2010 Acura Mdx 3.7l on 2040-cars

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Honda's Acura NSX masterstroke: building the factory in Ohio

When Honda announced it was going to build its NSX supercar in Ohio instead of Japan, it caught everybody in the industry by surprise. No one expected this proud Japanese company to build its most technologically advanced sports car anywhere but in its home country. Now Honda has a supercar production facility in rural Ohio that would be the envy of any Formula One team. The people at Honda call it the PMC, but its official name is the Performance Manufacturing Center. It's a building that started out as a shipping facility for suppliers, but Honda invested $70 million to transform it into a showcase facility that will build the NSX. Honda benchmarked the assembly operations at Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren, and Bentley before work began on its facility. The 200,000 square-foot building will also double as a customer reception center – Honda will open the doors for customers to come see their car being built. It's also going to offer them high-speed test drives at the gigantic Transportation Research Center just down the road. No one expected this proud Japanese company to build its most technologically advanced sports car anywhere but in its home country. Inside, the layout is wide open and well lit. There are no stripes or lines on the floor and none of the different departments are walled off. This creates a more welcoming appearance and lets you get a comprehensive view of the entire process at a glance. And with an eye towards future lessons learned, most of the equipment is of a modular design that can be easily reconfigured or moved. The body shop and paint shop are enclosed by glass walls so that anyone can see what's going on inside. And while you'll see some automation here and there, the idea was to achieve a blend between man and machine, not to try and automate everything. This is a low-volume facility with production targeted at only eight to ten cars a day. The plant runs four days a week with one ten-hour shift. Don't expect to see rows of new NSXs parked on any dealer's lot. The car will only be built to order. Honda is obsessed with ensuring the NSX is built to the most exacting quality standards. The plant people pored over the JD Power Appeal study to determine what supercar customers care about the most, then looked at which aspects of that directly tie into manufacturing. They developed their quality control strategy with three goals in mind. First, they wanted to build everything right the first time with no adjustments.

UPDATE: 2021 Acura RDX PMC Edition price set

The 2021 RDX is the latest in Acura's lineup to get the PMC Edition treatment. This limited-run, hand-built model follows the TLX and MDX PMC Editions and be finished in the same Thermal Orange Pearl that was pioneered on the NSX.  Blessedly, the "PMC in PMC Edition doesn't stand for pumpkin-anything. Rather, it's shorthand for the facility where just 360 examples of this crossover will be hand-assembled: Acura's Performance Manufacturing Center — the home of the Acura NSX — on Honda's Marysville, Ohio, campus. Each PMC Edition arrives in Marysville as a "body in white," ready to assemble and receive the paint process normally reserved for the NSX. The PMC Edition will be equipped similarly to an RDX with the A-Spec and Advance packages, with one exception: Acura's Super-Handling All-Wheel Drive system will be standard.  Otherwise, the PMC Edition is mechanically identical to the RDX, whose A-Spec already boasts a sporty exterior treatment to boot. The PMC Edition jazzes that up even further with gloss black wheels, a body-color grille surround, black chrome exhaust finishers, a gloss-black roof, gloss-black side mirrors and gloss-back door handles.  Inside, the theme is essentially inverted, with the black leather upholstery, steering wheel and floor mats all getting orange contrast elements. Apart from the serial number placard on the center console, the rest of the PMC Edition's interior is identical to that of a standard RDX equipped with the aforementioned packages.  Acura says the RDX PMC Edition will be priced at $51,000, with customer deliveries starting in October — just in time for jack-o-lantern season. Made you work for that one, didn't we?

Acura may go all AWD in bid to mimic Subaru's success

Acura's struggles have been well publicized. The Honda-owned luxury brand doesn't seem sure of where it's going or what it's trying to accomplish, with its cars and marketing lacking a coherent theme. Now, a new report from Automotive News claims that the brand could follow the success of Subaru and (to a lesser extent) Audi, and adopt all-wheel-drive as standard across its model range.
"I think that's the way we should go," Acura boss Koichi Fukuo told Automotive News.
Acura already offers some form of all-wheel drive on every vehicle in its line aside from the lamentable ILX sedan. That could change as Acura begins rolling out next-generation versions of its still relatively new stable of sedans and crossovers.