princed

I just got my issue of Car and Driver with a 2 page preview of the TL. I have no idea how to post this info, and I don't want to type it all out.

Highlights:

Wheelbase of new TL shorter than predecessor (107.9)
Overall length shorter by 6.3 inches
Compression ratio up to 11.0:1
60/40 weight balance
6MT is 50 lbs lighter than previous TL-S w/ auto being 5 lbs heavier than previous TL-s
Trunk volume down by 1.8 cubic feet
Projected 0-60 is 6.0 secs for 6MT, with 1/4 mile at 14.7 @ 97mph

I'll scan it in in a bit -- can I e-mail the scan to someone to host?

RJC RSX

send to me

if you can't get it scanned, I'll receive mine tomorrow and will post it up

princed

Done! The scans should be in your inbox...

Looks like there's real aluminum trim (no more fake stuff!)...

need4spd_RENAMED

COOL!!!!!!!

RJC RSX

Thanks princed! 1MB download:

Charmed

I can't wait to see that navi hacked.

pcinoc

Great Article - Thanks to princed and RJC for their coordinated effort!

I can't wait for Acura to come out with the actual sticker price! There seems to be a slight variation between the different magazines - 33,500 +2K for Navi and the car is 35,5K quite a bit more than the previous generation. I might have to look at the TSX / Accord V6 again

princed

I was just thinking that myself... The audio system has the Dolby Digital and dts logos, so assuming there's a way to input a digital audio signal to the unit, the car has the decoding capabilities built in. Imagine the ability to have TV, PS2/Xbox, DVD-audio and video w/ full 5.1 channel surround for your passengers!

On a related note, I'm hoping that in a few years, BMW's head up display will trickle into other automobiles and offer some of that functionality in the actual windshield (although I still don't know if watching a semi-translucent TV image superimposed over the view of the road will prove safe)...

Skull One_RENAMED

Well I stated if they went above $35K it would be a deal breaker. With the base estimated at $33.5 that means with Nav and dealer shipping that puts it at $36K. With Extended warranty and TTL, were now looking around $40K OTD. Heck I might as well go lease an '04 Vette and just learn to deal with the no Nav at that price point or get the Inifiniti M45 and learn to live with their Nav system.

lshenretty

From the pictures I've seen here and elsewhere, I think I actually like the dashboard of the TSX better, especially the center stack. I have to see it in real life to be sure.

gilboman

um...no thanks...the interior needs serious work and they forgot to design the rear again....i'll pass and if i must buy an Acura..other than the NSX it'll be a TSX...

vp12

so is the 6MT is lighter than the current Type-S ???

Raheel

I agree that the Non-Navi interior doesn't look too good, but I am not worried as I will get one with Voice Activated Navigation..

Anyways how can you buy such a nice car with out one

need4spd_RENAMED

Well Larchmont, you finally got the specs on the TL,

186.2" long (vs 183.3 for TSX)
107.9" wheelbase (vs 105.1)
56.7" high (vs 57.3")
72.2" wide (vs 69.4")

so length, wheelbase and width are all just under 3" larger, while the height is about 0.5" less, interesting.

With these dims, they are going for the more nimble feeling car (which C & D liked). Now we will have to see if the core TL owners like it or not, big change from 192"

Now I know why they said they will NOT put a V-6 in the TSX, they are just too close in dims.

Also, the trunk is smaller in the TL at 12.5cuft vs 13 in the TSX.

Most makers are going bigger in the trunk, guess not in the TL.

dabuda

looks nice to me...doesn't look like it needs serious work...and how can you truly tell from the pix? need to go see it in person

the TL-S curb weight is 3558...accordin to the MT article, the new TL is 3500-3600 so about the same

http://www.acura.com/models/types_specs.asp?model=tls

acura_driver

Based on the Car and Driver, and Autoweek mini-reviews, I'd say that overall the 04TL looks very good. I like the interior design, and the exterior has the right amount of aggressiveness. In general it has the features that I want, and I expect its performance to meet my requirements by a small margin. The car isn't perfect to me, but it looks to be the closest available.

Looks like it will come down to the test drive.

-r

VtecMW

Acura came through IMO. I'm surprised that the car is so much shorter than the "previous gen" TL. No complaints here! I also have no complaints about pricing. It appears that it will be much lower than I anticipated.

I like both the exterior and interior styling, especially against what the competition is offering. The tape deck is an annoyance, however.

Otherwise, I'm satisfied. I can't wait to test drive and ultimately get mine!

