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How I was reunited with my Acura TSX after 16 years

Back in 2006, I did a very unusual thing: I ordered an Acura. While ordering your car is always unusual in this country, doing so for an Acura (or Honda) is even stranger given how few combinations of color and options there are. The chances of finding what you want at a dealer are high. Despite the odds, though, I needed to order my 2006 Acura TSX with the combination of Arctic Blue paint, touchscreen navigation and, crucially, the six-speed manual transmission. Three months later, it was in the driveway. Fifteen months later, however, it was out of the driveway. I had just got my dream job as an automotive journalist and no longer needed to own a daily driver. The TSX would just be collecting dust and depreciation down in a garage, I hadn’t exactly grown attached to it after so little time, and it certainly didnÂ’t seem like a collectible car to hang onto for posterity. After months of trying to sell it (turns out all those dealers were on to something with their inventory builds), a nice young man named Chanc flew to Los Angeles with a check in hand. I took off my RIZ plates, he slid that manual transmission into first, and off my TSX went to its new home in Utah never to be heard or seen from again. Until Christmas Eve of last year. While enjoying an egg nog, I pulled out my phone to find I was tagged in the below Instagram post by someone named Tyson Hugie. It took me a second to process what I was seeing: somebody handing over keys to an Arctic Blue Acura TSX with a red bow on top. “Wait, what?” I exclaimed.           View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Tyson Hugie (@tysonhugie)   “IÂ’m an Acura brand aficionado, some call me an addict,” Hugie explained to me on an episode of the Autoblog Podcast recorded in the TSX itself. ThatÂ’s putting it lightly, and itÂ’s an addiction thatÂ’s resulted in quite the following on Instagram and YouTube, where he documents his collection/projects. “IÂ’ve been a fan of Honda and Acura products since the late ‘90s. Whenever I come across a particularly rare model, it kind of stays with me a long time.” His collecting started back in 2011 after Acura threw a red-carpet party for him, and more notably, the Acura Legend he owned that rolled over 500,000 miles. It has since crested 585,400. Nearly 30 other Acuras and Hondas have come, gone and stayed alongside it in HugieÂ’s garage since then.

2021 Acura TLX A-Spec Long-Term Wrap-Up | Not-so-long-term car

Been wondering what ever happened to our long-term 2021 Acura TLX A-Spec test car? Wonder no more, for we have answers to share with you in our long-term wrap-up. Last we updated you on our bright Apex Blue sport sedan, it was experiencing electrical gremlins aplenty. We weathered odd issues — random shifts into Park while stopped, infotainment glitching — the car simply decided to not start one day. This led to it being flat-bedded to the Acura dealer where it stayed for an abnormally long time. It was just over two months to be exact. The problems were ultimately determined to be from water intrusion to the fuse box, and some of the wait was for parts that had become corroded due to water being where it absolutely shouldnÂ’t be. Of course, our first question was, how did water get into the fuse box? Acura didnÂ’t have an obvious answer for us at first, but donÂ’t worry, we eventually got one. So, once the parts were in and installed, Acura gave the car a clean bill of health, and we took it back with only a month left in our year-long loan term. Unfortunately, our TLX would not make it that long. Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore took the TLX for this final stint. Two weeks of regular driving went by without any issue, but then the electrical gremlins returned. One afternoon he went out to the car and the dash lit up like a Christmas tree, sending the car into what Migliore said felt like a limp mode. The car technically ran, but it was not drivable. This meant yet another trip on the flatbed to the Acura dealer for another diagnosis. The days came and went, and eventually our original year-long loan term with the TLX expired. Approximately a month after this, Acura finally had answers for what had befallen our poor TLX.  Why so long, you ask? Acura actually called in engineers to try and sort out what had happened with this particular car. The answer? Water in the fuse box, once again. Apparently, the water intrusion issue from before hadnÂ’t been fully solved because the original source of leakage wasnÂ’t found in the first go-round, and water was still making its way into the fuse box. Acura tells us that trying to find the source of the intrusion is quite challenging, and thatÂ’s why it took the dealer and engineers so long to diagnose and sort out.

2020 Acura NSX Road Test | The cerebral supercar

The 2020 Acura NSX is the kind of car you’re pumped to drive. You think about it the night before. You read up on it. You tell your friends and family. You notice passers-by admiring it in the driveway. They try to be sly. Some gawk. ThereÂ’s anticipation. But is there satisfaction? The NSX immediately raises two questions. Where does it fit among its contemporaries and does it measure up to its legendary predecessor? Seeking the answers, I slip behind the wheel on a sunny morning. The NSX is a welcome respite from the cares of the world and concerns of the coronavirus. IÂ’ve got a few hours ahead of me in a $203,000 supercar. ItÂ’s a good time to reflect. Immediately, I have a sense of deja vu. I drove an NSX in 2017 at Pebble Beach, but my senses take me farther back, to the fall of 2014 when I drove a 1991 NSX. I had the same anticipation, nerves even, as I prepared for that drive. Getting situated in the 2020 model, IÂ’m struck by the simplicity of the NSX. A McLaren or a Lambo take a minute to figure out, but everything is easy to read and use in the Acura. Like the ‘91 NSX, it looks striking on the outside, but the inside is almost plain. IÂ’m OK with that. Simple works for Porsche, which will happily sell you a six-figure 911 with a spartan interior. IÂ’m underselling the NSXÂ’s cabin — which is actually quite nice inside — understated yet cool. My tester has a black interior with carbon-fiber accents and semi-aniline leather seats with Alcantara, though the big steering wheel is the focal point. Looking to my right, the infotainment anchors the center stack, and thereÂ’s a knob for tuning the drive modes and the push-button gear selector. The outward visibility is outstanding. Driving a supercar can be intimidating, and being able to see things is helpful, especially when youÂ’re inches off the ground. I accelerate onto a surface street where the speed limit is 45 mph. ThereÂ’s a low growl, and then the NSX gets a bit angrier. ItÂ’s never quite uncouth, even when the revs spin up on the expressway. ItÂ’s surprisingly gutsy low in the band, around 2,000-3,000 rpm, and the soundtrack gets louder and better from there. Anticipation building, I near the onramp to Interstate 75 in DetroitÂ’s northern suburbs, where I run into cones. And blockades. Construction work is a staple of summer in Michigan. More time on the suburban slow road, and I find myself growing more comfortable in the NSX.