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Acura, Penske reveal ARX-05 prototype racecar

CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, Calif. — Acura pulled the cover off its striking Daytona prototype, called the ARX-05, as part of a new partnership with one of racing's most legendary names, Roger Penske. The racecar debuted Friday at The Quail, a vintage car show held during the week of the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Acura and Team Penske will campaign two cars next season in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar championship, starting with the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January. ARX is short for Acura Racing eXperimental, generation five. The car will run a twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6 engine that's based on the J35 series six-cylinder used throughout Acura's lineup. The body, designed by Acura global creative director Dave Marek's team, uses design cues from the company's road cars, including similar headlights. The chassis is based on the Oreca 07 setup. "We're already testing, and things are looking pretty good," said Art St. Cyr, president of Honda Performance Development and Acura Motorsports. Acura has raced endurance cars since 1991, finding success in IMSA and the former American Le Mans series. Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya and Dane Cameron will drive one of the cars, while the other team to be announced later. Acura will face off against Nissan, Cadillac, Mazda, Oreca, Dallara and Multimatic Riley in the IMSA prototype field. The venture marks a return to sports-car competition for Penske, whose organization ran a Chevy Corvette in its first race at the 1966 24 Hours of Daytona and then operated victorious ALMS programs into the 2000s. Penske sees racing as a way to raise the image of Acura, whose cars he sells at his dealerships, Penske Automotive Group. "We want to take this brand to the next level," he said. "It's [racing] a core part of our brand and it's one of the ways we are validating our performance," said Acura vice president and general manager Jon Ikeda. After The Quail, the ZRX-05 is scheduled to appear at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion and in a featured area for concept and racing cars on the lawn at the Concours. Related Video: Featured Gallery Acura ARX-05 Daytona Prototype Reveal View 11 Photos Related Gallery Acura ARX-05 race car View 12 Photos Image Credit: Live photos copyright 2017 Drew Phillips / Autoblog.com Motorsports Acura Racing Vehicles Pebble Beach daytona prototype

Daily Driver: 2016 Acura RLX Sport Hybird

Daily Driver videos are micro-reviews of vehicles in the Autoblog press fleet, reviewed by the staffers that drive them every day. Today's Daily Driver features the 2016 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid, reviewed by Seyth Miersma. You can watch the video above or read a transcript below. And don't forget to watch more Autoblog videos at /videos. Show full video transcript text [00:00:00]Hi y'all. This is Seyth with Autoblog. I am driving the 2016 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid SH All-Wheel Drive, or SH-AWD, as we like to call it. Any way you slice it the name is a mouthful. This version of the RLX, the hybrid, incorporates an all-wheel drive system that includes three electric motors: one up front, two in the rear turning the rear wheels in [00:00:30]addition to the 3.5-liter gasoline engine. Now, that powertrain effectively makes it the performance version, hence the sport, of the RLX line. It's got a total system output of 377 horsepower, and 341 pound feet of torque so there's plenty of go juice in this hybrid. Clearly Honda had some performance in mind when they were putting this system together in addition to the sort of typical hybrid good gas mileage. It's rated at 28 MPG in the city, and 32 on the highway. [00:01:00]I've been seeing around 28 in two days worth of driving so far, and playing around with it. It's not the fuel-sipper that you're going to buy ... not a car that you're buying for economy exclusively. The good news is that when you really get into it, the car does feel quite quick. You still have that electric torque so you're really getting a lot of torque push from the rear wheels. You really do feel like kind of a performance all-wheel drive experience [00:01:30]more than a front-wheel drive experience like you get in the typical RLX. Now, it's not a sports sedan. It's pretty squishy. There's not much steering feel. Really throwing it from bend to bend isn't that rewarding. The car that I'm driving today is loaded out to around $67,000. I think you can spend a little bit more than that if you really try, but it kind of is at the top end of the RLX range. I feel like everything does come together kind of neatly. I don't think that this interior is going to feel very old in a couple of years. I think it'll age pretty well because it's a [00:02:00]conservative design frankly. The downside is that, unlike some cars, particularly a lot of the new Mercedes coming out right now, nobody's going to sit down in this RLX and think, "Wow.

2014 Acura RLX Sport Hybrid [w/video]

Having already driven and reviewed the 2014 Acura RLX this year, colleagues Steven Ewing and Jeffrey Ross poured several thousand words into apprising it, then someone took the safety off the Comments and flipped them to "Fully Automatic" because those two reviews and four brief posts were hit by more than 1,200 of your deeply felt sentiments.
People care about Acura.
Roughly half of those comments were in reply to news of this car, the 2014 RLX Sport Hybrid SH-AWD, a sedan that intends to show that Acura cares, too. Underneath a skin almost imperceptibly different from the standard RLX, the one that has given us P-AWS (Precision All-Wheel Steer), is a Super Handling All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD) system that replaces the mechanical components it relies on in the TL and MDX with computerized sophistication and three electric motors. Top that off with more power, and the aim is to provide a machine that does a better job of getting Acura a starting spot in the premium luxury game than the erstwhile and now all-but-forgotten RL that the RLX replaces.