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Acura bringing near-production-ready concept sedan to Pebble Beach

Three years ago Acura turned many heads with the Precision concept. Said to be the future of Acura design language, the latest RDX crossover is the most full-bodied expression of the Precision Crafted Performance design language. The rest of the range has only gone as far as the Diamond Pentagon grille. That looks to change later this year, when Acura brings a near-production-ready four-door to Pebble Beach that's inspired by the Precision. Car and Driver, which got a peek into Acura's Southern California design studio, says the tea leaves "point to a new production Acura sedan in the Precision concept's gorgeous 'four-door coupe' form." Believing the Pebble display will be "a tribute to the best of Acura's past" and could presage a flagship to replace the RLX, C/D wonders if the carmaker won't reach into its deep past and resurrect the Legend name. That's seems a bit much, but we have only six months to wait. After that, the next-generation TLX sedan and MDX crossover will arrive, and are expected to wear Precision cues. Both are scheduled to make landfall at the end of this year or beginning of next year. Based on shapes bulging under taut covers, C/D says both will receive stretched front intakes and "hook-shaped, extruded taillights." A juiced TLX Type S with a ducktail spoiler appears to lurk in the near future, too. Eventually, the second coming of the ZDX crossover might get the nod as well. Acura sold the severely rakish crossover coupe from 2009 to 2013, well before crossover coupes had established themselves. Looking at what's happened in the past 10 years, the ZDX was either ahead of its time, or consumers only want diminished rear headroom from German crossovers; no Japanese luxury maker has yet put a sloped roof on one of its crossovers. That means if a new ZDX does come, it could be just as novel the second time as it was the first.Related Video:

Acura considering Vezel-based compact crossover

There's a distinct benefit to automakers having their own premium brand. After all, why develop one vehicle to be sold under one nameplate if you can turn it into two? Especially if a little reconfiguration and some premium accoutrements allow said automaker to charge significantly more for the luxury version. It's a winning formula - for crossovers especially - that Toyota has used to turn the Highlander into the Lexus RX (even if the first-gen RX arrived before the original Highlander), that Ford has used to transform the Edgee into the Lincoln MKX and that General Motors has applied to the Chevrolet Suburban to turn it into the Cadillac Escalade (to name just a few of the many examples out there). And it's one to which Honda and its Acura division are certainly not unaccustomed.
Acura has adapted its Euro-spec Honda Accord into the TSX, the Civic into the ILX, the CR-V into the RDX and the Pilot into the MDX. And now that the Honda Vezel is coming to market, Acura reportedly has its eye on that as well. The idea was first introduced when Acura unveiled the SUV-X concept (shown above) at the Shanghai Motor Show this past April, just a few months after Honda revealed its Urban SUV concept that previewed the production Vezel. At the time, says Automotive News, Acura said it intended to put the concept into production in China for the Chinese market, and it's reportedly moving ahead with those plans. But now that it is, executives are wondering where else they might find buyers for the premium compact crossover.
With the Vezel soon to begin production alongside the Fit at Honda's new plant in Mexico, it wouldn't be a stretch to see the Acura version follow suit. The market does, after all, seem to be heating up with entries like the Audi Q3, BMW X1 and Mercedes-Benz GLA, and we couldn't blame Honda - pardon us, Acura - for wanting a slice of that pie.

Honda HR-V could spawn Acura variant

We've been saying it for months now, but the compact CUV is the next big thing. Everyone, and we mean everyone, is at least considering getting in on the action, if they aren't already actively designing or selling, and that's true whether they're a premium or mainstream automaker. That, of course, includes Acura, whose parent company, Honda, has a compact CUV of its own coming to market very, very soon. With the arrival of the Fit-based HR-V, that begs the question of whether the near-premium marque will join this burgeoning segment. The idea of building a car below the company's entry level CUV, the RDX, is an appealing one to Honda Executive Vice President John Mendel, who called it "potentially the only place you could go," and would occupy the "white space" the company is looking to fill. While we might chuckle about the idea of a luxurious, Fit-based CUV, it's fair to say it could do well for Acura. It could certainly provide a foil to the very hot selling Buick Encore, and may even capture some sales from the luxuriously outfitted Jeep Renegade Limited/Fiat 500X Lounge. It remains to be seen, though, if Acura could build an HR-V capable of tangling with the new entries from Lexus, Audi and Mercedes-Benz.