iforyou

iTrader: (1)

The ILX is quite popular in Vancouver, Canada. Heck, one of my friend's family has two! lol.

I guess it's down to the fact that the ILX isn't as expensive relatively to other cars here. For instance, Our Accord starts at $24k as opposed to $22k in the US. On the other hand, our ILX starts at $28k, vs $27k in the US. Another possibility is that Canadians tend to prefer smaller cars than bigger ones. The rebate helps a bit too.

MeehowsBRZ

I've just as many McLaren MP4-12C's on the street as I have RLX's.

EL19

iTrader: (4)

I see an ILX & RLX once or twice per week which is quite shocking to me. I see MDX's and RDX's all over the place.

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

Your friend's family has two, so it's popular in Canada?

fsttyms1

Ive seen my first RLX on the road (without dealer plates on it) around here this week. Its been out how long now and its the only one sold. Our dealer has a lot full of them, the original one they got in is still on the showroom floor

qingcong

Everytime I see an ILX or RLX I feel like I need to stop and make a wish because it's such a rare occurrence.

iforyou

iTrader: (1)

Hmm, it's a pretty common car here in Vancouver. Not Civic-popular, but I see a few on a daily basis (as opposed to seeing 1 or 2 every 3 months or something).

My friend has 2 siblings, the brother has the 2.4 one, and the sister has the regular one. I guess they were able to get a good deal. Cars here are generally more expensive. A fully loaded Mazda3 before accessories is over $30k. On the other hand, you can get an ILX for may be ~$25k. For that money you can drive a Civic Touring.

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

I don't know man.

ttribe

^^^Don't forget, only Yummy, iforyou and about 12 other people live in Canada. As a % of the total population of Canadian drivers, those ILX sales numbers are BIG TIME!

iforyou

iTrader: (1)

LOL ttribe is right man.

Canada: 35mil people
US: 320mil people

There are almost 10 times more people in the US than Canada.

The average of the sales numbers from your chart is 260. That's equivalent to 2600 units/month in US.

dom

I could be wrong but IIRC the old EL outsold the ILX by a significant margin. The old CSX as well. They were likely cheaper but its obvious even in Canada where we've always had a 'Acura Civic' the ILX hasn't quite caught on.

dom

Yep, the EL from 97 to 04 sold an average of about 7,500 per year. Even its last 2 years at around 5K it was higher than an ILX will ever see.

Belzebutt

And yet nuking the Civic lookalike was required in order to move Acura upmarket.

People who wanted to buy what was basically a Civic with leather can just suck it up and buy a Civic. With leather.

krio

it's simply a very greedy dealer... he want all the RLX only for himself... he likes this model too much for selling them...

fsttyms1

keeping the car rare and upping the resale value.

dom

They may have nuked the Civic lookalike (kind of) but has the ILX moved them upmarket? I'd say its dragged them down even further into the Honda + category. In the US anyway.

oonowindoo

where is Canada?

We have La Cañada here

iforyou

iTrader: (1)

Ya there are still tons of EL's out on the road here. Definitely the price is a factor. And nowadays, you can get a pretty well equipped Civic/Focus/Corolla.etc. That wasn't the case back then in the EL era.

Edward'TLS

^^^^^

It is very obvious that given the vast disparity in disposable income between population of the two countries, the ILX/EL/Civic strategy only works well in Canada, but not in the US.

dom

Yes....except the ILX isn't working in Canada either.

Edward'TLS

Good news. The Canadians are getting smarter nowadays.

Mizouse

dom

It was in bad taste, he's admitted as much. Lets move on. This thread has really been side tracked. With little to no TLX info coming lets as least try and keep this thread about Acura.

fsttyms1

Ok, I've seen enough. I'm not going back to clean up the other pages of this thread ( I should delete this one and start a new one) but the insults and name calling are going to stop. Take it to PM's if you want to insult each other. The next time I have to delete posts for the above actions or derailing the thread from anything other than TLX will from this point on will be an automatic week vacation.

vybzkartel

This is my 1st post in this thread....the negative bickering has been such a turn off!

So...

While it may not be the greatest of designs, this TLX will sell much better the current TL. The plenum, implemented the way it did on the '09-'11 TL was the worst, IMHO. It was just horrendous! Looked much better on the MMC. The way I see it, the plenum is the least of Acura's problem.

Acura's problem is, having a game plan, and sticking to it!

BTW, how the hell did they think that putting the 2.0L and Hybrid in the ILX(which is a decent looking design, IMO) was a good idea?!

dom

^ Couldn't agree more about the plenum. It was bad on the 09-11 TL but its not the main problem for Acura by any stretch. Although I think its far better suited to an SUV.

fsttyms1

Like you said, Acura doesn't have a game plan that they stick too or have a clue on.

qingcong

I truly believe the bean counters are the blame for that decision. In theory I can see how it makes sense - for the professional 25-40 yo crowd who doesn't know anything about cars, the 2L and hybrid may make sense. Those people just want to get from A to B and look good doing it. For whatever reason, I think it's primarily pricing and advertising and to a lesser extent the car frankly not being any good, Acura has wildly missed its mark with that crowd. Even the 2.4L ILX is a miss. It's not luxurious and it's not sporty enough. I agree with you, it's an elegant looking car, and the idea of trying to hit up the gen Y people like me makes a lot of sense as there's no car out on the market that appeals specifically for this crowd, but they didn't execute the plan very well. I'm the guy who grew up on the Integra and as such, I'm excited about new iterations of the small Acura, but the ILX is a let down to me.

