mindanalyzer

Wow ... I see many people still going through these pains after so long with this situation and Acura not stepping up by continuing to play the "normal specifications " BS. They did that to me and the 3rd time I decided that nobody plays me like that.

Do yourself a favor and ditch this Acura POS and get a BMW, Audi or even KIA. You can thank me later

KeithL

and this is why I don't even bother bringing mine in. My time is too valuable and honestly living with the issue further ingrains my desire to never to own another Acura. Their constant mishandling of this issue and the fact that they just are not competitive much anymore tells me how long a road they have ahead of them.

evo462

I got my car back with a new transmission - haven't driven it much off the highway yet but what I have done seems 100% better.

I am glad I got the transmission issue resolved but disappointed with Acura as a whole. The dealer was responsive and fair the deal with after the first couple visits, so obviously, I can't really fault them any. But, now I have a car with barely 10K miles on it and already has a transmission replacement on the records.

I had a TLX 4 cylinder loaner with the 8 speed transmission - the gears shifted very smooth and fast, but every so often the transmission would do this weird thing where the car would kind of "jump forward" when braking or coasting, there'd be a little "thump" and the car would lurch forward. I dunno....hopefully Acura learns their lesson sourcing their transmissions externally. That loaner car did not seem right either and I'd have been unhappy if I bought that car too.

Rocketsfan

I think there's a TSB or two for the 4 cylinder transmission issues. Maybe there are still gremlins in that one, too -- I have no idea. BTW, the 4-cylinder's transmission isn't outsourced - it's an Acura transmission. So damned if you do and damned if you don't. Congrats on successfully getting your transmission replaced.

evo462

Ah, I did not know that. I honestly don't see how any of these issues slipped through. Surely after taking a random sample set and driving them for a few thousand miles, it'd have been apparent they have something going on in both their transmission models.

wlkeel

There's a long thread on this subject: 8sp DCT Transmission issues

There were several issues early on with the DCT, and several software updates which helped many owners. Seems like it's pretty well sorted out now, but there will always be a few with serious transmission problems. There are also many, many owners who have had no problems at all.

I'm in the last category, an occasional klunky shift when cold and before warmed up, but minor indeed. I drive in Sport mode all the time, except in the mountains when I use Sport+ and manual shifting. Love it.

Rocketsfan

There were actually known issues with the 9sp transmission itself, or how it was being implemented anyway, before the TLX was released because Chrysler was having all kinds of issues with it before Acura. Because of this, I even posted on this forum before I bought mine that the transmission was my only worry about the car. Acura delayed the launch of the TLX by a few months because of "something" that I don't believe was ever made public. My guess (and I have nothing to back this up) is that it may have been the transmission. Maybe the test vehicles they used didn't exhibit the problem. Maybe it was only upon release of the production car that the vehicles had the problem. Maybe they released it knowing there was a problem because they couldn't wait anymore after the delay and it was too late to make any major changes. Who knows what the real truth is. All I can say the 9sp implementation had issues before it was in an Acura. Interestingly enough, the shifting freakishness is apparently the reason Volvo chose an 8-speed instead of the ZF 9-speed around the same time.

TX_BB

Well, the honeymoon with the new transmission seems to be over.

While I'm happy that the hard 2-3 is gone and that it up shifts so much better, I still find that when downshifting, particularly when turning a corner, the transmission takes a few seconds to "catch up", even when I put my foot into it.

I think I'm going to be moving on to a Q50S.

I'm a long time Honda/Acura guy, but I think I'm over them now.

jeich182

This is exactly why I stopped bringing mine in (and bought a new BMW losing money on the Acura). My time was too valuable and I didn't want to be made to feel stress arguing for something I know I'm right about when I'm the one with a considerable monthly payment and I'm the one who has brought more customers to the brand than they will ever know.

