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2015 Acura TLX is all too familiar, despite its new tricks [w/videos]

I'm confident in saying that the 2015 Acura TLX, revealed today at the New York Auto Show, will be a perfectly nice car to drive. It'll be nice to sit in, with plenty of luxurious amenities. It'll be... fine. And for Acura, "fine" is apparently good enough.
I say that because while the TLX is an all-new offering (it replaces both the TL and TSX), it hardly shakes up the Acura formula we've come to accept over the past few years. It looks like everything else in the automaker's lineup, complete with the neat LED headlamps and signature beaked grille. Power comes from either a 2.4-liter naturally aspirated inline-four with 206 horsepower, or a 3.5-liter V6 with 290 hp - engines we've tested in countless other Honda/Acura products. The front-wheel-drive version uses the Precision All-Wheel Steer (P-AWS) from the RLX, and high-end V6 models use the Super-Handling All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD) that we've enjoyed across the rest of the Acura range. Really, there's nothing to write home about here, except maybe, how that power is sent to the wheels.
Acura is finally - finally - moving beyond the world of the six-speed transmission, offering a new eight-speed, dual-clutch gearbox with the 2.4-liter engine, and a swanky new nine-speed automatic with the 3.5-liter V6. This is arguably the biggest news surrounding the TLX, though do note, fuel economy hasn't vastly been improved in the process. The TLX 2.4 musters up 24 miles per gallon in the city and 35 mpg highway, while the front-drive V6 is rated at 21/34 mpg. Optioning for the V6 SH-AWD reduces things to 21/31 mpg.

2014 Acura MDX goes for a camouflaged cruise

While the often misunderstood (and infrequently purchased) Acura ZDX may be going the way of the dinosaur, the company's far more conventional and successful MDX SUV is evolving. In fact, the 2014 MDX seems to be coming along rather nicely, if this latest set of spy images is any indication.
In the camouflaged prototype we see here, it is evident that Acura designers are going for a beefier look for the MDX front end. The current car's pointed and beaked nose are nowhere in evidence on this tester, though some version of Acura's prominent shield grille does seem to remain.
It's a bit difficult to tell if the shape of the glasshouse is much revised on this new car, as the camo is applied in such a fashion as to obscure the post C-pillar design. But it does seem as though, when we look hard at the full-profile shots of the MDX, that the wheel-arch bulges and side character lines of the current vehicle have been replaced with much simpler surfacing.

Junkyard Gem: 1987 Acura Legend Sedan

Honda beat Toyota and Nissan in the race to bring a luxury marque to North America, introducing us to the Acura brand for the 1986 model year. Acura shoppers could buy a luxed-up, more powerful Civic (the Integra) that year, while the real high-rollers went for a smooth-looking, V6-powered luxury sedan co-developed by Rover and Honda: the Legend. That was quite a leap for a company that had been selling tiny cars with two-cylinder motorcycle engines just 15 years earlier, but the 1973-1985 period had been spectacularly good times for Honda. The early Legend sold very well in California, and that's where I found this high-mile '87 a couple of months back. While the Legend had the same underlying chassis structure and engine family as the Rover 800 (known as the Sterling in North America), the Honda-grade build quality and non-Lucas electrical components of the Legend meant that it outlasted its Rover cousins by decades and hundreds of thousands of miles. This one didn't quite make it to 300,000 miles, but 281,032 miles blows away the readings I see on most 1980s junkyard cars not made by Mercedes-Benz. It's hard to imagine a prestigious luxury sedan with three pedals these days, but plenty of the early Legends were sold here with the five-speed manual transmission. Starting in the early 1990s, though, nearly all U.S.-market Legends had slushboxes (though the manual could be had all the way through the final Legends of 1995). Every Legend ever made came with a V6 engine. This car has a 2.5-liter DOHC rated at 151 horsepower, while the 1987 Legend coupe got a 2.7 making 161 horses. Other than the worn-out front seats, the interior in this car looked fairly decent when it arrived in its final parking space. Most super-high-mile cars I see in junkyards aren't very trashed-looking, presumably due to owners who took good care of them for decades (I do see the occasional exception to this rule, of course). The body shows no rust, as you'd expect in California, but the paint hasn't fared so well over its 33 years. It's the performance sedan making European automakers uncomfortable. Unlike many of the wild Japanese-market car ads of the 1980s, Honda pitched the JDM Legend in a most dignified manner. Featured Gallery Junked 1987 Acura Legend Sedan View 15 Photos Auto News Acura Automotive History Classics Acura Legend