MSZ

All they have to do is follow what Audi did: Put all of their sedan lineup on a longitudinal engine platform. Acura had huge successes with it back in the early 90s. RWD or not doesn't even matter now, since they have mastered the whole AWD thing already.

qingcong

So in contrast to the ILX, I think Acura actually tried with the TLX. The ILX strikes me as a car where they raided the parts bin and put together a generic little Acura (at least in terms of engineering). The TLX appears to have had more effort put into it in the engineering side. The appearance is definitely a conservative/safe/just don't fail look, but the engineering side took some risks. What made Honda exciting in the past was they took engineering risks and they worked very well; they did things in an elegant manner nobody else could. I kind of see that happening now with things like super hybrid SHAWD, PAWS, SHAWD, 8DCT, turbo VTEC. There's certainly seems to be a lot more new stuff coming out of Honda than in the last 8 years or so. We'll see if any of it is actually any good.

vybzkartel

Not follow...'cause as you pointed out, they(Acura) did it back in the '90s. But that's a good point. The longitudinal engine architecture will always make a design look more balanced.

That's what makes it more sad. When they say what the competition is(IS?, A4, or A3?), they then decide to put those 2 drivetrains in. Should have just done the 2.4 alone, IMHO! I just don't get the hybrid thing! ILX 2.4L, 22/31/25, $30,095...ILX 1.5L Hybrid, 39/38/38, $35,495. You get a more powerful engine, and save a little over $5k. WTF, $5k buys a whole lot o' gas, lol!

qingcong

I don't mind a hybrid model, but the hybrid technology they used on the ILX was way out of date. There's way more potential in the electric motors than what the IMA setup offers - just look at the P1, 918, LaFerrari. There is serious performance potential in hybrids.

krio

and even more affordable in clean diesel engines (turbo-turbo-diesel)... you get performance and great fuel efficency.
for ex: two ILX with 1.6td (140hp) and 2.0t (220hp),
and two TLX: 3.0td (240hp) and a 3.0t (320hp). Nothing more.
And in 2-3 years a TL-S with a V8 (420-450hp)...

oonowindoo

i thought i was the only one day dreaming at work....

qingcong

Well I don't know if diesel options are going to help Acura much, but who knows.

Basically as I see it now, they've already got themselves some engine options that we know they have or know they are working on, which may work on future ILX&TLX. These are just rough hp estimates -

200-220hp: 1.5L turbo, 2.4L from TLX
220-270hp: ?
270-330hp: 2.0L turbo from Civic Type R, 3.5L V6
330-500hp: V6 + hybrid?, 2.0L turbo + hybrid?

Which kind of makes me wonder... are they going to go turbo in the future or stick with the equivalent powered N/A options? Using both seems redundant.

kurtatx

If power were the only issue, I would agree with you, but the torque in each engine is not the same.

My 2008 A4 had a 2.0T with like 200 hp and 200 lb-ft of torque. My 2013 TSX has a 2.4L with 200 hp-ish but only 170 lb-ft of torque. The 2.0T was quite a bit louder than the 2.4 but the torque difference was also noticeable. So no, they're not exactly redundant, but I see your point.

oonowindoo

That is the difference between "useable" power vs. I am going to rev the shit out of this engine power. Pushing hard vs. Effortless

Can the 2.4 N/A provide similar performance as most of the 2.0T? Sure, absolutely.

Certain engines belong to certain cars that target different buyers.

This is not year 2000 anymore, screaming Vtec while accelerating in a family sedan is not cool anymore.

charliemike

It seems like there are two schools of thought:

1. Japan. Naturally aspirated engines. Period. Nissan, Honda, Toyota, and Mazda are all trying to get as much mileage out of NA four-bangers as they can.

2. Everyone but GM. Varying displacement and force-induction engines including turbo/supercharger forced induction.

3. GM. Picking and choosing but not really consistently applying a technology and sticking to it.

Who is right? I think that's difficult to say. But I am going to bet that at some point the Japanese with their 3.7L V6s are going to be the dinosaurs if they don't start changing.

kurtatx

Never thought about it that way, but you're right. Even the base IS has a 6 cylinder when all of its competitors run 2.0T's.

That's a great point. GM has really used Buick and Cadillac to target specific markets of cars and then beat them. Cadillac has the very European design, the 2.0T engines, and they continue to target BMW with their models. Buick, on the other hand, although initially designed in Europe, has tried to become a full on Lexus target (given they have fallen short and are still closer to Acura than Lexus).

To GMs credit, the appear to be the only US company that manages to compete on all fronts. Chrysler feels like they might be going in the right direction with the new Jeeps and the Dodge reorganization, but the actual Chrysler brand doesn't really compete. The Ford brand is the best American brand IMHO, but they can't seem to do anything well with Lincoln. GM has managed to compete in nearly every segment. Chevy is a bit weaker than Ford, Buick is at least a competitive Japanese alternative (and it's killing it in China), and Cadillac is more than a viable competitor to the European models.

oonowindoo

This wave of FI engines is no different than DI, 6/7/8/9 speed auto tranny, paddle shifter, DCT, and etc..

It is just the way the market is moving forward or "advancing" if you will, and eventually all the Japanese brand including Honda/Acura will give in. I suspect that Nissan/Infiniti will be the first one to do it since they already have the blue print of a proven V6 TT on file.

What is frustrating is why does Honda/Acura always, always have to the be the last to arrive on everything!!