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Acura NSX owners receive custom short teaser movies of their personal car

In a neat bit of fan service for those who've ordered Acura's new NSX halo car, the company will make a short film that reflects the way the car's been configured. Those films are on their way to future owners as you read this. In addition, they'll get a 1:18 scale custom model of their own car, reflecting every appearance option inside and out. That's neat. So neat, in fact, that we decided to commission our own video. We got together and configured a car in the lovely Nouvelle Blue Pearl, and sent our build over to Acura. They put together a video that's mostly representative of what an owner would see. You can see our build plate (hint: it says "Autoblog – Precision Crafted By Performance Manufacturing Center" on it), and that's "our" car on the dyno starting about 22 seconds in. If you want to check out someone else's film, you can compare our build to Jay Leno's. The reason Acura can do this is that there simply aren't that many available configurations for the NSX. This is at the root of one of the main criticisms some of our editors have about the car. An NSX starts at darn close to $160,000, and there are eight paint options (not too bad), four interior color options, and three seating options. All well and good, but compare that to the 16 paint and 12 interior color/material choices in a 911 Turbo, for example, choosing a similarly high-performance car at a similar price range. And there's a further wrinkle: Porsche will paint your car to match a sample you provide, so in reality the ability for an owner to make the car uniquely theirs is infinite, if you don't mind paying for it. See also the BMW Individual program, or McLaren's MSO one-offs. We're not just talking about the MSO Defined options, but the MSO Bespoke program itself, which will basically do anything you want to the car as long as it's road legal and your check doesn't bounce. We've been to MSO, and they're not kidding: they'll build anything. So yes, these custom videos are nice fan service, and they'll certainly jazz up the buyers who've already ordered one of these dynamically impressive cars. It's a move that builds loyalty, and certainly doesn't have much of a drawback. But for us, already a bit sensitive to Acura's conservative option list for the NSX, it serves to highlight the gap between Acura and the more established brands in catering to well-off customers' desire for bespoke range-topping creations.

Kia leads J.D. Power's Vehicle Dependability Study for 2022

For the first year ever, Kia leads J.D. Power's annual Vehicle Dependability Study with a score of 145 problems per 100 vehicles. Buick (147) and Hyundai (148) round out the top three. The highest premium brand on the list is Genesis, with a score of 148. It's common for so-called "mass market" brands to lead this particular study, according to J.D. Power, as "premium" brands "typically incorporate more technology in their vehicles, which increases the likelihood for problems to occur" and aren't necessarily built to a higher standard that less-expensive brands. The highest-rated single nameplate is the Porsche 911. It's the third time out of the past four years and the second year in a row that Porsche's quintessential sports car has taken top honors. Porsche as a brand sits in seventh place (162) just behind Lexus (159) and ahead of Dodge (166). At the very bottom of the list is Land Rover with a dismal score of 284; the SUV specialist held the same unfortunate distinction on last year's list. Ram (266), Volvo (256), Alfa Romeo (245) and Acura (244) also performed poorly. The overall industry average score sits at 192 — mass market brands average a score of 190 while premium brands sit 14 points lower at 204. While Tesla is unofficially included in some of J.D. Power's results, the agency says the sample size it has access to for this study is too small to include. As has been the case for the past several years, infotainment systems dominate the list of problems reported by owners. Popular (or unpopular, depending on your point of view) complaints include built-in voice recognition (8.3 PP100), Android Auto/Apple CarPlay connectivity (5.4 PP100), built-in Bluetooth system (4.5 PP100), not enough power plugs/USB ports (4.2 PP100), navigation systems difficult to understand/use (3.7 PP100), touchscreen/display screen (3.6 PP100), and navigation system inaccurate/outdated map (3.6 PP100). While problems with the car's infotainment and technology packages are indeed bothersome, it's important to remember that such issues aren't usually leaving owners stranded with an immovable vehicle like a broken transmission or blown engine would. Culling infotainment complaints from the results would reduce the average problem-per-100-vehicle score by a staggering 51.9 points. The vehicles included in this study are from the 2019 model year. That means owners have had three years to get to know their cars and trucks. It's the 33rd year that J.D.

2016 Acura NSX aimed at Ferrari 458 for the price of Audi R8

Acura has done a good job of keeping the next-generation NSX under the wraps for the past few months, especially after a fiery little incident during testing at the Nürburgring earlier this year. But UK's What Car? recently got a chance to speak with development boss Ted Klaus, and he unleashed a few new details about the much-anticipated supercar to make it even harder for us to wait.
Among the info was a strong estimate of the NSX's performance potential. "We have to achieve the type of acceleration that the customer is achieving with the Ferrari," said Klaus to What Car?. "More importantly we have to achieve this every day and also at the Nürburgring." Assuming Acura's supercar is as actually quick as a 458 Italia, then it could hit 60 miles per hour in around 3.5 seconds.
Klaus also claims that the wickedly fast performance could come at a relative bargain for the class. The price is reportedly being benchmarked against the Audi R8, which would put the NSX around $130,000 in the US. While hardly cheap, it would still be a healthy discount off a 458.