Where’s the passion, Acura?

Photo Courtesy of AutoGuide.com

I was watching some tv on Hulu the other day and, knowing that I like cars, Hulu showed the same commercial for the new Acura ILX about a dozen times. The scale of the car didn’t exactly dawn on me until about the 10th time that I watched the commercial and I realized that this was Acura’s new foray into the luxury compact market. A foray, that much like the rest of their lineup, I find to be a combination of boring and half-hearted.

Let’s be honest, Acura could not have created this car for any reason other than the fact that someone in Acura’s marketing department got together with a statistician and someone from accounting and said “there is a market to sell X-thousand small luxury vehicles between $25k and $35k and we could have a profit margin of Y per vehicle” and then some executive at Honda got dollar signs (or maybe yen signs?) in his eyes and said “brilliant! let’s do it!”.

So then, much like Acura did before with the CSX -the ILX’s predecessor, which was only sold in Canada-, they took the current Honda Civic, popped in some fancier headlamps, had the designers pull on some of the exterior lines a bit, stretched some leather over the seats, and pinched the top of the H on the grill emblem to form an A. The design of Acura’s makes it less blatantly obvious that the ILX is the Civic than the design of the CSX did but, to anyone capable of completing a 10 piece jigsaw puzzle, it’s not difficult to see.

The US market was probably added to the territory of the ILX so Acura could compete with the Lexus CT hybrid. In fact they offer the ILX as a hybrid at an MSRP of $28,900, undercutting the Lexus by roughly $200.

This kind of profit driven strategy is all fine and dandy for the share holder, but my issue is that it shows how clearly Honda has lost it’s libido and no longer has any passion in their products. Yes, the company is coming out with a new NSX, but it’s clearly because they want a slice of the luxury-sport GT market from which Audi is reaping so much success with their R8.

Honda is a company that makes family cars, but no longer offers any that will get mom and dad “revved up”, so to speak. The sporty S2000 which was so popular as both a driver’s car and simply a joyous little convertible is a thing of the past. The new NSX ads may feature car enthusiasts like Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld (how could he betray Porsche like that!?), but it’s not like the old one where Honda touted a chassis developed with the help of Formula 1 Racing’s greatest driver, Ayrton Senna. Honda even pulled out of sponsoring an F1 team altogether in 2008.

Acura, much the same, is Honda’s brand for the socio-economic ladder climbers with a family. They tout cars full of tried and true technology, but never anything new or innovative. Acura puts an emphasis on safety, comfort, and fuel economy balanced with what they subjectively deem is sportiness. They load their cars up with a plethora of tech, though none of it is ever cutting edge and all of it seems to distract from the actual sensation of the driving experience. Their cars are priced in such a manner that they undercut other luxury automakers. They seem target young men or couples who can drop $30,000 on a car, then move them up their product line in $5,000 increments as their income increases. In short, their cars are designed and built to be sold to a specific demographic, but that leads to a problem, there is no passion. None. Zero. Zilch.

The whole lineup is reliable, perhaps more so than its competitors. My grandparents appreciate that reliability and are on their third Acura TL. I’ve driven their newest TL on a couple of road trips and around town a time or two, and once went with my grandfather to test drive other Acuras at  a dealership. The cabin in an Acura is a nice place to be, the seats are comfortable, the leather is of good quality, there’s lots of space, the sound system is decent, the back up camera is helpful, and the satnav… well actually the satnav is a bad joke, and the interior panels look as though two designers argued over wether to use cheap or quality finishes and settled on juxtaposing the two.

The brakes and suspension are both gentle yet manage to instill confidence in the driver. The steering and the pedals are all smooth and consistent, but they feel electronic and artificial, and their punchy-yet-smooth drivetrains can’t really make up for that. The optional automated-“manual” transmissions Acura offers is also slow to react and is based on a system that many European car manufacturers have left behind.

