My wife and I are taking delivery of our first Acura tonight, a 2008 White/Taupe RDX Tech. I always swore I'd never own an SUV, but I caved and I must admit I'm mildly excited about the vehicle.

The tech features of the car are exciting, as I've never had a car with satellite radio or bluetooth functionality. My current car has NAV, but it's a 1998 model and horribly outdated.

Coming from a sport sedan, I'm not very excited about the handling capabilities of the car, but I do realize that the handling is excellent for an SUV.

I'm enjoying this forum very much already and hope to be an active member as I get to know our new car. Wish us luck!

 

Welcome to the club ddb. You'll love this car. I've had mine for 3 weeks and everytime I wake up in the morning I just love that I have to drive to work in the morning. It makes my commute so much better.

Mine has been at the shop for the last 3 days getting the bumper fixed so I'm excited to get it this afternoon as well.

This forum is great but please take it with a grain of salt. You can get a lot of great advice on this forum but do remember that it's all subjective and based on a person's personal preference. So what one person hates another might love. That being said I find this forum very helpful and comical at times!

 

should have bought a saturn.

 

Should've bought both a Saturn and an Acura

 

Well, the car is primarily for my wife, so she'll be doing the bulk of the driving. She's gotten kind of sick of lugging various baby gear in and out of her smallish sedan, so we finally decided for practicality reasons to get something with a little more space. Although I would have preferred that she get some sort of wagon (like a Subaru Outback or maybe even Forrester), she didn't really like that option.

Thanks for the forum advice. I've been heavily involved in some other car forums for about 9 years now, so I'm fully aware to take all comments with a full pound of salt. Still, though, I've already picked up some useful ideas (e.g. I'll be spending some time tonight carefully cutting up some mouse pads to use as liners for the various storage compartments).

 

Save the mouse pads, see Mr. Wong...you will happy you did!

http://stores.ebaycom/PadsPlus?refid=store

 

Congrats, best wishes, and have fun =)

 

Mouse pad solution = free.

 

arent mr wongs pads like 20 bucks total?

 

Congrats ddb, I had my 2007 Tech for a little over a year, still love driving as much as day one. I love the bluetooth and the GPS, I don't think regardless of brand that I would ever get another car/cuv/suv with out GPS.

 

Yes, but again, Mouse Pad solution is FREE.

 

you just bought a 2008 TECH PAKAGE....20 bucks??????? cmon now

 

For all your RDX Tech owners who believe that $20 is insignificant, kindly send me $20 via Paypal.

Kind of funny logic. That's like saying I bought a $300,000 house, so it should be no big deal to pay $18 for a bag of Doritos (completely ignoring that I could get a bag of Doritos much less expensively). Cost/benefit analysis - why pay $20 for something that I could make myself for free in probably 30 minutes time, likely with a better fit?

 

I like you based on your avatar alone. Favorite scene of the movie.

 

will you be using 89 gas?

 

im not tryin to break your balls (just kinda)....but the logic over saving 20 bucks really doesnt make sense, not to me anyway....if it was more expensive yea maybe u have a point.....but 20 DOLLARS all said & done custom fit including tape....i dunno i just dont see it.

thats alotta mouse pads, different sized mouse pads....you have alotta mouse pads at home? or just planning on doing the cupholders

 

Of course not, as there is a fairly clear benefit for the extra money paid for the higher-octane gas.

 

theres no way youre gonna have those custom fit, cut and installed in 30 minutes time. you realize wong's pads are for everything right

 

I have access to as many mouse pads as I need at no cost to me (not stealing from the company or anything, but a legitimate source). I'll make cargo tray liners for those areas that I deem necessary. As far as the cost of tape, that'll be what, a few bucks?

I've actually done the same thing for one of my current cars and have been very pleased with the results over the years.

- DDB

 

we all spend our time differently, more power to you.

enjoy the car.

 

Sigh...I didn't expect this to turn into a thread about how I should or should not be spending my time. Thanks to all for the feedback.

 

its not and hasnt, if you like making ur own stuff im not sayin its not worth time spent, someone like me who doesnt have that kinda time its worth 20 bucks and no headaches.

no problems here man, i could care if you spent all month re upohlstering the car

 

Who knows, maybe if Mr. Wong starts selling sheepskin seat covers for the RDX, then I won't have to make my own!

