To be fair, the styling of the 10G Accord was pretty polarizing. After a year or two, people became more accepting of the new look. Most people seem to like the new TLX styling. I live on Long Island, where there are 6 Acura dealerships within 30mins or closer to each other. I don't have the data, but judging by that fact, I'd assume Long Island is a hotbed for Acura sales. I've only seen two 2G TLXs in the wild so far. That being said, I know getting a deal on our RDX was a hassle, so many people might be put off by the fact that there's little to no incentives being given out by these dealers who think they'll get sticker by some sucker who's coming in "any day now." Another reason I doubt any deals will be gotten on the Type-S in my area. I honestly do hope sales do begin to climb, but with it being a brand new model, right now may be its sales peak. If sales don't pick up (they were good, but not great for Oct) and sales only drop off after this, this will likely be the last generation of the TLX, which I think even the most critical of us don't want.

This is way out of my wheelhouse, but isn't buying out a lease a terrible waste of money? I was never interested in leasing cars, but with my current dissatisfaction with my RDX's interior build quality, my next vehicle "purchase" may be a lease. I'll need to do some more research on the topic though, as I'm completely ignorant on the topic.

 

Leasing Pros

- Try out a car for 2-3 years. Could be important for first year models of a new gen that may have mechanical issues.
- Return the car if you don't like it or if your lifestyle changes for something else.
- If you do buy out the car, you know the previous owner
- Always under warranty (unless you do a > 3 year lease, which is rare)
- Never needs emission inspection (too new)

Leasing Cons

- If you negotiated the sale price well, buying out the car should only cost you hundreds more (outside of tax) but it could easily be thousands more if you didn't.
Some folks forget to haggle during a lease compared to straight purchase.
- Fixed annual mileage can be deal breaker for some (companies like Acura allow for some free overage if you stick with Acura for next car)
- Cycle of leasing offers no equity since there's no trade-in. You start over each time.
- Gap insurance included in most luxury brands' leases but typically not included in non-luxury brands.
- In some states, you don't pay tax on the value of your trade-in. Not having a trade-in makes a buyout less enticing.
- When turning in a lease early, you lose the down-payment of the remaining months.

In my 8 years of leasing, I have yet to find a keeper.

 

Forget about the 2022 Civic, even the current 10G Touring gives it a run for its money (and would be the one I would pick if they were priced the same).

 

About what I was seeing for pros/cons. With the issues I've dealt with the RDX, if I go Acura again, and assuming it puts out decent performance, the TLX Type-S will likely be a lease. If I can get a great deal, I might just buy ... but, as I stated before, I don't think good deals on Acuras are really prone in this area. If I do take the leap to the dark side (German), it will absolutely be a lease.

 

Not if you negotiate up front and have a good residual value at the end of the lease. I have seen instances where people actually made money off of buying the car at the end of the lease and then selling it on their own.

Minus a few shortcomings that could be deal breakers for some e.g. mileage allowances a lease can be pretty enticing; with modern cars and all of the gizmos found in them a 3 year trial period is not a bad idea.

 

leomio85, I know you referenced haggling on your RDX was a hassle with dealers not willing to deal. The fact that I and others were able to get our TLX's a couple thousand below invoice is a testament to the possibility (just check the Owner's Sign-In thread with the reported pricing). Note that I got mine a bit over a month after the car hit dealerships!

My bare minimum when buying a new car:

1) Sign up with Truecar so that you get free quotes directly to your inbox. You can have dealerships fighting each other with written quotes in hand.
2) Now, with Truecar as the anchor, shoot to go lower, possibly even below invoice as I and others routinely do.
3) Some dealers eventually give in if they know you are armed with the info above and have been shopping around.

If the dealer doesn't give in to the price you want, simply walk away until you find someone who does. No harm, no foul. Everyone has a price.

There is the caveat of course that if the car is too popular or considered too premium, only MSRP or above will be what you see (thankfully not the 2.0L TLX).

 

Yea, one of the buying tips I see is that people forget to negotiate initial cost seeing as they're simply leasing it and don't want to haggle.

We got ours for just over invoice (44k - not ideal) during July '19 when the 2020's were still fairly new. I found emailing to be a fruitless venture ... maybe I don't have the gift of gab. Simply asking nicely how much they could take off sticker after a few back and forths would leave me ghosted. Went in person to a few dealers and most were annoyed when I started to try dealing. Ironically, the one who really didn't care all that much was the furthest from us ... maybe because they were closest to NYC and their sales volume was the highest? Brought it back to our local dealer and he simply matched it but wouldn't go lower. Best part is he had the audacity to ask for a tip. He said it jokingly, but he brought it up several times during delivery. Do you Acura-buying mooks actually tip you car salesmen? I can see if they got you a rock bottom deal, but I was already paying slightly over invoice (more than I wanted), so the dealership made plenty of money and he got his commission.

 

That's the beauty of Truecar. Once you give your email address, you have multiple dealers giving you their best offer. Even if your local dealer doesn't participate, you can always show them the Truecar email from a participating dealer.
If you like saving money, this is the absolute bare minimum when buying new and it's completely free!