jeich182

I am fairly certain you are right about this. If you'll recall the timing, TL and TSX production were held slightly longer than planned after earliest estimates had the release in December of 2013. I believe TSX stopped production in January 2014 and TL stopped production in April 2014. 'Unknown' issues persisted with the TLX launch which then moved to April 2014, then June 2014, and finally August 2014. Working in manufacturing, I'm confident there were low rate initial production (LRIP) cars running around where engineers were experiencing these issues (these LRIP cars would be a step beyond mules or prototypes) and frantically working to fix something that was not fixable. But by this time, summer of 2014, because production on the other models had been drawn down in anticipation of the launch, Acura dealers had almost no sedans on their lots to sell. Mine had under 10 total by the time the first TLX arrived in August. They were essentially forced to release the TLX knowing the issues it had. Again, working in manufacturing, I can appreciate this situation on some level but you damn well better circle back around and take GOOD care of your early adopters and loyal customers.

CheeseyPoofs McNut

I'd bet a zillion dollars you're correct here. And keep in mind the 8 sp DCT had two TSB's in the first year so it likely had known issues too - albeit much less troublesome ones in comparison.

I've worked for software companies over the past 20 years and can say that not one of them ever released a product they didn't know had issues/bugs. Look at Microsoft for a great example of that. You get to a certain point where you need to get a product out there - knowing it has things that need fixed and knowing that you can fix them with a service pack 6 months down the road and get away with it. Acura certainly isn't the only car company who has done this but they very likely underestimated the issues which is why they resisted replacing the transmissions for so long. Clearly a bad move on their part but one that was likely driven by the bean counters and not the PR/Marketing people.

I'd also bet a zillion dollars they have a social media team who reads AZ - but I would still recommend that each and every one of you who trades in your TLX for an Audi/Lexus/BMW/Whatever should write them a letter and tell them WHY you did it. You'll likely never get a response (beyond a canned letter perhaps) but if they get enough of them that's the type of thing that will make them take notice.

weather

^^ I have done so, my dealer is also aware and they saw me as a very loyal customer so when I bought my Lexus, it was quite a surprise but they understood. I doubt Acura really cares because if they did, they would have taken steps to reverse the trend.

People say that the new tranny are better and not as the original units but I still reads about the lag, and now TX_BB just indicated that the replaced tranny is now starting up again. You can put lipstick on a pig, it will still be a pig

SDSilverM3

The latest Consumer Reports has ranked Acura at near the bottom; bottom 5. Hate to say it, but with how they handled the transmission problems, they deserve it! There are consequences when consumers are made into beta testers and hopefully Acura learns that is not the way.

neil0311

My transmission was replaced 11 months ago and had TSB 16-012 applied at the same time. Has been fine ever since.

Sorry about the person having new issues, but that is almost certainly a one-off problem with their specific vehicle. No matter the vehicle, transmissions go bad and defects exist.

The initial ZF hardware that went into early 2015 production runs like mine (SH-AWD built in 09/14) had the issue with the harsh 2-3 upshift. That was solved in the spring of 2015 and subsequent production of 2015, 2016, and 2017 TLXs don't have those issues. Some downshift surges in Sport + IDS mode were corrected with software with TSB 16-012.

The dog clutch delay is inherent in the hardware, so if that bugs you, then this vehicle isn't for you. I don't really have an issue with it.

1Louder

Maybe Acura was betting it was a software problem, or at least the issue could be fixed in software. Of course they were dead wrong on that.

Here's some interesting sales data on the TLX. Acura TLX Sales Figures - GOOD CAR BAD CAR

I just looked at US sales, but in 2015 they sold 47,080 and in 2016 they sold 33,535 (maybe call it 37,000 when you estimate December). That's a 10,000 car drop off from 2015 to 2016. I looked at monthly average, and 2015 was 3,923 cars/month versus 3,049 in 2016.

Seems like the bad press made a difference in sales, that's for sure. Amazing Acura is still going with this tranny. Look how they describe it on their web site:



Zero regrets moving to Lexus. Would highly recommend the IS 200/300 for those that are cross-shopping.

pyrodan007

Acura may think that the problem is under control due to the reduction is customer complaints. However they have significantly underestimated the number of people that just gave up and moved on (traded, waiting for lease end). I never got the update because it's a Canadian version, but my update will happen next year once my lease is up. Will not be done by Acura, or in an Acura. They had the chance to fix things by bringing in the RLX tech on newer models, but they failed. Well Acura is now a total failure to me. I'm really happy some users got a good fix, but it seems a MASSIVE amount did not.

