Striker223

Yeah they are a boring look but I like them for what they are as a car vs appearances. I tend to buy most things that way, looks are the last of my concern

SW17LS

Then that dealer is just stupid and you should be able to get one for less somewhere else. The car isnt a BMW, no, but its also 15% cheaper, and Acura has their own fan base.

TheRas900

I'm a huge Acura fan. My 07 TSX 6MT was my second favorite car ever and certainly the one I kept the longest. In September I picked up a new Integra manual despite not being a fan of it's styling. The car drives amazingly well.

The TLX is just a compromised vehicle. I have tried to will myself to buy both the first and second generations, and still can't do it. The current model is big outside, small inside, which is the worst of both worlds. It lacks some features the competition has, and with Acura packaging you can't even option them. For instance, you can get a rear heated seat or the hotter engine, but you can't get both in any version. None has a panoramic roof despite being such a large car. Acura makes some wonderful naturally aspirated 6 cylinder engines and 6 speed manual transmissions, but the TLX gets neither. Due to differences in weight and transmission response, a BMW 330 feels as quick as a TLX Type S, and an M340 feels faster and sounds better. The BMW does have a price premium, as it should for the reasons mentioned. It also seems to have much greater demand, again probably for the reasons noted above.

I would usually put reliability firmly in the Acura camp, but while my Integra has no issues save a loud rattle, the activity on that forum will quickly make you realize this is not Honda quality of the 1990's. When I last looked, the gen 2 TLX launch was riddled with several quality issues. For what it's worth, as with any N of 1 is not much, my 2016 328 6MT was flawless for 3 years with the only 2 dealer visits for annual complimentary services.

Vladi

That's been around for over 15 years now and even though it's biased to the rear it certainly doesn't feel like that nor can come close to EVO X rwd feeling. Active sports differential is real wheel vectoring option which comes standard on SH-AWD.

Striker223

You clearly have never driven a real Quattro car with a torson center diff and TVD. The SH system is a cheap attempt to copy it, always has been with the RL and the current version being the closest attempts but still not on the same level. Very few Acura cars had a active rear diff and it has operation limits that do not allow it to operate at all angles of attack and will actually stop working when pushed hard due to the ratio limit. There is also a activation delay since it's a relative system without a torson diff, the Quattro system doesn't have these limits and I have gone over this extensively before on this sub forum.

I am not referring to the cheap, Haldex "quattro" system that the "Audi" A4/5 cheap SUVs use but rather what the real cars like the RS/S and top cars use.

SW17LS

Honda is a shadow of what it once was in regards to reliability unfortunately...

TheRas900

Absolutely!!

jwong77

Audi needs to do a better job to market the differences, I always assumed "Quattro" just meant AWD system in Audi speak. The tech sounds really interesting, but seems wasted if most people aren't aware of it.

Striker223

Oh they suck at it, I'm not sure it's really their fault vs VW forcing them to more aggressively market. In any case they made the stupid decision of just slapping the label on EVERYTHING they possibly could, even if in some cases it's nothing more than a PTO/"transfer case" with a viscous coupling that doesn't even send power to the rear wheels at all times.

The real Quattro system is the best on market to the extent Porsche uses a lot of elements out of it.

Toys4RJill

still ahead of Hyundai and KIA. Look at this chart. The Japanese are still the best. From my CR mag

gor134

LOL what is this misinformation? A4/5/Q5+ are "real Quattro" and use Torsen based system, and ride on longitudinal MLB platforms that's shared with everything from the A4 to the Urus.

The "fake Quattro" you're referring to is the transverse VW MQB platform models on the A3, TT, and Q3.

Striker223

The center diff has operation limits in the lower end cars and they don't have TVDs unless you buy the top version like I said. Just since it's on the same platform doesn't mean they are remotely the same car.....

https://www.audi-technology-portal.d...r-differential

This is what true Quattro cars use, the system is defined by the best offerings not the common ones. It was made to intentionally improve upon simple single torson diff cars, combine this with a TVD and dynamic ratio steering and you have cars that are freakishly good on the street. A traditional torson is unable to alter TQ split since they are fixed ratio and they also have nowhere near this level of overall spread.

You will not see this stuff on the common cars, only the top cars that happen to share a body shell, and even then they usually alter that as well.

Acura is stuck at the level of the midrange Audis aka about 10 years behind. All of their systems are reactive and require electronic input to correct vs Audi that have systems that are constant and real time and work best with ESP off.

SW17LS

You really can't say cars from one country are "the best", the data doesn't show that to be true. For instance even in your CR chart, look at Nissan...

Consumer Reports is a questionable source compared to other sources because they only poll their membership, its not a representative sample. They also only base their brand rankings off models they have data on. JD power shows bigger issues at Honda:

Vladi

He is referring to top of the line Quattro version available in something like RS5 while vanilla A5 doesn't have that kind of setup. I guess with the current gen both S5 and RS5 have the same setup but I could be wrong. I know with previous one only RS4 had that "sport differential" or whatever while S4 didn't.

Vladi

No I haven't driven one with sport differential TVD but I had owned one gen before it and had Evo X with me for a year when it got out. Difference in rwd bias is night and day. I see that the cheapest sport differential Audi you can buy is S4 Premium Plus with S sport package which puts it $6,500 more than TLX Type-S. That's for a car with no navigation so that renders it pretty much useless as an option.