I would never tip a car salesman. They make money off a sale (shame on them if they don't). As a non-commissioned part-timer at Best Buy, I was tipped once buy a customer but store policy is to not accept tips.

You may be local to me so feel free to PM if you need some dealerships that may be willing to work with you.

 

FWIW True car gets a finders fee for the deals that are completed. That leaves a few hundred on the table that you lose. Best plan is to have someone with a different email & computer ID to send the info to. You get a number you can work down from.

 

In my latest deal, I started with TrueCar who pointed me to a participating dealer. Received an offer. Took it to another dealer who did better. In the end, TrueCar was left out of the loop.

 

Do we have a company like this for Canadian buyers? Gonna be helpful come trigger time.

 

These may or may not help:

https://unhaggle.com/

https://carcostcanada.com/Home/MakeModel

I think concepts are the same.

 

Thanks, Elin. Also, Canada is a lot less competitive than the US. Overall, US has a huge market and the prices are lower. In Canada (Montreal) on average a used 2019 RDX with 40,000KM+ is at least $42K CAD (A-Spec model). Whereas the brand new is $51K. So in 3 years, it lost less than $10K. It's incredible. In US I hear people are getting 20-25% off. You won't get that in Canada, except for Infiniti lol! i am not sure of Toronto and Vancouver as they are both large cities.

 

I hear the used car market is super-hot right now bc of the pandemic. Any chance the residual value is inflated because of this or has it always been this way in Canada?

After 2 years, that comes out to a residual factor of 82%. I'm more familiar with the 3 year number but 82% after 2 yrs sounds ok. The 3 yr number is more like 62% of MSRP.

I think the 20-25% off is more for outgoing RDX/TLX (ie. 2020 models and not 2021).

 

https://acuranews.com/en-US/releases...-sales-results

American Honda Reports November Sales Results

• Release

December 1, 2020 American Honda Total

102,614
-23.4%
Cars

39,830
-26.9%
Trucks

62,784
-21%
Total

11,891
-17.9%
Cars

3,245
-17.5%
Trucks

8,646
-18.1%
Total

90,723
-24.1%
Cars

36,585
-27.7%
Trucks

54,138
-21.4%


See accompanying spreadsheet for complete results.

 

I've seen more Taycan's than TLX-2's on the road....
in fact, havent seen a TLX-2 yet...Ive seen many a ILX's that make me do a double take but no TLX-2's yet.

 

That's a lot of negative values! Really bad month of Nov for Honda.

 

In my area, the 2020 Sport Hybrid RLX is going for the same or lower than the MSRP of the 2021 TLX A-Spec! No wonder RLX sales are up but everything else is down!

 

WOW. Those numbers are just brutal. You bet there will be some deep discounts in December. Still early, but looks like 2nd Gen TLX is doing nothing in terms of sales. That total number includes heavily discounted 1G TLX and it's still pretty low. Sedans ain't selling. I don't care how good you make the car, people vote with their wallets and they're buying CUV/SUV's....

 

Taycans are selling! sedans arent dead. I live in Houston with 7.1 million other people...and have seen several Taycans on the road.
The rest of the population is now realizing what we have been realizing...the TLX-2 is just too expensive in terms of what you get.
if you've got $50k to blow on a vehicle, there are other amazing vehicles to blow that money on.
and if you dont have $50k to blow on a vehicle, Hyundai and Kia have vehicles for you.

Acura has out priced themselves out of their own market.

 

Maybe this will be a wake up call to Acura and time to come down to a reasonable price for the TLX, up coming TLX-S and MDX. They aren't that type of brand for the price. Anyway, it's becoming a broken record around here. December is their month to do right and run some discounts (end of year sales).

 

Same

 

They could be worth the price...if the cars punched above their weight class in terms of performance. From everything we know about the car thus far, the TLX Type-S sadly ain't doing it, no matter how hard Acura marketing tries to sell the performance angle. If Dodge can sell Chargers for $40K-$50K, no reason Acura shouldn't be able to do the same with TLX if they had a product that stood out more.

 

Surprised how bad Honda is doing. Not having any pure electric cars and more diverse hybrid options is not helping. Acura having nothing new electrically for the near future is worrisome. If the MDX keeps it's hybrid for new model, well Acura deserves it's slow burn sales. The new TLX is clearly not what most buyers really wanted.

 

Similar things were prob said 6 years ago when the 1G came out. The pandemic has a way of accelerating the demise of mediocre companies. I hope Acura survives but I won’t shed a tear if it doesn’t.

 

TLX is following the same trajectory as when Accord launched. I recall back then, the price was pretty firm for a few months and the sale was not good. Once incentives kicked in, the volume picked up. I see the same thing happening to TLX.

I still think you guys are too hard on Acura. They decided to hold on and see market's response on a 3-month old car - that is totally reasonable. They have the numbers and sooner or later they will do what they need to do to balance the supply/demand.

 

Is the correlation between covidncase number and sale drop a coincidence?

