Overview & Reviews

Acura is an upscale automaker known for offering cars with impressive levels of luxury, features and performance. It's come a long way in a short time, however, as the history of Acura is relatively brief. Parent company Honda introduced the Acura brand to the U.S. market in 1986 in an effort to create a separate luxury division for its products. At first, it was just a two-car show: the Legend sedan, which was the first true Japanese luxury car sold in America, and the Integra sport coupe and sedan.

Though essentially a marketing creation for the North American market, the Acura brand was immediately successful. Consumers liked the features, performance and upscale image of Acura cars, along with the fact that Acuras were backed by Honda's reputation for reliability and low ownership costs. In 1991, Acura introduced its crown jewel: the all-aluminum NSX sports car, which offered performance close to that of other exotic cars while undercutting them in price.

As Acura's product line grew in the 1990s, however, the company struggled a bit. Some of its products were duds, and it risked alienating loyal customers when it replaced the Legend and Integra names with alphanumeric designations. The company jumped on the hot luxury SUV bandwagon in the mid-'90s with the SLX. Unfortunately, the SLX was just a rebadged version of an Isuzu SUV, and its quality did not match customers' expectations.

For the new millennium, Acura revamped its product range. An all-new SUV called the MDX debuted, sporting numerous family-friendly features, including a third-row seat. The Integra was replaced with the RSX sport coupe, and an all-new entry-level sport sedan called the TSX was introduced after that. A complete redesign of its most popular model, the midsize TL sedan, followed, as did a redesign of its flagship RL luxury sedan.

By mid-decade the NSX was gone, but Acura filled out its model lineup with the street-performance-oriented RDX compact crossover, the TSX wagon and the ZDX, a fastback-styled crossover that placed unique styling over practicality. Today Acura is still trying to find its ideal niche but there's no denying the quality of Acura's vehicles, nor their appealing mix of performance, technology and value.

User Reviews:

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  Love my Acura TL Type-S - 2003 Acura TL
  By mary patterson - December 13 - 7:39 pm

  My only complaint is that the car requires premium gasoline.

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  RLX - no 4 x X - 2015 Acura RLX
  By KV - December 12 - 10:22 am

  One of my requirements was 4 Wheel or All Wheel Drive capability in a luxury sedan. This car was wonderful but didnt have either although, as I understand it, prior models did.

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  GPS sucks! - 2015 Acura MDX
  By Michal - December 8 - 9:27 am

  I had great expectations for this car and it has been a great disappointment. Driving experience is excellent, comfy, well responsive, good visibility to the front. Poor visibility to the back when parking. Infotainment is big mess. I find using my i-phone more than cars features, because it takes so much time to enter or find any Point of interest from Acura database which is extremely poor or algorithms for searching are poorly designed. Acura owns apology to all owners for this mess and perhaps free update to fix it. It is also very slow in response and user experience requires numerous endless clicks to get to anything. I prefer hands down my GPS in 10 year old Honda Pilot EX than this new Acura. It seems that a lot of owners are furious over this infotainment fiasco. I really want to love this vehicle but in the future I will definitely look more closely at many other brands before buying another Acura.

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  I was shocked! - 2015 Acura TLX
  By Steve Turso - December 2 - 8:22 am

  It took a while for me to get over no spare tire with this car or you can buy one for about $300.00 - 400.00 but we had a problem, the battery went completely and couldnt be jump started. We then found out that with the awful new transmission they forgot one thing.......you cant put the car in neutral to push it unless it starts. Roadside assistance came out and they had no idea, I called the dealer and they said the only way to move the car is to jack up the car and put rollers under the tires. So I wrote Acura and this is what they had to say "We value you as an Acura client and we appreciate the opportunity of responding to your concern. On behalf of Acura, we offer our sincere apologies for the circumstances which prompted you to reach us. We assure you of our interest in your feedback and we thank you for bringing your concern to our attention. Upon further research, the information provided by your dealership is correct and we apologize for any convenience this may have caused. It is our pleasure to note your valuable feedback as Acura strives to produce vehicles which exceed our clients expectations and your insight assists us in fully understanding consumer perspective." Do with it what you may but I think its clearly a case of engineers not thinking about the consumer. Its just like when they reasoned no spare tire saying it increased the fuel mileage...I found that funny. Acura is losing site of you and me. My 4th Acura and surely my last.

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  Sensible Luxury at an Affordale Price - 2013 Acura RDX
  By jack.beecher@gmail.com - November 28 - 10:03 pm

  Drive the RDX -- it handles well and is appointed like cars costing much more... and it hold sits value as well. We have enjoyed driving it.