Raheel

Ya its not exactly what I had in mind, but its best thing I can get, specially for its price.. But I wouldn't mind having some options that the Nissan Maxima has..

phile

I'm a little disappointed with the interior ambience of the car. The problem with the current TL's interior is that it's nice...and nothing more, it doesn't give off a luxurious feel like the Audi A4 or the Lexus ES300. I see the same thing here, there is more plastic than I think should be allowed. The shiny black finish in the center console should really extend towards the area where the lid for the cupholders is located. I don't like the plastic on top of the gauges either.

vp12

well, i think it is fitting to thank everyone who got these stories up so quick. What other car loyalists would be so quick to scan magazines and have them post it for the rest of us to read. So thanks to all of those people who did that. I/and many others would possibly have to WAIT for once in a while. (although we did wait a long time). THANKS.

larchmont

Right. Maybe that's OK for y'all, but at 72.2" width, I can fuggedaboudit, because it won't fit in my garage.

I'm serious.

Probably also an issue for a few others out there, but I'm sure it sounds nuts to everyone else.

2.8" wider than TSX -- and even 1.5" wider than current TL, which I got rid of partly because of this.


But, forget about fitting in garages -- From the size standpoint alone, it seems like this car might have a couple of issues.

(1) A car of that width is hard-pressed to feel sporty. It's more conducive to a "comfort/luxury" type car; yet....

(2) A car whose length is only 186.2" is hard-pressed to have the ride-quality that people expect in a "comfort/luxury" car.

Taking all dimensions into account, and considering the relationships among them -- height as well as length and width -- the main thing to be said is:

THIS IS AN EXTREMELY UNUSUAL SIZE CAR.

In fact, it's probably unique. Literally, unique.

That means the nature of the car may be unique too.


Speculate and assume all you want, but we won't really know what kind of "species" this car is until we try it.

Jason

What's happening to you? This is almost paying a compliment on the TSX. You used to be a hard-ass hater. You would never accept an Acura, or a TSX, and now you have almost opened the door. So when are you going to pick your TSX up and are you going to get the nav?

G-35

As you might guess from my screen name, I currently own a G-35 Sedan. I've always been a fan of Acuras and wondered if this would be the car that might win me over to Acura. So far, I'm really enjoying the feel of a RWD car and had hoped Acura would have tried harder to compete against the G. At this time, I'm really not seeing much to get excited about.

Question: I'm not interested at all in a Navi system (unless it came free). Has anyone seen a photo showing the TL's dash without the Navi option?

Also, one other point...I really think the non-body colored license plate area on the TL is really ugly. It would look best on a black or gray colored car. Wonder why Acura cheaped out on this?

EmuMessenger

Interesting, very interesting!

Things are looking up, although, I think it still lacks some features found in similarly priced cars.

Who cares, I think I am definitely on board for 6MT!

Peter7777

Check out:

http://www.acura-tsx.com/forums/show...5&pagenumber=1

You have to scroll down once or twice.

gilboman

i always thought the TSX was good value for the money but since i could afford more than the TSX... i felt there were a lot of better cars....if i could only spend a max of 25k US or whatever the MSRP on the TSX is, i might have gotten it.

iNteGraz92

you mean u want rwd right? cuz the tl seems to have everything except that

iNteGraz92

the plastic that makes the gauges look like they're on pods?
the current TL has those, as well as the lexus GS

Raheel

Ya and those pods look ghey

I like it better on the TSX, it looks more sporty, what Acura did is put Cheap Plastic Pods on the TSX ones, they tried to make it look luxurious somehow, and totally took out the Sporty Feel..

They tried to hard to make the car Sporty/Luxurious, and couldn't decide which one to emphasize more money on so some parts of the car look sporty while others luxurious.. Still i think its a good car, but those pods and all that plastic takes the UGH Luxury away..

need4spd_RENAMED

Well then, the A4 would not fit in your driveway as it is 74" wide or so (bigger than the TL), and shorter than the TL at 179", it is 56.2" high, so the proportions of the A4 are even more out of wack.

But all the press like that car (for what it is worth).

fdl

I agree I like the interior of the TSX much better. Actually..i LIke the exterior of the TSX as well. I started a thread on this a while back...

04 TSX vs 04 TL

princed

I think everyone has their own priorities, and unfortunately at 30-35k, no car is going to be perfect. I almost bought the G35 after my test drive, but ended up holding off after reading complaints about the brake life and paint (which, in retrospect, are far less worrisome than I originally thought). When I sat down and made my "perfect car," it had the power of the G35, the AWD of Audi, handling of the 330i/A4, the Honda/Acura 6-speed manual, the Honda/Acura navigation system, the interior look of the A4/C-Class, the gadgetry and luxury amenities of MB/BMW and Honda reliability (rattles aside, hehe). Obviously, purchasing my perfect car (E55/M5) would cost far more than my budget, so I weighed the different options and decided on the TL. I think many of us here are willing to sacrifice a bit of performance for the TL's awesome nav, the interior (which I think is beautiful), and the ability to make a 20-mile commute in the Northeast during the winter. Plus, Honda makes some of the funnest FWD cars out there (although I'm sure they'd be even more fun with AWD). In all truth, if I didn't live in New Jersey or if Infiniti was releasing the AWD G35 a few months earlier, I might be over on FreshAlloy or G35driver right now talking about my 04 DG 6MT sedan w/ aero/nav instead of here (I'd still have a hard time giving up the Honda nav, though)... Oh, and BTW, the new issue of C&D also has a one-page blurb on the G35 6MT sedan. They like it...

