2005 Acura Tl 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.

2013 Acura ILX 2.4

Going Mainstream Has Its Privileges
Acura's experiment with niche models has failed. Competing in the luxury car business by filling white space with product just didn't work for the Japanese automaker. In place of slow-selling models like its ZDX and quirky first-gen RDX, the mindset at Acura has recently switched to more conventional products with vastly improved volume potential. The redesigned 2013 RDX, for example, sold almost as many units in 2012 as it did in 2010 and 2011 combined, and the all-new 2013 ILX has sold more units each month - since going on sale in May - than Acura sold in ZDXs and RLs in all of last year.
While the redesigned RDX is a crucial product to compete with luxury compact crossovers, the ILX might be the most important new product for Acura, as a growing number of premium makes are starting to realize the importance of upscale entry-level compact cars. Ironically, this segment was a pivotal part of the brand's success in the 1980s and '90s thanks to the Integra, but Acura completely abandoned the genre when it killed off the RSX coupe in 2006. The addition of the ILX not only gives Acura a competitive small car again, it also drops the brand's entry price by almost $5,000.

Acura MDX PMC priced at $63,745

The 2020 Acura MDX PMC edition, first unveiled as a prototype at the 2019 New York Auto Show last spring and later shown in production form at the L.A. Auto Show this past fall, is finally arriving in showrooms. And that means we now have actual pricing: $63,745. That includes a hefty $1,995 destination fee, which is $970 more than the charge for a regular MDX and equals that of the NSX supercar. The total represents a $4,470 upcharge over the now-penultimate MDX Advance, at $59,275. What does $4,470 worth of extra specialness buy you? Let us review: Like the previous PMC version of the TLX sedan, the MDX wears trim-exclusive Valencia Red Pearl nano pigment paint, applied with a multi-stage process at the NSX factory. It's set off with gloss-black exterior elements including 20-inch 10-spoke wheels, roof panel, grille and surround, side mirrors, door handles, and antenna, with black-chrome exhaust tips. Inside, the seats are upholstered in black Milano leather with Alcantara inserts and red contrast stitching. Red stitching also appears on the steering wheel, door panels, center console and armrest, and headrests. Floor mats have A Spec logos, and metal shift paddles are also included. Besides the PMC-specific visuals, the model includes a full raft of features, including navigation, heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats and steering wheels, adaptive dampers, LED exterior lighting, ELS Studio premium audio, second-row captain's chairs, surround-view camera system, and more.  Beyond the content, what makes the PMC edition unique is that it's partially assembled at the brand's Performance Manufacturing Center (thus, "PMC"), where the NSX is built. Production is limited to 300 units for the U.S. market, with another 30 for Canada. Related video: Acura NSX Factory Tour