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  Perfect car - 2010 Acura TL
  By Courtney - November 28 - 1:01 pm

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  Great looking car, but pricey & poor fuel economy - 2006 Acura TL
  By Keith Eliot - November 27 - 12:07 am

  This is a great looking car with Acura reliability. I have a 97 Acura CL with 223,000 miles and the thing just keeps going. I have owned the 2006 TL for over a year and have enjoyed driving it, but the biggest downer is it comes nowhere near the advertised fuel economy. Check the forums online and youll see other owners saying the same thing. This is the main reason Im rating this car 3.5 stars and not 4.5 stars. Its way over 250 hp and with that power and weight you arent going to get great gas mileage. The quandary here is that similar Accords do get very good mileage, and my TL isnt getting close to what is advertised. Im getting 16-17 in the city and only 19 combined. If I do take a rare highway trip its around 25mpg, but the downer is the city driving, I feel like it should be at least 20 mpg. Take this into consideration when buying. Acura is one of the only car manufacturers that had a Sirius XM receiver as stock in 2006, this is a huge plus! The stereo is also pretty awesome for stock radio, even includes a subwoofer. If you like keeping your paint perfect, the touch-up paint for the White Pearl model straight from Acura is a complete joke & will drive you nuts fixing little marks & dings. Its not even close to a match due to the two-tone nature of the treatment. Youll be spending hours to get one nick the right color from one or two base coats of white and then a dozen or so of the stupid pearl top coats to get the darkness to match because the base coat is way way too light. What every happened to the simple days or just one coat of paint in a touch-up tube that matched pretty well? The dual climate control works but doesnt work well if the passenger wants it warm and the driver wants it cold, the workaround is you have to turn the temp up really high on the passengers side to get warmer air to come out that side if the driver is pumping the AC. This is true in my car even though both sides have their own digital temperature control. Weird. A final complaint is you can lightly hear the interior creaks and noises when going over speed-bumps doesnt seem quite as solid as you would think from an Acura. You only notice this when driving along in a quiet car with the radio off. Nothing serious, but my 97 CL doesnt have this problem. The real selling point of this car is looks and reliability, if you can do with the weak MPG this might be the car for you. Its fun to drive, will impress the neighbors and is a real rocketship. If you can find a black interior, do it - stays much nicer looking if you have kids.

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  225K and going strong - 2007 Acura RDX
  By K Smith - November 26 - 11:22 pm

  Ive had no maintenance or repair problems with my RDX. All maintenance at Acura dealership. No repairs beyond scheduled service. Drive 25K/yr in Northern and Central Valley California. Most miles on I-5 at 70 mph. Also into Sierra foothills in light snow. Acceleration is great entering highway and passing on 2 lane roads. Only negative comments - suspension is very tight. Wonderful for cornering but bothersome on poor roadways at highway speed. I still prefer it to my wifes 2007 MDX. Premium fuel required but knew this when I bought it. Interior is great except center console armrest is thin vinyl that began to wear and tear after 4 years. Mentioned to dealer and they acknowledged that other owners had same complaint. Overall great car, hoping to get 50K more on it waiting for Tesla Model 3.

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  Hate to part ways - 2010 Acura TL
  By Robert Dictor - November 25 - 9:11 am

  After six years of comfortable trouble free driving, Im ready for a sportier vehicle with a convertible top. The Acura TL has been a great vehicle, fun to drive and very reliable. Whats made it even more responsive is the Pirelli replacement tires. They take the turns well and perform well in the frequent Florida rain.

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  Great Car - 2015 Acura RLX
  By TMW - November 24 - 12:09 pm

  Just to give a little backround, my last two cars were a Lexus GS and an Acura RL. I did not like my Lexus at all and got rid of it after less than two years. I had that Lexus in the shop 7 times in those two years for various problems. Up until then, I had pretty much owned only Toyota or Lexus. In 2008, I decided to get the Acura RL to replace the Lexus GS. The Acura RL treated me very well for 6 years until I gave it to my daughter. When it was time to get a new car, I considered many different luxury brands but kept coming back to Acura. So far, I have 13,500 miles on the car. I can honestly say, this is the best car I have ever owned. I look forward to driving it everyday. There were a couple of recalls which were easily taken care of...I was not having problems before the recalls. If I had to do it again, I would not hesitate to get the RLX. I would love to have the hybrid version but it was not available when I bought my car. I had a deposit for one with the dealer but after waiting a year, they finally told me they werent sure when they would available. I guess that would be my one complaint with Acura...they had a predicted release date for the hybrid and it kept getting delayed and there was no information available as to if and when they were going to come out with the car.