What's up guys. I'm a newbie at this CLS forum, but I'm a big fan of the car. My friend got a new bright blue TL Type-S and it's pretty damn nice. I'm looking for a new car right now too and I wanted to know what you CLS owners think about your cars. I know it's a bargain at the price, but do you guys really like the car? Also, on the side, when is that friggin' SEMA Acura CL Type-S gonna be available? Oh, and does anyone have a pic of that factory bodykit coming out? Thanks.

 

1. Love my CLS

2. SEMA CLS is a pipe dream for now.

3. Factory body kit is a pipe dream for now as well.

Great car for the money. No major problems as of yet. I'm sure others will chime in on this one as well.

Jim

 

I like the car, but sniglets keep me from loving it. The brakes need fixing on 2002 and beyond. Rattles need to be addressed. Finally, more torque lower on the tach. Just my .02.

 

i love it

 

The shiznet.....

 

best foking accord i've ever driven!

seriously, a great car for the price...

btw, any word on the "underbody spoiler kit" mentioned in the 2002 brochure?

 

Only one thing that bothers me is the tranny ...besides that I love the car I just hope it doesn't go out on me

 

So, what is wrong with the tranny???

 

Great car and only gets better with a few mods. Great time to buy a remaining 2001, you should get a GREAT deal.

 

I love my car. No other better car for the money (IMO)

[ 10-03-2001: Message edited by: 01blkCL-S ]

 

i love its looking.powerful engine and comfortable cabin.auto with manual shift..and all the technologies..enjoy it still..good to have a sports coupe...i just washed my cls just now..and now it looks like brand new again..

 

This is my third Honda. Two Accords, '85 and '92 Coupe, and the CL Type S. I don't really know what got me started on this brand, but I'm glad I did. Probably was thinking about the two R's, reliability and resale. Nothing major has gone wrong after a couple of hundred miles. Lots of oil changes and a few sets of brakes and tires.

 

My love, my pride, my life and my everything

 

With the CL-S, you get a bit of everything: speed, class, speed, looks, handling, speed, and last but not least SPEED! To be honest, I was not a big Acura fan, but the CL Type S changed my mind in a hurry. You CAN NOT find a comparible vehicle for the price. The only other car that comes really close is the TL-S!!! Good luck with your decision!

 

I love the car, but I wish it wasn't made for midgets. I feel very cramped in the car. Also, I have adjustable seats that I have never used. They are all the way back and all the way down. I also wish the steering wheel tilted more than 2 inches.

-Ash

 

hey, i'm offended! i'm very comfotable in the car (5'8"...in the words of Joe C, "I ain't no *** damn midget!").

 

I love it, but the tranny and rotor issues are really pissing me off. If it wasn't for these 2 things I'd have no major complaints.

 

Sig check... testing 1 2 3

 

I like it, don't love it for the same reasons covered in the above posts.....next car, I'm waiting to see the new Volvo S60R.

 

I would choose the CL-S over all the other cars it competes against.

 

Love my CLS, but I am worrying about the transmission and brake rotor problems. These problems should be reported to NHTSA as they are safety issues.

 

geez...i'm sick of people worrying about trannys and brake rotors.

these are NOT common problems.

had my car for over a year (bought in april '00).

no hint of brake vibration, no hint of tranny acting up.

you don't hear from people without problems, and there's probably a lot more of us than there are with problems (not counting people who are just paranoid).

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: mrdeeno ]

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: mrdeeno ]

 

I just went in and ordered a new transmission today(11700ish miles). Besides the tranny and the constant rattling, I really like the car. Not love it.

 

Well said, although my brakes shook like a Mofo until they shaved the rotors.

 

Not common problems, huh? Then tell me why CL-S/TL-S trannies are on SIX MONTH BACKORDER. Or how about this, why have I had my rotors machined twice in six months?

Mark my words, this car is a time bomb waiting to explode. I've got the same tranny issues on my 02/00 CL-S and told my S.A. NOT to order a new one. When mine goes, I'll just get out of the fucking lease.

