has a lower EPA number than its Accord-based predecessor.
It’s trying too hard to look like a BMW.
I have a similar size car my 2nd of the same model FWD as they have been since 34 its huge inside massive luggage capacity and the east west engine is all behind the front wheel centre how did Honda get it so wrong
Interesting reading! Yeah, I’m glad I bought my 2015 Accord V6 new back in the day. It’s just now got 34,000 miles and it’s been a great car. Honda did cheap out on a couple of interior items compared to my ’98 Accord V6, like the floor carpeting and mats, and the “leather” seats in the ’15 don’t feel or look near as nice as the real leather seats in the ’98, but the quality and reliability is still there in the ’15. I plan to keep it a long, long time.
You justified my decision about not spending more to buy the Acura version.
Anyone remember when Honda was led by engineers rather than marketing gimmickry? I knew the absurdly long hood was a tortured styling situation, but had no idea they compromised so much for a styling element. Why don’t more companies mount the battery under the rear seat, like GM did on the old H/K/G body? I know they all shout about weight distribution, as if a 30 lb battery will totally changed the dynamics of a car. It’s just all so silly. I also constantly get the feeling as sedans die off that most every manufacturer seems to go out of their way to make sedans standard with lists of reasons NOT to purchase them.
Also, not to get stuck on GM, but the freaking Cobalt/Ion had their battery in the trunk along with a standard mini spare. If they could do it in a dime-store FWD compact 20 years ago, why can’t Honda do it with what is essentially a full size sedan today? That costs over 3 times the price.
I have one of these. I really like it. This is after a F10 528i. Interior is better quality and reliability is light years ahead of the BMW. May not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I really enjoy this car. I specifically chose the Acura over the Accord because of the transmission. I will never buy a cvt unless there’s no other choice. Plus the interior is a lot nicer than the Accord. I bought mine preowned as well. I’m up to 111k miles with no issues other than brakes and tires. I drove both the Accord EX-L and the Acura, and the slight price premium over the Accord is definitely justified.
Personally, I really like the looks/appearance of this car both outside and inside on the featured pictures.
Interior quality is subjective, perhaps I’m wrong or just an outlier in what I’m looking for. Glad you like yours and that it’s treating you well. 111K miles in only 2 years? Wow. The Accord with this 2.0T has the 10 speed geared auto. CVT is the 1.5T, and I agree with you–don’t like the way that CVT pairs with the engine.
Last year I was looking at similar cars (though Acura isn’t sold here) and ended up going with a VW Arteon. Not everything about is is as nice as I’d like, but the huge cabin (both front and rear) and hatch make it worth it.
As far as baffling design decisions go, a Lexus I looked at didn’t have a folding back seat. Perhaps acceptable in the US where everyone also has a pickup truck, but what the heck…
I’m too German and have been around too long to be impressed by pointless swoopy styling on a car. I grew up during a time of pointless swoopy broughamobiles, faux luxury and interior decorating and I only see updated versions of those rides in cars like these.
Never cared for cars that try this hard to get my attention. But that’s just me.
Wow, what a great review! I’ve always had a hankering for an Acura, and style-wise it’s great to see them back after severely drifting off-course in the late ’00s. That said, it seems this car makes you make a lot of compromises….nothing you should be doing in this price range.
Have you looked at the Infiniti or Genesis?
Stay tuned!
An interesting viewpoint that doesn’t seem to match my perception of Acura-worship from the motoring press. One of the best cars I ever owned was my 1982 Honda Civic DX hatchback. Reliable, economical, functional – and much sportier than its image projected. Just the opposite of my Vega, really. The only car that I ever won an SCCA autocross with. Before buying it I test drove an ‘82 Accord; the newest of that model I’ve tried. Before buying our 2008 Prius we checked out a Civic Hybrid, and both my wife and I found it very disappointing. The reviews that praised its handling and steering feel vs the Prius? I don’t know what Honda was serving at the press release buffet because we sure didn’t notice anything noteworthy. These cars (and to be honest the Camry too) have just passed me by over the last several decades. Even the new Fit Sport we test drove in 2017 did not impress. So thanks for taking the time to write this up. I don’t have to worry about what I’m missing.
Agree on many of the comments. We all spend most of our time inside the vehicle and the unforgivable issue for me is the cumbersome infotainment system in older Acuras – lack of touch screen and until recently, poor graphics that were often hard to see in sunny daylight conditions. Our lowly Tiguan with a digital cockpit was so much better than the MDX Advance of the same model year. It was one of the main reasons I let it go. It has so much going for it otherwise.
