Clear Tile!!! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2020 Acura NSX Road Test | The cerebral supercar

The 2020 Acura NSX is the kind of car you’re pumped to drive. You think about it the night before. You read up on it. You tell your friends and family. You notice passers-by admiring it in the driveway. They try to be sly. Some gawk. ThereÂ’s anticipation. But is there satisfaction? The NSX immediately raises two questions. Where does it fit among its contemporaries and does it measure up to its legendary predecessor? Seeking the answers, I slip behind the wheel on a sunny morning. The NSX is a welcome respite from the cares of the world and concerns of the coronavirus. IÂ’ve got a few hours ahead of me in a $203,000 supercar. ItÂ’s a good time to reflect. Immediately, I have a sense of deja vu. I drove an NSX in 2017 at Pebble Beach, but my senses take me farther back, to the fall of 2014 when I drove a 1991 NSX. I had the same anticipation, nerves even, as I prepared for that drive. Getting situated in the 2020 model, IÂ’m struck by the simplicity of the NSX. A McLaren or a Lambo take a minute to figure out, but everything is easy to read and use in the Acura. Like the ‘91 NSX, it looks striking on the outside, but the inside is almost plain. IÂ’m OK with that. Simple works for Porsche, which will happily sell you a six-figure 911 with a spartan interior. IÂ’m underselling the NSXÂ’s cabin — which is actually quite nice inside — understated yet cool. My tester has a black interior with carbon-fiber accents and semi-aniline leather seats with Alcantara, though the big steering wheel is the focal point. Looking to my right, the infotainment anchors the center stack, and thereÂ’s a knob for tuning the drive modes and the push-button gear selector. The outward visibility is outstanding. Driving a supercar can be intimidating, and being able to see things is helpful, especially when youÂ’re inches off the ground. I accelerate onto a surface street where the speed limit is 45 mph. ThereÂ’s a low growl, and then the NSX gets a bit angrier. ItÂ’s never quite uncouth, even when the revs spin up on the expressway. ItÂ’s surprisingly gutsy low in the band, around 2,000-3,000 rpm, and the soundtrack gets louder and better from there. Anticipation building, I near the onramp to Interstate 75 in DetroitÂ’s northern suburbs, where I run into cones. And blockades. Construction work is a staple of summer in Michigan. More time on the suburban slow road, and I find myself growing more comfortable in the NSX.

Acura bringing near-production-ready concept sedan to Pebble Beach

Three years ago Acura turned many heads with the Precision concept. Said to be the future of Acura design language, the latest RDX crossover is the most full-bodied expression of the Precision Crafted Performance design language. The rest of the range has only gone as far as the Diamond Pentagon grille. That looks to change later this year, when Acura brings a near-production-ready four-door to Pebble Beach that's inspired by the Precision. Car and Driver, which got a peek into Acura's Southern California design studio, says the tea leaves "point to a new production Acura sedan in the Precision concept's gorgeous 'four-door coupe' form." Believing the Pebble display will be "a tribute to the best of Acura's past" and could presage a flagship to replace the RLX, C/D wonders if the carmaker won't reach into its deep past and resurrect the Legend name. That's seems a bit much, but we have only six months to wait. After that, the next-generation TLX sedan and MDX crossover will arrive, and are expected to wear Precision cues. Both are scheduled to make landfall at the end of this year or beginning of next year. Based on shapes bulging under taut covers, C/D says both will receive stretched front intakes and "hook-shaped, extruded taillights." A juiced TLX Type S with a ducktail spoiler appears to lurk in the near future, too. Eventually, the second coming of the ZDX crossover might get the nod as well. Acura sold the severely rakish crossover coupe from 2009 to 2013, well before crossover coupes had established themselves. Looking at what's happened in the past 10 years, the ZDX was either ahead of its time, or consumers only want diminished rear headroom from German crossovers; no Japanese luxury maker has yet put a sloped roof on one of its crossovers. That means if a new ZDX does come, it could be just as novel the second time as it was the first.Related Video:

2019 Acura NSX Track Test Review | Exotic tech, exhilarating performance

EAST LIBERTY, Ohio — The 2019 Acura NSX makes sonorous noises behind my ear as the tachometer soars toward 7,500 rpm. My hands grip the squared-off steering wheel a bit too hard as I scrub off about 60 mph and dive into the first corner of the Transportation Research Center (TRC) dynamic handling course. There's 3,878 pounds of car beneath me, but the front tires do exactly what my hands tell them to, without hesitation, and I'm through the double apex corner without even thinking about the defiance of physics I just witnessed. On paper, a nearly 4,000-pound track car makes no sense. Yet in practice, it's just as tossable and eager to change direction as something much lighter. This is the NSX's party trick, thanks to some magic with the suspension and all-wheel drive system on this car. And while the new NSX is a very different vehicle than its predecessor, it was born of a similar spirit of innovation and forward thinking. The original Acura NSX hit the streets in 1991, establishing a new set of rules for every supercar released since. Constructed of an aluminum body — still an exotic material mainly used in competition vehicles — with curves that still drop jaws today, it was every bit as sophisticated as a Ferrari. But unlike Ferraris of the time, it was also reliable and easy to drive. Slide behind the wheel of a 1991 NSX, and you'll be transported back to a time when outward visibility was still in style. You can see the ground right in front of the nose. Turn around, and there's nothing blocking your view but a low wing. It's essentially a bubble canopy. Acura knows owners of the original NSX, your author included, absolutely love this about their cars. The effort to make the cockpit of the NSX similar is appreciated, even if modern crash standards prevent a perfect implementation. There are other subtle throwbacks. Every original NSX made a distinctive intake whine when winding it up to 8,000 rpm, and the new NSX has real intake noise physically pumped into the cabin to replicate this sweet sound all the way through the rev band. Another echo of the original is the simplified, sedate dash layout — eminently usable and likely to age well. A simplified version of the new RDX infotainment system would have fit the bill, too, but sadly it's not present. Under way, however, the generational similarities cease. Our time on this trip in the 2019 model was spent solely on track at TRC, and it was a wholly different experience from the old car.