 

Good point, but I don't think it's as bad as it sounds, but that just might be my wishful thinking. Hopefully Acura addresses the tranny and rotor issues soon.

 

Okay... be nice. The reality is the CL-S is a great car for the money. There are few cars that rival it for the price. Issue -- The quality on a CL-S is the same as an Accord - well built for the price. You get what you pay for is the message.

I also own a current 325i which cost about $1000 more than the Acura. The BMW could never keep up with the Acura on the track nor could it provide the ammentities for the price (loaded 325 would be $38K). The BMW does provide much better safety, handling, brakes, and sense of quality. For me power is important, but qualitity and safety are most important.

Summary - BMW builds a 3 with the same qualitity as a 7. Acura builds a CL-S with the same qualitity as an Accord.

Agree? Not likely, but this is my take.

 

that's kinda backs up my previous post...

if the tranny problem IS common, then wouldn't 90% of the people on this board be sitting on it's ass because we'd all be waiting 6 months for new trannies?

bottom line, that's NOT the case.
MOST of us AREN'T waiting 6 months for trannies.

your bad tranny still only counts as ONE more bad tranny, even if you have to wait 6 months. so how does 1 more incident make this common?

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: mrdeeno ]

 

I really feel bad for you guyz with the tranny problems, and I'm a member of the "Warped Rotors Club" (mine have been replaced--the only good fix.) But I have to agree with the Deenster that there are thousands of CL's out there WITHOUT tranny problems. So, we really need to get metrics on the total number of failed trannies to see if the failure rate is significant. If you have a gripe, talk to Acura Customer Service. They were helpful to me with my brake and rotor problem.

 

yeah, that's why i got the post about emailing me to a designated address so i can tally the numbers.

 

You're right that it may not be "common" in the sense that the majority of owners do not have transmission or brake rotor issues (i.e. not more than 50% of owners encounter these problems). However, you cannot deny that more than just a handful of owners are experiencing transmission and brake rotor problems. To see new posts popping up every other day entitled, "transmission..." or "brake rotor" is very unsettling. This doesn't inspire much confidence to other Acura CL/TL owners. It gives the feeling to some that all we can do is wait for the failure to occur.

When I first heard about transmission problems with other owners, I thought to myself, "Wow...how unfortunate! But these are reliable cars so I probably don't have much to worry about!" Then a few months later, I'm having the same problems and my car is sitting at the dealership awaiting a new transmission.

I have owned many cars from Toyota Tercels, Honda Civics to Acuras and to me, having a transmission fail at 15k miles is severe and unacceptable. At first I was willing to consider this as an isolated incident. However, my service advisor at Tustin Acura has experienced 3 failed transmissions on the CL-S so far! Who knows how many on the TL-S! To me, that is an embarrassment to Acura and I'm sure none of us will be repeat customers after all these problems. At least people I speak to are reconsidering future purchases of any TL/CL Type S car.

But I guess you get what you pay for. It would seem more cost effective for Honda to fix the problem in manufacturing than having to replace all these things under warranty.

 

ok, so they've been selling cl-s's for about a year now, and acura has about 260 dealerships. from what i'm hearing most dealerships have reported no more than 5, so total would be about 1300 bad trannies!

but they've sold over 25000 (this is underestimated...i dont' know the exact #).

so this means the % of failures is 5.2%.

i dont' know what 'common' is to you or 'handful', but out of 25000+ cars, i'd call that pretty rare.

if you can get me better #s, then do it. otherwise, i stand with my figures.

i'm trying to get an accurate count by having people email me at acuratranny@yahoo.com w/ their info (see related post).

if enough people cooperate, then we'll see exactly how 'common' or 'isolated' this problem is.

[ 10-05-2001: Message edited by: mrdeeno ]

 

Someone posted earlier that over 65 thousand TL-s were sold last, probably over 30 thousand or so CL-s. Thats close to 100 thousand and don't they all have the 5 speed auto ? I don't know what a normal failure rate is for that many but we hear on this site about 10 or so. Also if they were failing like crazy, wouldn't they be making more than a couple a day ?