I work in the software industry with QA testing. What Acura never planned was that the ZF9 was flawed in its hardware design from the very beginning. No patch can ever fix that. Their treatment to brush off customers as normal is a complete textbook no-no for service, and they will pay dearly in the future. Especially that they silently applied a hardware fix on 2016s. Not only have they lost my money, but any future references from now on.

kkannr

Honestly, I am making every effort to push people of Honda/Acura. One who wanted a Odyssey now has a Sienna, other, who wanted a TLX has a IS, my father who wanted a Honda Jazz now has a VW polo!! Well done Honda/Acura getting me pissed :P, I am just waiting to be upside on my loan and I will go as well..

neil0311

I agree that the initial brush off was bad, although I personally didn't experience it. It took some discussions but I got my transmission replaced within a month of reporting it.

What I don't get is your point on a them "silently" applying a hardware fix. What did you want them to do, take a full page ad out in the newspaper? The manufacturer tweaked the design.

Now, whether Acura knew the original design was defective and deliberately withheld replacing some transmissions is the stuff of lawsuits (good luck proving it). They may have been told by ZF or internal engineers that software fixes could make the needed adjustments. It seems difficult to believe they would deliberately blow off customers knowingly, only to wait a year and then replace all the transmissions.

For me, they did what they needed to do and compensated me financially for the inconvenience. I'm now enjoying the vehicle and what I have in it financially is substantially less than comparable alternatives. The lesson learned for me is to never buy early production of a vehicle in its first model year. That was the real issue.

weather

^^ Your situation and the way your situation was handled is more the exception and not the norm. Had ALL TLX owners would have been treated the same way you have been, the growing list of annoyed or disgruntled owners wouldn't be the way it is. In Canada, there is virtually nothing being done for owners, you are told that the car is behaving as intended and that you are just left to "suck it up" while in the States, many TSB have been issued to try and address the issue while some are getting some success in getting their transmission replaced.

If the car is behaving as intended, then why are they issuing TSB? I would not expect Acura to do a massive recall as the transmission problem is not a safety issue (with the behavior of some units that were handled accordingly) but a matter of not behaving as it should, at least many of the earlier versions. Are ALL of the owners asking for a replacement, absolutely not so there is no need for them to recall of them but for owners who have been inconvenienced several time by having various programing done to their tranny only to see the behavior continue, do the right thing and replace it for those people. You saw the post from kknarr just above, see what happens when you treat people like crap, they will push many of their friends and family away from the brand and that is what I am doing too now. That kind of bad reputation and lost of sales is FAR MORE costly in the long run than replacing a stupidly designed transmission.

tmitch2315

1louder I had a very early build in 2014 and they finally replaced my transmission and everything is good.

I would have gone with the Lexus IS F from the start but I found it a smaller car and could not deal with that. Glad you are happy my wife drives a NX200t great car.

Acura seriously screwed themselves with this deal by making such a fight out of this. ZF is the real bad actor here. It was their transmission that was too innovative and not ready for prime time not only for Acura but also the other car companies they sold it to. It needed another year of testing before being put on the market and still needs some work. That being said it's still an amazing bit of engineering when you consider you are getting four overdrives.123456789R4.7132.8421.9091.3821.0000.80 80.6990.580.483.80
I drive a 62 Corvette most of the time with a 4 speed which was a big deal at the time. I could do with a .48 overdrive I'm lucky to get 16MPG with FI.

tmitch2315

That did not come out very well. 4.713, 2.842, 1.909, 1.382. 1.000, 0.808, 0.699, 0.58, 0.48. are the 9 forward gear ratios.

pyrodan007

True that the transmission may be excellent on paper, but in the real world it's really not that smooth as wrongly marketed by Acura. I just saw a Christmas clearance ad on TV last night and they still market themselves as performance players. Those 4 overdrive gears should never have been included if they truly focused on performance. At least give me the option to buy painted brake calibers, useless but I would have payed for it. It's those little things that makes me think Acura doesn't really have a clue on how to play the performance game now a days. Or with customer support based on many problems being flagged as normal only to be fixed later.