Interesting in comparison to our 2013 TSX wagon. Some similarities: the TSX, based on the shorter non-NA Accord, also has/had terrible rear seat leg room; maybe not quite as bad as this, but it’s pretty mediocre. It also came without a spare. We’ve never had a flat… But a spare can be fitted, as there is a place for one.
The handling on ours is extremely good; it’s the last of the double-wishbone Accord/TSX line. It never fails to impress me, and it is difficult to tell that it’s a FWD car except in a full throttle low-speed curve. Impressive.
I love the NA K-Series 2.4 four. Given its fairly light weight and the extra weight of the wagon body in the rear, its weight distribution is much better than say a V6 sedan.
I really wonder if the extra expense to develop this unique body for the TLX is going to pay off. And of course the intrinsic trade-off for the aesthetics of the long hood at the expense of rear leg room is very questionable. That profile cutaway drawing is almost shocking, how far back they located the seats in the body.
I agree that the profile cut away is shocking with the front row of seating basically in the middle of the car.
Paul, I have a 2011 TSX Sport Wagon, in big part to your reviews when I bought mine in 2016. I’ve driven the current TLX a few times as loaners when I’ve had work being done on my wagon. I love how the TSX wagon drives and handles. And you’re right about the 2.4. What a great motor!
Having sat in the backseat of both cars, they’re not that different, but since our wagons are smaller cars, it feels more okay than in the TLX that the backseat is smaller…
I’m surprised they made such a compact interior when the Integra was in the works. It really muddles the traditional hierarchy of size classes. The Integra is tidier on the outside but almost certainly is roomier everywhere but width. But maybe that’s what the marketing data says will work in this day.
Many sedans seem to be evolving into very stylish things at the expense of traditional interior accommodations.
The reality is that you’re in a minority: how many families with two growing kids are shopping for a sedan? Extremely few; if any. They’re all buying SUVs and such.
Sedans like this TLX are obviously targeted to buyers who want something decidedly non-SUVish, for style and image reasons. These buyers do not have kids or expect to carry adults in the rear except in very rare cases.
The question at this point is if they’ve got the proportions of a coupe, rear seat room of a coupe, and are valuing style over practicality like a coupe, why even bother making them with 4 doors anymore?
I mean I for one welcome the anti-suv class of car, but this is an odd interloper being a “sedan” with all the drawbacks of a coupe, yet still not as attractive as it could be if it were simply just a 2 door.
Real irony is the older CL 2-door coupe was attractive to look at and more practically packaged
Honda has always been known for packaging efficiency. This is the the most un-Honda car Honda has ever made. Mr. Soichiro Honda must be spinning at 9,000 rpm.
Looking at the battery picture it sure looks like it was designed from the get go to stow a spare tire too. The hold down bracket has a threaded hole for a hold down bolt and the bracket is domed to give space for the bolt to stick through and not contact the battery.
The reason for the lack of a spare of course is CAFE since a spare and jack weigh more than a small compressor and can of tire sealant.
The reason the battery back there is of course for weight distribution purposes and probably a little due to the fact that they had that big hole in the back. Though to be honest underhood isn’t the best location for battery longevity.
I do like the color of the one you tested but agree the other interior schemes are more appealing to me.
I like my 2014 Sportwagon and when I moved up to the Sierra foothills, I thought about getting a AWD TSX. Then it had a V6 and was cheaper than a Lexus, Audi or BMW. Bonus for being more reliable. In the end it was still too expensive for my retirement salary. And actually I only need AWD about 10 days a year and I get Doordash to do my errands for me if it’s that bad. Or put chains on.
Thanks for the informative review. I read this with interest, as I too could see myself returning to driving a sedan on a daily basis, especially one in the same general price range as this Acura. While I would like something that handles better than the average CUV, I would not place quite the same priority on sportiness, but neither do I want a cushy brougham-mobile, either.
So many sedans, especially in the luxury market, nowadays fail to make a case for themselves as practical alternatives to CUVs/SUVs. It seems the convergence of current design trends, the dwindling market for sedans in the upper-middle price range, and some misplaced notions of what constitutes luxury (low-slung seating, while enveloped by a cockpit-like dash and console, and limited space for annoying passengers!) have combined to basically eviscerate an aspirational market that thrived from the mid-1980s through maybe 2010 or so. Something like a well-finished Accord or final-generation Passat would suit me well, but those plebian vehicles lack some of the polish of their upscale brethern in return for true 4-5 passenger capacity.
