Benush

For very little cost, Lexus gets a huge amount of publicity.

Enthusiasts pay for the design and mock up work and Lexus racks up countless extra sales. If Acura was smart enough to offer the same project then think of all the possibilities. Oh well.

http://www.sema.org/Main/ArticleDeta...ontentID=59597

neuronbob

This is Acura we're talking about, remember? They'll never go for it.

CL6

Back when I sold Acuras I met with a bunch of guys, some of whom didn't really speak English, about the ASPEC stuff. They had great ideas but from what I could tell they were badly underfunded and had to run to Japan for everything and didn't get the warmest of receptions. Road and Track just placed the IS-F 4th out of 4 in their roadtest.

neuronbob

That only amplifies my point.
You have to spend money to make money in the U.S. market, or at least be creative in what little money you spend.

///M Roadster

IS-F is another miserable attempt to match performance german cars. Lexus tried to pull something similar with IS300 debut, but people quickly dissed it by saying, "good try but not quite". Same thing this time around. I've not driven IS-F, but it just smells like a poor mock up job that put a bigger engine in IS and a few body parts and they just called it a day. I am sure it performs good enough, but not enough to justify its cost, IMO.

Unless Acura takes the approach of building a real performance sedan from ground up, a mock up job would probably end up in disaster. I think we will just see something similar with what's happened to TL-S. Awesome looking car with many reported problems that Acura just turns its head away from.

Will Acura take the time to really make a mark on performance sedan? I doubt it from what I've seen in the last a few years...I am sure we can count on fancier accords and civics in the future though.

xenonhid

I think LEXUS has perfected the art of Balancing LUXURY + PERFORMANCE.


It seems like Acura is going through growing pains and still hasn't figured it out yet.

Roy Cya

Huh? What about BMW, Audi, MB or even Infiniti? I think the luxury/performance bit is unique to these guys, at least in my mind. Again, keeping in mind performance; I do not want or expect to take anything away from Lexus in the Luxury area - this is all as I've seen or experienced it after driving or owning the LS/GS, M3/M5, A8L/S6, E430/E55. Unless you were talking about Japanese manufacturers and not the Europeans....

Of course, this is merely one mans opinion, and as we well know, everyone's got one of those....

...and as always YMMV!!!

lland

It's also $20,000 more than the base IS350 and $26,000 more than the IS250. Load it up and you're over $65,000. I'd rather have an M3. Plenty of cars to choose from at that price.

LL

neuronbob

I'd get a CTS-V for that price. Excellent point.

CL6

It's not the car, it's the marketing of the car that matters to the unwashed masses.

lland

If that was the case, Acura would not sell many RLs. Oh, wait. Never mind.

LL