52 minutes 'til pickup!

 

Let us know how it goes!

 

Delivery went well; we signed all the forms and paid, then I took off while the salesman went through the "delivery" process with my wife. He seems to have done a decent job, as when my wife got home, she had a fairly decent understanding of how to use the audio system and the HFL (she's not the most tech-competent person). Although the salesman originally claimed that they couldn't throw-in the all-weather floormats, he surprised us with a new set at delivery. Having put them in the car, I'm really glad we got these, because the fit and finish are fantastic (particularly the one-piece rear mat).

Infant seat installed easily with the LATCH system (nice not to have to use the shoulder belt for the infant carrier anymore) - as noted before on this forum, the amount of legroom for the front passenger when the infant carrier is installed is limited, but my 5'4" wife seems comfortable enough. We'll be switching to front-facing within a few months, anyway, so it's only a short-term inconvenience (unless we have another baby!). It's also great to be able to have the "60" portion of the 60:40 fold-down seats folded down even with the baby seat installed.

I was expecting to strongly dislike the Taupe interior, but to my surprise I found it somewhat attractive (coming off a long history of black interiors).

I haven't driven it yet, but I'm sure it's just like the demo that we had for our 2-day extended test drive late last month.

 

How did you get an extended test drive? Is that something a dealer will do if you insist or do you have to pay first? I've been thinking about getting an RDX but don't want to suffer buyer's remorse after a day with no clutch - I've been driving a stick forever!

Thanks.

 

Well, the dealer offered. The dealership is closed on Sunday, so the sales manager let us take their RDX demo on a Saturday afternoon and we returned it Monday morning. Very helpful for my wife in determining whether she wanted the car or not.

As for missing a manual transmission, well, you'll miss it. Despite Acura's best efforts to "sportify" the automatic transmission, it obviously isn't anywhere near the same driving experience.

 

Congrats ddb on your new car! I am getting closer and closer to taking the plunge myself. I thought I could wait another month and see the 09's but I am hoping the dealer will make me an off er I can't refuse! I think I am leaning to the exact color of yours, white with taupe, as I live in the southwest and it's hot here in the summer.

If you don't mind my asking, what sort of deal did you get?

Thanks.

 

I drove the TSX MT over the weekend and it didn't seem nearly as grown-up as the RDX. I am planning to hold out for the '09 RDX in the hopes that it has the integrated iPod interface and then my thinking was I would be so busy playing with the tech gadgets that I wouldn't miss "driving" <grin>!

 

My dealer offered me this as well if I was serious about purchasing. I didn't take advantage of it because I knew I wanted the car anyway and didn't want to delay the sales cycle. It's a nice perk though if you're just not sure.

 

It definitely helped us a lot. We wanted to test the fit of our various baby gear, suitcases, etc. Yeah, we could have lugged all that stuff to the dealership, but a lot easier to test it out when it's sitting in your garage. Also, it's difficult to test "seat comfort" on a 10-minute test drive.

 

Well, we leased. Total down payment was $2,000, which is broken down as follows:

Cap Cost Reduction (CCR): $82.70
Sales tax on CCR (8.00%): $6.62
1st Monthly Payment: $435.46
DMV Registration Fees: $160.00
NY Waste Tire Fee: $12.50 ($2.50 per tire, including spare)
Document Fee: $45.00
Sales Tax on Payments (8.00%): $1,257.72

Monthly Payment is $435.46 going forward, and the residual value at the end of the lease is $19451.20. The adjusted capitalized cost used for calculating the lease (net of the CCR shown above) was $33,750.67.

I was pleased with the deal. I took the present value of all lease cash flows, including purchasing the vehicle at the end of month 36 for the residual value, and found that this lease deal was equivalent to purchasing the car for $33,128.94 cash upfront (plus sales tax). Since I don't think I could have purchased the car for that low of a price, I concluded that leasing was a better option than buying (assuming that I'll keep the car). Plus, there's the chance that I can buy the car for less than the residual value in 3 years, depending on the market for 3-year old RDX's at that time.