2022 Acura Mdx W/tech on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.

Acura NSX GT3 non-hybrid racecar on sale soon

Just over a year ago, Acura debuted the NSX GT3, the FIA GT3-spec racecar based on the automaker's latest and greatest. While it took years for the road car to hit the streets, the NSX GT3 was developed in a relatively short amount of time. This year, the car competed in several races under the factory banner, racking up 50,000 miles and two race victories. Today, Honda and Acura announced the NSX GT3 will go on sale for private teams. Think of the NSX GT3 as a stripped out version of the standard NSX sans hybrid system. The 3.5-liter twin-turbo remains, but, since there are no electric motors up front, all the power is sent to the rear wheels through a XTRAC semi-automatic 6-speed sequential transmission. The chassis is built in Ohio right alongside the regular NSX. The same goes for the engines. The block, heads, valve train, crankshaft, pistons, and dry-sump lubrication system are the same specification as the production car. Final assembly is completed in Italy. This past year, the NSX GT3 competed under the Acura banner in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD class and the Pirelli World Challenge GT category. In addition to those series, the car is built to compete in the Blancpain GT Series and 24 Hours Nurburgring in Europe, the Super GT GT300 class in Japan, as well as other GT3-spec race series. Different divisions of Honda will be handling global sales, with HPD responsible for the North American market. US pricing hasn't been announced, but converting the European models start at about $545,000. Now we just want to see a lightened, non-hybrid version of the NSX on the street. Related Video: Featured Gallery Acura NSX GT3 View 11 Photos Image Credit: Honda Motorsports Acura Honda Coupe Racing Vehicles Performance honda nsx acura nsx gt3

2019 Acura RDX infotainment first impressions | A first step into the touch pad world

One of the greatest design challenges in the modern automotive industry is an infotainment system that provides loads of capabilities, but is also easy-to-use and not overly distracting. Touch screens have been leading the way as the favored option, but Acura is trying a new design that relies on a touch pad with some unique tweaks to separate it from similar systems, such as those seen in competing Lexus models. And we got to try it out in the first production application, the 2019 Acura RDX compact crossover. The key feature of the touch pad is its one-to-one position functionality. What that means is that, if you have a grid of function buttons on the screen, tapping on, say, the upper left corner of the pad will highlight the button in the same area on the screen. And if you were to take your finger off the pad and tap in the opposite corner, that section of the screen would immediately be highlighted. You don't have to slide your finger across the pad to reach selections if you don't want to, and you don't have to slide back from the last function you highlighted. It basically does away with the need to move a cursor around like you would on a laptop with its mouse pad. In practice, it's a little odd to use at first because we mentally connect using a touch pad with the traditional cursor interface of the laptops we use day in and day out. As such, we forgot that we didn't have to scan the screen for the cursor every time we needed to select something. But once we remembered we could skip that, we found it quick and easy to drop our finger down and slide to our preferred function quickly. We could occasionally even pick something on the corners without having to slide at all. This is partly because Acura designed the interface to work with this pad. A representative from Acura's R&D center explained that they tried to put common functions on those corners because they're easy to reach without looking or thinking much. Another bonus to this system is that you don't immediately go to the function the second you press the pad. Instead, the feature is highlighted and still needs a physical click to enter. This is enormously helpful, since it virtually eliminates the chance of going to the wrong selection because you hit a bump or just got lazy with finger placement. Instead, you can get your finger in the right spot and then commit with a button press.