 

The looks of the 10G Accord likely had a lot to do with slow sales initially. I know I didn’t like it when it was first released. It grew on me and now I quite like it. I feel most people like the looks of the 2G TLX. I think the main thing keeping sales down is the price. Down sales from last year and even from last month with a brand new models. That’s brutal for Acura. Hopefully they can turn things around.

Unfortunately, I think slow sales are going to impact production volume of the Type-S. I don’t think there’s going to be many of them around and you’ll be lucky to get one for around sticker. They’re probably gonna be gouged like the CTR. =(. Hope I’m wrong on this one.

 

I don't think so. I've been tracking COVID daily since my analytics class from the Spring. Cases had been rising since school started again in the Fall.
How do you explain a decent October but a horrible November?

I'm sure other car makers numbers will have some drop off but nowhere nearly as bad as Acura's across the board (except for that RLX on blowout sale).

 

Thanks ELIN, I'll keep this in mind for spring.

 

Acura can't stop lurching back and forth with the direction of the TLX.

1G TLX appears to be descended from the 3G TL, but with botched mechanical execution (transmission) and still too closely related to the Accord to offer much incentive.
2G TLX appears to be descended from the 4G TL, big on the outside and small on the inside.

Unfortunately, time has run out and nobody with money even cares about a sedan with yesterday's tech and no compelling features, status, or even reliability track record. It's neither luxury nor a good value.

 

I wouldn't call it yesterday's tech. The biggest knock so far is the lack of full-digital gauges. The 3D ELS is the equal or better of many luxury systems!

 

Respectfully, I would call having a 710 watt, 17 speaker audio system, 20+ choices of ambient lighting schemes, leather upholstery, heated/ventilated steering wheel and HUD, and a 10 inch infotainment screen a fairly full luxury experience. I define luxury by what something is, not what it isn't. Nit-picks about a lower than Lexus-level dealership experience, lacking Audi-level tech, and lacking a back seat big enough to have a baby in, much less put one, are just that - nit-picks.

 

The ELS system is amazing, but I don’t think that’s the type of tech most people think of. Infotainment system is still lacking behind even mainstream cars like Hyundai/Kia or even the new uConnect5 system on FCA cars. And the lack of a digital gauge cluster really limits the tech they can pack in. Hyundai/Kia have this cool feature where when you put on the turn signals, a camera projects your blind spot into the gauge on the corresponding side. That’s a way better implementation of the LaneWatch thing Honda tried out, and I wish more cars did things like that.

 

I would definitely include engine into tech category. It's neither performant or fuel economy leading. May as well have kept the V6 since MDX will continue with it. Use the I4T for new ILX to keep category intact (ILX/RDX, TLX/MDX, NSX). And still no hybrid option.

 

If you only look at what it has and not what it doesn’t, that means you’re not comparing it to the competition and you fall into the “ignorance is bliss” mentality. Most luxury car buyers have more discerning tastes and higher expectations, and generally have the means to be choosy and picky and compare across the segment.

 

That's a valid point. It appears Acura rushed things just to get something out. They would do well to hire engineers from other companies to get new perspectives but I'm guessing Acura is fairly homogenous and stand by "tradition".

 

A simple single scroll turbo with an engine also used for the last couple years in a mainstream family car and was first introduced 6 years ago isn’t technically advanced enough?

 

Not necessarily. In fact, I did extensively compare the TLX 2 to the Audi A4, Lexus ES 350 and '21 IS 300/350, and Genesis G70. Also compared to top-trim Camry and Sonata. To me they are all luxury vehicles in different ways. To me, luxury doesn't necessarily mean a vehicle has the absolute very latest tech or very best top level of luxury accoutrements or power train options. I think we all define luxury in different ways; hence the extensive debate regarding whether or not Acura counts as a Luxury or a Premium brand. Luxury is more about what we want versus what we need. Most of us need a solid reliable car. If that were the only factor, we'd all drive base trim Camrys, Accords, Sonatas or Opitmas. Luxury buyers have a plethora of wants that brands like Acura, in my opinion, do satisfy.

Fiatlux, please don't make assumptions about whether or not someone did comparison shopping before making their purchase. I find your "ignorance is bliss" comment to be more than a tad insulting.

 

Not necessarily. In fact, I did extensively compare the TLX 2 to the Audi A4, Lexus ES 350 and '21 IS 300/350, and Genesis G70. Also compared to top-trim Camry and Sonata. To me they are all luxury vehicles in different ways. To me, luxury doesn't necessarily mean a vehicle has the absolute very latest tech or very best top level of luxury accoutrements or power train options. I think we all define luxury in different ways; hence the extensive debate regarding whether or not Acura counts as a Luxury or a Premium brand. Luxury is more about what we want versus what we need. Most of us need a solid reliable car. If that were the only factor, we'd all drive base trim Camrys, Accords, Sonatas or Opitmas. Luxury buyers have a plethora of wants that brands like Acura, in my opinion, do satisfy.

Fiatlux, please don't make assumptions about whether or not someone did comparison shopping before making their purchase. I find your "ignorance is bliss" comment to be more than a tad insulting.