 

What are you, some kind of fucking Acura apologist? What industry do you work in that a five percent failure rate is acceptable? Firestone recalled 14.4 million tires because of an tire failure incident rate that approaches only a little over one percent.

You tell me another manufacturer with a five percent failure rate for it's transmissions. Name one.

What if five percent of all planes crashed during landing? What if five percent of nuclear power plants had a core melt down? What if five percent of surgeons were drunk when performing operations? You see what I'm getting at? Five percent IS NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE!

 

Also keep in mind that that anyone out there who has mods obviously runs their car at 100%, or why have the car or the mods???

I havent seen anyone on here with NO MODS and a tranny out??? Am I correct???

 

Droideka, sorry to hear about your trans but chill out ! My dealer has not had a single trans failure. There are 2200 plus members here and 4500 plus on the TL site and maybe 10 people have had to replace their trannys. It is not an epedemic. Hope you get yours back asap.

 

dude, pull the bug out of your ass.
if you were open enough to "think" about what you posted, you'd realize how what you posted makes no sense.

aviation is a DIFFERENT field!
nuclear power is a DIFFERENT field!
surgery is a DIFFERENT field!

the reason firestone recalled their tires is because PEOPLE DIED!

in the aviation industry, if there is a 5% failure rate during land, PEOPLE DIE because of it!

in a nuclear power, if there is a 5% failure rate, PEOPLE DIE because of it!

how many people died because their tranny failed?! i haven't heard of ANY reports. if there was even ONE report that someone died due to the tranny, i'm sure NHTSA would be all over acura's ass.

my 5% is an OVERESTIMATE because i underestimated the # of cars sold and OVERESTIMATED the # of tranny problems. find me the actual failure rates of other manufacturers and then you have an argument. otherwise, just because you "dont' know any" doesn't hold.

you dont' like acura? fine, there's thousands of others that don't either!

like i said before...it's mostly the people WITH problems that scream the loudest, and of the majority without these problems, only a few speak up.

and another thing, you have a problem with your car, so you can bitch and bitch and bitch.

i have no problems with my car, but when i defend acura because of it, i'm a "fucking acura apologist"?

grow up, dude.

 

Hehe, you didn't get mad till read through it a couple of times, did you? Sorry, that was inappropriate, but I am fed up with this fucking car and your posts remind of a guy on the AudiWorld forum who they call "the Audi apologist".

Just because someone hasn't died from a tranny failure doesn't mean that it's acceptable. If my tranny were to "fail" and somehow lock-up at 90 mph on the freeway, I'd be in a world of shit.

I frequent a lot of auto boards and have yet to see a widespread failure of such a major component such as a transmission for any other marque, save for the Audi K03 turbo fiasco. Still, there are less 2.7T engines experiencing turbo failure than Acuras having trannies go bad. When your dealer tells you flat out that a new tranny is AT LEAST six weeks away and more like twelve, well you've just got to wonder what in the fuck is Honda thinking trying to deny this shit is happening (NO TSBs.)

 

check out www.nhtsa.org

don't check for service bulletins, check for "recalls" which are even more important and look at the #s.

for example bmw has 14300 x5's affected with a tranny problem. i'm not sure exactly how many x5s were sold total, but i think it's around 40k. that means the # of affected vehicles is 30%.

and droideka's complaining about my overestimated 5% being unrealistic?

 

i'm not denying that there are problems.
i'm not denying that you have a problem.

i'm denying that it is widespread.

if you studied manufacturing, 5% is big for some industries, but small for others which i believe it is for this (compare it to a marque like bmw and 14300 affected x5's).

every board is different, how can you compare what one board talks about to what another one talks about? so this one may complain a lot more...does complaining more increase the failure rate?

i'm still waiting for your email to add to the bad tranny list.

[ 10-06-2001: Message edited by: mrdeeno ]