1Louder

I agree. To me, the Acura SUVs are great and they are highly reviewed with excellent reliability. I love our 14 MDX, and we loved our 12 RDX and 06 MDX before that. Whoever is running their sedan department needs to be replaced. The ILX is a fancy Civic, none of the TLX versions are worth owning, and the RLX is way out of it's league at it's price point. IMO.

KeithL

imwould argue that even the SUVs are vulnerable. The wife has owned three RDXs and is done due to,the crappy infotainment. IMO the SUVs strength is the pure value play and they have been very reliable. The competitors are breathing down Acura's neck on all fronts.

TX_BB

Went ahead and made the leap to a pre-owned Infiniti Q50S with only 15k miles. Got a great deal, and the dealership gave me a very generous trade in value for the TLX.

I tried really hard to like the TLX, but every single time I turned into my neighborhood off of a 45 MPG road onto a 25 MPH road, after slowing down, making the turn, then giving it gas, it hesitated to find the right gear.

So, after an '85 CRX, '90 Civic Sedan, '04 TSX, '05 Accord EX-L V6, '14 Accord Coupe V6 M6 and now a '15 TLX (with some off brands in between), I've decided to take a long break from Honda products.

Good luck y'all and hope that Acura resolves everyone's challenges.

pyrodan007

I'm really happy that your pain has been put to rest with Acura. I'm still trying hard to look past my TLX's problems but I'm counting down the days for Feb 2018 (lease end). For the members here who complain that some "bitch" too much about their TLXs, well there must be a reason why so many of us are dying to get rid of it (and DO so). If yours work beautifully, enjoy it. But don't try to convince us that a dollar is not 4 quarters. I know my 12 TL was not perfect, but I never complained when people brought up relevant issues.

weather

TX_BB - Congrats on your new ride and I don't blame you for ditching Acura - Wise move if you ask me!

pyrodan007 - Hang in there buddy, 1 year and one month to go!! It will come before you know it. At least now you can use the upcoming summer month to start driving new cars and getting a grocery list - That is always the best part of car shopping. You could also start browsing at the Mtl auto show in a few weeks and use it an advantage to go mingle with some execs at the Acura booth and vent in person

rocket_pup

I almost pulled the trigger on a new one before the TLX, but the quirky electronics and drive by wire steering killed it for me. Plus, Nissan/Infiniti's don't hold up well after 4 or 5 years.

However, they are fun to drive for sure. Enjoy.

Rocket_man

I don't know how you can be so naive about how Acura treated their customers. They did exactly as you stated above. And in fact how they only ever treated their Canadian customers this way, never putting any fixes in place as far as I know. Just because your situation was handled properly you can't assume everyone was treated the same way. Hence why there are so many swearing off the Acura/Honda brand on here.

I just had the 2nd software update made on my late model 2015 production. Still too early to tell if this update is much of an improvement. The car always seems to shift better right after the update and then the transmission 'learns' to be crappy. I'm still in that first 500 miles of learning bad behavior.

As for my future with Acura... still too early for me to take a bath on the car. I'll hold on to it until my loss is acceptable, but I'm not sure what will be next for me. Maybe I go back to BMW, or try a Lexus product.

If Acura really wanted to keep these customers they would give them some financial incentive to stick with the brand. I will not hold my breath. After this last software update the service rep basically said there is nothing else Acura will do for me.

1Louder

Agree with all you said above. To your last point, it's curious that when I was trying to get out of my car back in August I got trade in values from two dealerships that happened to be affiliated with the Acura dealer I worked with. They both gave me miserable trade in quotes - really, really low. It wasn't until I went to a dealership that didn't have any affiliation with Acura that I got a respectable amount, and it was a clean $3K higher than Acura. Also, I did explore the idea of trading my TLX for an RDX earlier that summer and I was given no real consideration as an existing customer let alone a TLX owner.

