Man its the same as the handa Accord. I test drove a 2006 acura rl and some of the parts were exactly the same You should just get an accord with navi xm. It run you about $28k total vs. paying twice the amount for the exact same car. It even has the same steering wheel controls

 

whoops sorry i read somewhere that it used fake wood... maybe it was for the 97-01 models?

 

Lexus doesn't use fake wood, never has. Acura does, except the RL.

 

man, these guys don't get it , Toyota all the way

 

Acura made a name for itself when it had the Legend, but since then what happened?

 

Its funny how the entry line Lexus model can directly compare to the flagship Acura. For the same price, I'd have to go with the Acura RL but the features definetely are comparable. Refinement and luxury would be simular, and I doubt the RL drives any better.

 

Not a big deal man, you made some great points. Just wanted to point that out.


Scott

 

You can't do a comparo of the two by saying some people have gotten the RL for mid $40K. The RL is priced $50K and will more likely be bought by the majority of consumers around that price. The ES price has just been released and it will base at $33,170, so fully loaded will most likely be around $38K. It won't break $40K.

With that said, I would get the ES350 over the RL based on one, the price difference (about $10K) because I don't think the RL is $10K better, and two the slightly more prestige of driving a Lexus over an Acura. I see Lexus to Acura, as BMW to Audi, with Lexus being above BMW of course.

Until Acura comes up with a REAL flagship that's going to go head-to-head with the LS, then Acura will never be seen as a top-of-the-line luxury car maker. It will just be a want-to-be luxury nameplate that was first to market, but just didn't live up to it's potential.

Also to mind, my remarks are not from someone who just owns and loves Lexus. I have a '92 Acura Integra which I love and has 203K on it, a '98 Accord V-6 which has been fair thus far, and of course my '99 RX300.

 

I'm not so sure about that. I did some preliminary estimates of invoice pricing - and I hope someone corrects me with correct invoice pricing, but here is what I came up with. The MSRP is in the left column, estimated (by me) invoice pricing in the right.


ES 350 (Includes Destination, Trunk Mat, Wheel, 34059/30312.51

ULTRA LUXURY PACKAGE-Includes PREMIUM PLUS PACKAGE plus UL 5380/4411.6

Panorama Glass Roof, Perforated Leather Seats, Power Rear sunshade,
Wood and Leather Steering Wheel and Shift ****, Rear Side Airbag, High-
Intensity Discharge Headlamps (HID) w/ Adaptive Front Lighting System
(AFS), Unique 17” Alloy Wheel with 215/55R17 Tire and Spare

NAVIGATION/MARK LEVINSON PACKAGE-Includes Lexus Generation 5 VN 4050/3321
Navigation System w/ Voice Recognition, 14-Speaker AM/FM Tuner w/
Cassette and 6-Disc In-Dash CD/DVD Changer and Voice-Activated
Wireless Bluetooth Hands-Free System

Intuitive Parking Assist PA 500/400

Full Spare Tire FS 205/164


Destination 695/695



TOTAL 44889/39304.11

Edited to add - my apologies in advance on formatting issues.

 

ES350 and there was quite a quality step down in the interior of the TL. At that moment I realized that the ES350 would compete well with the Acura flagship. BTW all of this talk about platforms is sort of bogus. The design of the ES350 unibody is unique and not a version of a Camry or Avalon. It is the third Lexus Finesse design to come out and the only thing it shares is the powertrain in its design. There is much more sound insulation in the Lexus ES350 than in the past and this includes the acoustic barrier laminate in the windshield. The liberal use of high tensile strength steel gives the body its intregrity and a roll cage type protection level. The seams of the body are equal to the LS430 in their refinement.

The Acura RL offers a front wheel biased AWD. The ES350 goes to sixty in 6.8 seconds which is good enough for highway merging. The Lexus has California Walnut which had a depth that the TL's plastic wood could not match. Until the current gen RL it also used plastic. Yuck! If Acura would only bring back the Legend they would not depreciate so fast. I will say that the Acura out performs the GS300. That will change this fall as the GS350 arrives to play with its Rear Wheel biased AWD toting 306 HP. If you are looking for luxury the ES350 will be hard to ignore. The car valets will be surprised how much guts this car has. The dash clutter of the Acura TL looked like cheap shiny plastic. The large 8 inch nav screen just increased the size of the poor graphics though it is better than most but not in the class the Gen 5 Lexus nav.

I don't get a different experience when I sit in the RL from the TL. It's a nice car but I can see why people aren't willing to pay 50K for it because it doesn't have the same level of sophistication. Ironically the Legend did have it. They ought to resuscitate the Legend design team and give them a budget to get creative. Honda is still the next best competitor to Toyota and the only other carmaker to design its own hybrid which is the future. BMW yesterday announced that they were experimenting with auto engine shut off to save fuel and their version of regenerative braking. Toyota and Honda did that in 1997-98. Talk about playing catch up......

The current RL has more of sport sedan slant and doesn't measure up to the Luxury content of the new ES350. Conversely the ES350 does not handle like an RL but will stay next to it on the highway and get better mileage...The RL feels cramped in the back seat to me. The ES350 seems commodious. The ES350 with Pre-Collision System in an Ultra luxury version could cost $47,700 I guess. Does Acura even make a Pre-collision system? See what I mean?

Rock

 

Exactly. The Acura Legend was a great car. Then the RL came out and my friend always thought that RL stood for "Replaced Legend."

I'd get the ES 350 all the way. Can't go wrong with it.

 

Woooof.... I stand corrected. Someone did post the ES350 with available packages and individual options and if you really got all the nuts and bolts available, it was somewhere like $45K+.... now that's a lot of potatoes...

I won't be getting the super top of th line, I'll just get the luxury package with Nav and I'm set to go...

 

I wasn't that far off...

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=211596

 

I'd much rather have an RL than an ES350 - it's superior in most measurable ways.

With that said, if you compare apples to apples and try to equip them as similarly as possible, the RL is still quite a bit more expensive - you can't get the ES' sticker to within a few thousand of the RL's without adding several options not even available on the RL.

The RL is meant to compete with the GS300/E-class/A6, etc..

 

Do you have any references to back that up? I know previous models were built on the same chassis with only slight structural differences additions in some cases (like the strut tower brace on some of the later ES3/330 models).

In fact I remember reading an article talking about the new chassis designation for the Lexus ES350 and I did a quick search on it and pulled up quite a few references to the new Camry as well. Thus meaning their chassis has the exact same designation again.