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2015 Acura NSX burns to the ground at the 'Ring [w/video]

Assuming all goes to plan, automakers test their vehicles to the breaking point in the months and years leading up to that vehicle's actual release into the public. Which is good, because it's much better for a car to break in glorious fashion in the hands of the company that produces it than in the driveway of an owner who just spent their hard-earned cash to get it.
Such was the case with this production-guise Acura NSX prototype that we saw running around the Nürburgring just the other day. We can't be 100-percent certain, but the burned-out carcass is wearing the same number plate as the car that was spotted earlier, so it's likely the very same NSX. We have no idea what was the cause of the blaze that turned this Acura into the car-b-q you see pictured above, but our spy shooters on the ground in Germany say it was not involved in any collision, having caught on fire all on its own with engineers behind the wheel.
The good news is that nobody was hurt, though the car is quite clearly a complete loss. We're sure there's another ready to to test in the burned car's place... just as soon as the engineers at Honda figure out exactly what went wrong. Have a look at the smoldering aftermath up above, and feel free to scroll down below to see a video of the car in much better circumstances.

Acura launches ad spots for Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Acura and Jerry Seinfeld are expanding their partnership as season three of the comedian's web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, prepares to debut. Seinfeld has paired with director Barry Sonnenfeld to create a series of ads for the luxury brand showcasing the new Acura RLX and MDX.
There are eight spots, written by Seinfeld and directed by Sonnenfeld, that seemingly mock advertisements of the 1960s, with a deep-voiced, smooth-talking host highlighting the cars in question. It's all very folksy, Leave it to Beaver style humor. We'd be lying, though, if we said we weren't reminded a bit too forcefully of Dodge's successful range of Will Ferrell ads when watching the eight Acura spots.
"My idea for Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee was to show this certain aspect of the stand-up comedy world in a way that comedy fans would enjoy experiencing as if they were there," said Seinfeld. "There is absolutely no doubt that without Acura's support I would not have been able to continue beyond the initial experiment. And now Acura has enabled me to extend the concept by creating ads that fit the comedy tone of the show."

This is why Acura hasn't yet announced its EV strategy

Despite parent company Honda's green and friendly brand image, luxury marque Acura hasn't made a grand statement about electrifying their lineup. Even as brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Bentley, and Infiniti pledge to entirely electrify their lineups in the coming decade, Acura has held back. The reason, according to Acura head honcho Jon Ikeda, is that it's focusing on reestablishing itself as a performance brand. In a wide-ranging interview with Automotive News, Ikeda says Acura came out of the gate strong in 1986 and did well for the first 20 years, but when the bottom fell out of the market in 2008 the brand experienced "growing pains." That spawned a period of self-reflection and, as Ikeda puts it, "What are we about?" The decision was made to go back to Acura's roots as the performance division of Honda. "That's what Acura is. That's what I fell in love with," Ikeda says. Ikeda joined Honda in 1989, but his promotion to Acura boss in 2015 was a surprise to many, including himself. That's because Honda had a tradition of putting engineers at the helm, and Ikeda was a designer, responsible for the looks of such cars as the FSX concept, 2001 Civic Coupe, and beloved 2004 Acura TL. 2021 Acura TLX Advance View 38 Photos When asked by AN whether Acura is worried that luxury competitors are putting stakes in the ground to claim EV brand identities, Ikeda says no. "For us as a brand, we needed to kind of refocus and reestablish ourselves as a performance brand... We want everybody to understand where we are, what we're about first. Even if we go electric we will continue to be a performance division of Honda and performance will be our focus." To earn its performance street cred, Acura poured resources into the second-gen NSX hybrid supercar, which served as testbed for how electricity can work harmoniously with performance. They will continue to campaign IMSA race cars to earn trophies as proof, and Ikeda also wants to bring more Type S models to the lineup. Ikeda says Acura is still in the process of rebuilding its foundation, but when he's done he expects people to associate Acura with performance. That sure seems ambitious to us, but products like the new TLX are a helpful stepping stone. It also explains why Acura is investing in different platforms to differentiate itself from Honda. To be clear, Ikeda isn't ruling out electrification.