Oh, and I totally agree about the license surround. It's AWFUL! I hope my anthracite TL will blend a bit better than the silver we've seen. And if they upgrade that piece to be body-colored in 05, I'll be the first in line to order the part...

larchmont

Where did you get that figure, n4s?

Wherever you got it, it's wrong. Even without looking it up, I knew it couldn't be true. I'm pretty sure there isn't a single "real" car (I mean as opposed to an SUV or something like that) that has as small a length as the A4 that is anywhere near as wide as 74".

So I looked it up. It's 69.5".

But I'm gonna make something else out of what you said, which is: It's true that a lot of the very desirable cars have widths that are large enough to cause problems for many of us. I don't think this has ever been talked about on here, probably because it's not an issue for THAT many people, and it sounds stupid.

For me it's a double issue. The main one is just that if a car is more than about 70", it loses a lot of the sporty feeling; I don't have enough of a feel for the whole car. And, yes, there's also a less interesting issue, which is that if a car is that wide, the garage thing also comes into play.

A lot of cars that I might have been interested in get eliminated by this, including even the Accord sedan and coupe.

darth62

The minicooper is shorter than the TL but nearly as wide as a Honda Pilot!

larchmont

Very interesting -- and not true. I've posted about this before. I used it as an example of how "stats" and "data" are often wrong.

You must have seen one of those false figures. I've seen absurdly great widths listed for the Mini -- e.g. in Consumer Guide, which says 75.8". Since I felt that was ridiculous and impossible, the next time I saw a parked Mini, I paced off the width, and I saw it wasn't anywhere close to that.

Consumer Reports lists the Mini's width as 67", which is more like it.

cusdaddy

Larchmont is right about the Mini Cooper... It's 66.5 inches wide.

I think it depends on the car. My 350Z is 71.5 inches wide and it handles like a dream, althought it's a sports car.

Nonethess my Z is difficult to park in a 2 car garage. The TL being wider will be even more of a pain to park in close quarters

Raheel

dude my Current 98 Toyota Avalon XLS is Length/width/height: 191.9/70.5/56.7 in.

thats actually close to the TL, and actually longer..

Its just fine for me, I do admit it took getting used to after my old smaller car, but I think its just fine, and the new TL is shorter, so I think I will be just fine

VtecMW

The license plate area is a reflective surface. It's not gray. Take a look at the hi-res photos and you'll see what I'm talking about.

http://photos.acura-tsx.com/soopa/ac...//IMG_1522.JPG
http://photos.acura-tsx.com/soopa/ac...//IMG_1526.JPG
http://photos.acura-tsx.com/soopa/ac...//IMG_1521.JPG



One theory that I have about the TL's rear-end design. If you look at a lot of cars on the road today, many of them look very similar. The new TL's rear could easily be mistaken for a VW Jetta/Passat, Mercedes C & E-Class, Audi A4 or A6 and Nissan Maxima. I'm sure there are others. These are the ones that I could think of off the top of my head.

So, why design the TL's rear in a manner that would make it even more closely resemble the cars I mentioned, e.g. reverse lamps integrated into the tail light assembly, body colored license plate cover?

IMO, with the LED tail setup, especially with the lighting pattern we've seen, and the reflective license plate cover area, the TL's rear end should give it a unique character. It at least seems that this is what Acura was trying to accomplish. Otherwise, they could have taken the road most traveled and come up with another run-of-the-mill rear-end that gets mistaken for the cars named above.

larchmont

Probably. But it might not be.

I know, after all those weeks of me harping on "Length" -- which BTW turned out to be worth harping on -- now probably everyone's going to be saying, What's the big deal about Width?

Your car is 1.7" narrower than the new TL. Probably nothing to most people. But it's a significant difference.

It makes a big difference in what you can do with the car in a lot of situations -- that's a fact, no ifs ands or buts. And -- this part is very subjective -- it alters the feel of the car. For me, it's the difference between being able or not being able to have the feel that I want.

Other things being equal, the smaller a car is, the more feel you have for it.
The "bar" is at a different place for everybody. For me, it's just about right there.

Raheel

OK BLABBLE BLABBLE, (J/K) WHENS SEPT 1 COMING!!! DAMN IT I CANT WAIT!!