Been in and out of the Honda family since the late 80's, I am dismayed at how Honda's prestigious luxury mark, Acura, is not what it use to be. Having owned my first Acura, a '92 Legend sedan, the car delivered as promised - Reliable, easy to drive, and cheap to maintain.

Turn the clock a few years forward, my next Honda was the infamous Honda Odyssey, a 1999 minivan with the power of a V6 and had a automatic transmission that was "GM" like in design - it failed miserably with just 75,000 miles on the clock. As it just so happens, Honda's judgment was to fix all V6 transmission failures from 2000 and later vehicles. Yes, 1999 V6 transmissions was strictly on a case by case ordeal. Honda's incompetency to resolve V6 transmission failures forced me to get a lawyer, and a nasty letter was certified en route to Honda NA. These nut-heads probably figured out their cost to lost ratios and eventually sanctioned a new transmission. Needless to say, that left a real sour aftertaste.

Seven years to the day, I was yet again given the opportunity to purchase a new family vehicle. With a bias towards Japanese cars, I naturally looked to the ranks of Lexus, Infiniti and Acura. Unsurprisingly, Acura's list of features and amenities ominously outweighed the other guys. My 2007 TL came equipped with leather, navigation, Bluetooth, rear-view camera and three months of real-time traffic via XM radio. Call me greedy, but I was truly lured by the TL's price - Secretly chanting to myself, "All this for a price in the mid 30's ?" Honda must've done their math wrong, it was my turn to "Stick it to the man!" Plus seven years of ownership in my last Acura gave me the courage to overlook my entire V6-Tranmission-Failure-Honda-Sucks campaign.

I believed once again in "Precision crafted performance", which lasted for just two weeks last June. And here's my driver's log thus far:

006 Miles - It was an hour's drive from the dealer and I couldn't recall how I got home - I couldn't help myself and the geek inside me tortured the voice-command system with everything I can think of.

600 Miles - Two weeks into ownership and I ended up with a visit to my Service adviser. My entire navigation system along with the audio components failed to respond. CDs wouldn't eject, none of the touch screen buttons worked, nor could I turn on the radio. The dealer kept my TL for two weeks with a new replacment and command unit, it took Honda another three just to return my CDs that was stuck in the unit.

1300 Miles - A horrendous creeping sound was orchestrated while I turned my steering wheel. Dealer says it was an actuator (sp?) issue which took 2 days of labor to resolve.

1800 Miles - In a hot (100+ degree) day in Southern Cali, I engaged in reverse and noticed my rear view camera started to misbehave - the imaged turned black in white and flickered like an antique monochrome television set. Return to the dealer, but was unable to react this scene.

2600 Miles - Notice a squeak while I roll my windows up and down. Exactly describe in the thread here: https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1806057

Now, I see the irony with this smile ( ) on the Acura forums.

 

Sure hope it gets better.

Mine has had only two very minor issues with almost 36k miles. Another minor point, the Legend became the RL.

 

I hear ya man!

Except unlike you this is my first Japanese car (07' TL-S) and w/ 5k miles I have warped rotors (no its my driving style), rear deck clunk, and now the HFL has a terrible whirring noise while driving.

My wife drives a Ford (Lincoln Zephyr) w/ 22.5K miles and its NEVER been back to the dealer for anything, except routine maintenance of course. Funny thing is the Zephyr is built on a Mazda 6 platform w/ lots of Japanese content!

Now as far as driving these 2 cars, there is NO comaprison, however, I just didnt expect to have these kinds of isues w/ an Acura.

I worked in the auto industry for many years and I can tell you this has market share increases continue the PPMs for problems simply due to higher vehicle volumes will catch up w/ the Asian manufacturers. In fact, Toyota has had major recalls just this year for fires and steering/transmission issues. Who would have thought that?

Lastly, what you may not know is most of the advanced technology in vehicles today come from the Tier 1 suppliers and not the OEMs. In fact, OEM vehicle manufacturers simply build the cars and rely on the Tier 1 system suppliers to develop the technology that we as consumers drool over, this includes the Asian & European OEMs as well. Companies like Delphi, Visteon & Bosch are the ones lining up to sell to the Japanese and in fact have been successful. This has been happening for years and you will find lots of technology in these cars that originated from the big US Tier 1 suppliers.

 

Same here. Somewhat disappointing. Its feedback from the alternator.

Reminds me of my old high school days (graduated only 7 years ago), when kids would spend all of their mcdonalds earnings to install huge stereo systems and not add enough grounds, isolation, to keep out the alternator sounds.

Annoying

 

Ok.. a brief update to my log:

~10,000 miles: Navi seized up and had the entire unit replace under warranty. Acura had to manually 'eject' the CDs and they were later mailed back to me via UPS.

~12,000 miles: Passenger mirror squeaks and has a a lot of resistance when going up/down (automatic feature when gear is in reverse). Acura lubed the mirror with new grease and all is well; Done under warranty.

18,000 miles: Trunk release wouldn't open via internal latch or key fob. Acura changed the trunk seal and added additional 'lube' to the contact areas; Done under warranty.

26,000 miles: Returned to Acura for power steering recall. Performed under warranty.

and somewhere in between..... replaced front Windshield from a rock chip while on the freeway. (driver error?)

29,000 miles: Car wouldn't start, Acura replaced a new battery.

33,281 miles (last week): Car wouldn't start again. Had vehicle towed to Acura dealer. New battery#2 replaced.

I'm coming up short on my warranty replacement days....

 

Sorry to hear all of this...

 

Wow, that sucks.

I wonder if the plant had a bad year, layoffs or what? There seems to be a lot of people having one audio/navi problem after another. I've done a conversion of my non-navi car and found a refurbished unit from a dealer. So far so good.

Hope things stop happening to you. I am having a ball in my TL.

 

Yours sounds worse than mine! I thought that was impossible. I bought my 2005 TL for the same reason you bought your 2007. I owned 2 civics before this car, and besides blowing my motor due to nitrous, I never really had any problems with it. I buy a TL expecting better quality/reliability. Boy was I wrong. Here is my thread on my experience: https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-problems-fixes-114/whining-noises-other-issues-2005-tl-5at-problems-solutions-748921/