So, I understand your dilemna. I would recommend checking out Infiniti and Genesis to see whether you can find something suitable. There’s nothing on the domestic side worth mentioning, other than perhaps a final version of the Chrysler 300. Stay away from the Germans if you are buying used without a warranty and intend to keep the car a long time. I await the next installment to see where this journey takes you.
I have looked at another 3 options and will post them here. The journey is a winding road and the destination is not in view.
After reading this and the prior installment, I don’t believe you’re ever going to truly find what you want in continuing down this path – which is something with a manual. You may find something, but I don’t see it being perfect. Nothing with an automatic, no matter which automatic, is anywhere near as engaging. Period Paddleshifters as you found out are a joke, with as many gears as cars have nowadays, the car does shift better by itself than you can ever hope to do it with the paddles, and as far as just going and getting you there, they all do it pretty well if too sanitized.
But the engagement factor – it’s not there without the real manual transmission. You can go fast, you can turn quickly, you can have all the “feel” you crave, but you’re going to miss the fun factor of rowing your own any time you actually have the car in a setting and a time to enjoy it to its fullest….and it will then let you down.
The options as I see them are to either spend far too much money new for something with perhaps an “M” badge or find something older and then need to budget for higher levels of maintenance, unexpected expenditures, and lower safety levels than perhaps desired, i.e. something like an older M5 with a manual. (And I’m not a BMW guy at all).
Instead you can look for the best car to replace the Camry and do what it does well; if it’s been outgrown, then probably the next size up is the best bet. Boring? You betcha! But stress-free. And not pretending to be something that it isn’t, which is what all the “sporty” sedans are doing when they don’t offer a real manual option. Thus the reason you have the Fiesta ST in the first place.
Frankly this is why I think there are so many people pivoting to off-road and embracing that lifestyle. It is completely different than driving quick with a good car on a great road, but that’s gotten so boring and hard to do for most people that going off the beaten path (as you do in the 4Runner) is substituting as an equally satisfying, albeit totally different experience. And it can be shared with others far easier.
But I am enjoying the series! 🙂
Jim, you’re right that this is a more difficult exercise than I thought it would be. I’m questioning whether my criteria are reasonable. The next few installments in the series make some progress there, though, so stay tuned.
Unfortunately, a manual is a non-starter; this would be a shared daily and distance traveler with the wife who will not touch one. But I’m getting a sense of the attributes that would make an automatic sedan fit the bill. They exist. But do enough of them exist on the same car?
Thank you for doing an honest review. All too often the magazines focus on what’s new and improved, but neglect to mention the things that aren’t as good as they used to be, nor as good as they ought to be.
That space inefficiency would kill it for me, as would the poor interior quality. You can’t add a few luxury cues (like faux wood, metal speaker grilles) over notably poor quality plastic and expect to be credible – that’s like the worst of seventies Brougham-think. And when such seat wear is showing on a two-year-old vehicle – that’s a resounding NO from me.
Maybe a Mazda 6?
I’ve driven a few of the current TLX models, and most of the current Acura lineup when I’ve had service done on my 2011 TSX Sport Wagon. I completely agree about the backseat and it’s ridiculously tiny for a car this size. Overall I’ve enjoyed how the TLX drives, and I know I’ve driven the SH-AWD, and maybe the FWD, but I can’t remember that exactly. The weird part for me about driving a sedan is after years of driving a wagon, it’s very weird to have to think about backing up with a trunk behind the car.
Sadly, I think more and more that if you want to carry more than one other person companies want you to purchase a CUV such as the RDX or go all the way up to an MDX. Sedans are mostly a style vehicle these days…
Sedans are mostly a style vehicle these days…
Agreed. The Camry is one of the exceptions. It looks pretty stylish but is still roomy.
Great review. It is interesting that you find the Acura steering feel to be superior to your BMW test drive. It seems that since BMW adopted electric power steering that US reviewers have constantly complained about lack of feel and adjustability that does not improve feel but only makes the steering heavy. There seem to be fewer complaints about the M versions, and UK reviewers still generally say BMW steering is among the best, which makes me wonder if BMW is purposely programming US versions with reduced steering feel. Obviously Acura, Porsche, Cadillac and a few others seem to be able to make electric steering systems with decent feel, and if they can do it I expect BMW could also as they seem to be able with M and UK versions, and yet they don’t. Thus I am left with the sad realization that BMW tunes their US version steering to not offer feel because the majority of their current customer base likes it that way – perhaps today’s BMW buyers are Lincoln buyers from the lifeless steering 1970s?