Acura is just failing on all fronts with this car. The 22% drop in sales from 15 to 16 apparently didn't mean much to them.

weather

^^ That is likely because they don't understand what a 22% drop in sales mean. The brand is in free fall and total chaos as far as I am concerned. They have totally lost their mojo and confidence and just when they try to get themselves out of the hole, they go further into it. Given the fact that Acura is not sold on a full global market, if I was the talk executive at Honda, I would just pull the pin on the brand all together and call it a day - OR - take the brand globally to try and build the credibility in the name.

pyrodan007

Funny you mention it, already have my tickets. Acura was a major player last year since their halo car, the NSX, was a showstopper at the end of end of circuit. This year, have nothing, as usual. If they would show the new TLX, I'd be floored!!! And then disappointed since as usual nothing really changed lol

pyrodan007

Honda should do like what Toyota did with Scion. Considering that most Acura models are very similar to Honda's products, minus SH-AWD, would not be far off. Honda does changes faster, should be a great solution to cut the useless fat being Marek. Just make current Acuras the touring models and boom, all done! They already do it with the NSX globally. Acura now has a bad reputation for being boring on a long term basis and having questionable engineering/service.

neil0311

I'm not naïve at all. As a matter of fact, I seem to be one of few who dealt with Acura and accomplished what needed to be accomplished, and got substantial financial compensation as well as a new transmission, new Michelin tires, etc. I knew that dealing with this at a business level without emotion, and escalating to the dealership GM and within Acura was the best way to handle it. So if that's naiveté, then I'm naïve.

Personally, I don't believe some nefarious plot at Acura existed to deliberately screw TLX owners. I think they probably were told by the ZF engineers that the initial problems could be solved by software updates. Obviously they have to consider the costs and when they realized the software updates wouldn't work and people like me would not relent, they started to replace transmissions on early builds under warranty. They probably realized that they'd end up replacing many (if not all) of the early transmissions and so they updated the TSB. Maybe ZF agreed to reimburse them and replace defective units. Who knows.

Should they have had better quality control...absolutely. Should they have replaced transmissions immediately...probably. Were they deliberately plotting to screw TLX owners for their own greedy reasons and laughing at the misfortunes of those owners...I don't think so. Mine is not the naiveté.

Happy new year!

kkannr

Honestly, If everyone was treated the way you were, the 59 page thread would be all praises. however, they treated me with lies and deceit. The district rep who came down was a complete liar!! they even refused to test drive a newer mode 2015 car claiming they dint have one. while all the while the dealership had some and the service manager just agreed to the problems a few weeks back. this was till my patience ran out and I decided to let the my friends and family know the problems.

I have a mail thread which I show everyone and test drive them on my car and people just move on from this brand.

Momyc

Pyrodan, we should go to shop together . My lease is ending on March 2018. My Tlx was produced on Jan 2015.
What production date was yours ?

pyrodan007

Mine was made Nov 2014, I purchased it on September 2015. Dealer never told me it was one of the early models, if I'd known I'd change color or to Tech instead of Elite to get an up to date version. This shows you the power of rebates to make cars move, I fell for it unfortunately.

I don't know how many times I thought about just dumping this thing to somebody else, but financially it makes no sense. It's only one more year to go but...I used it today to merge onto 50KM traffic and it still scares me due to transmission taking it's sweet time to go.

Momyc

Yup , I got same thing. I have to swallow it for another year. I tried something (get an A4) this December , but financially didn't make any sense yet. Too much to lose.
Actually, I enjoy driving my wife 2015 Santa FE , which with 2.0T and 6sp is way more enjoyable to drive than my TLX. It's always on the right speed and the low end torque makes it very responsive and fun to drive . It reminds me about my old TL.

pyrodan007

I too have my eyes set on the A4, beautiful machine. Did you start negotiations on price? I wonder how much of a special people get since they must be selling really well!
It's sad that most mainstream cars seems to have just as much tech or drive better then some of Acura's luxury models. How the mighty have fallen in just a couple of years!

weather

HEY HEY - Hold off you two! My lease for my Lexus will be due in 1 year - Let's all get together and buy in bulk!! I'd be willing to try and Audi or we can try and get a group Lexus buy (lol)