In the end an Acura is a good buy and hopefully the ILX will live up to that. However, I would much rather save up my money a bit longer and buy a slightly more expensive, less reliable car from a German maker. One that is willing to take a risk and offer me something that is not a rebadged econo-car, but something truly new and innovative, truly sporty, and most importantly, truly passionate.

Tired of Terrible Tires

Within the past week I’ve read a blog post from Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson and a column in the Radar section of evo magazine (issue 170) both talking about how terrible today’s tires are. Frankly, I couldn’t agree more with them and I don’t own a super car or even a car that rolls on special tires.

I remember two years ago I punctured a front tire in my family’s 2003 VW Jetta on one of the many roads of Tulsa, Oklahoma that ought to be condemned. I made a big deal about it and got the city to replace, not only the punctured tire, but also the other front tire, as I insisted they needed to match and Michelin no longer made the original tires that were on the car. Clarkson points out that a VW is probably the only car around that you could readily get a tire for without waiting, but even that is a stretch these days. I distinctly recall it taking several days to get the Michelin “Primacy MXM4”, a tire which is used by many cars including my neighbor’s Mercedes W220 S-Class and my grandfather’s Acura TL.

The saddest part is that while the “Primacy MXM4” provides more traction than it’s predecessor, the ride these tires provide is downright horrendous! Driving on highways is pleasant enough, but once you’re in a city the tires are a complete joke and you can’t drive more than five minutes without feeling like you need a spine transplant. Yes, they provide “more precise handling”, but what’s the bloody point if the wheel is practically shaken from your hands at every seam in the road?

And let’s touch on the fact that these low profile demons can ruin your car over time, especially some of the earlier models with large wheels. Our Jetta was nice and quiet when we bought it used with some 30,000 miles on it, but at nearly 80,000 I have to turn up the radio to keep from hearing all the rattles. Yes, things come loose on cars over the years, but rarely to this extent. The low profile tires provide such a rough ride that the chassis of your car can slowly begin to warp, causing things to no longer fit together perfectly, the way they once did. This was also the case with my neighbor’s S-Class and the rattling was one of the many contributing factors when he eventually got rid of the big German land yacht. Even some Porsche buyer’s guides warn potential owners against buying some of the earlier 911s to sport 18” rims for this reason. Newer cars have been engineered to take the brunt, but often this results increased weight and thus lower fuel economy. Ironic, no?

My 1994 BMW 3 series has what I would call “normal”, sane, high profile tires. Tires that, despite the BMW having 214,000 miles, give it a smooth, luxurious, and rattle-free ride while also delivering exceptional handling and performance. Traditional tires also don’t leave your wheels as vulnerable to damage as low profile tires. So why in the hell could VW and Mercedes not have put these wonderful tires on the Jetta and the S-class? Why did BMW switch to low profile tires?

The industry may make the excuse that these tires offer a lower rolling resistance, and thus better fuel economy but let’s face it, these tires don’t last as long as high profile tires. Replacing tires more frequently far outweighs both the cost to the environment of a couple less MPGs, and to your wallet of a few more dollars at the fuel pump. The other argument they might make could be for handling, but unless you’re taking it to a track you’re probably going to prefer high profile tires. Besides, most new cars are going to electronic steering systems that offer less feel, making it increasingly easier throw out the handling argument altogether.

The day the industry could justifiably put these tires on a car is the day that tires are made of compounds that last longer without sacrificing traction and that even the common man’s car can have adaptable magnetic suspension that let’s you forget that you’re on low profile tires altogether. Even then, however, car companies and tire manufacturers will have to come to a consensus and choose a few tires that everyone will use. This business of having five different kinds of tires with specific sizes and compounds for each model that a car manufacturer produces is complete nonsense. Even the high profile tires on my BMW, tires that fit a multitude of vehicles made over the past 20 or 30 years, had to be ordered a couple days in advance when I needed them replaced. This is simply unacceptable.

Advancing tire technology for the track is great, but it’s past time for the car industry to think about the actual customer and not the race car driver when they design tires for their products.