Blog

Early in its life, Acura was a brilliant attempt to establish an upscale Japanese brand that was a smart buying decision.  The Acura Legend and Acura Integra carried the brand at first with the Legend being a very rational buying desicion vs. a Mercedes 300 or BMW 525.

Unfortunately, Acura lost its way when it went further upscale and changed from using names for its vehicles to alphanumeric nomenclature.  This was a move that Honda insiders once admitted cost $1.5 billion in lost sales revenue and damaged the Acura image immeasurably.  At the same time the third generation of the Acura range topper was launched replacing the well-liked Legend.  This was the RL.  It had boring style, was heavy, slow and expensive.  It had completely abandoned the Legend’s Unique Selling Proposition.  Wags called it the “Ruined Legend”.

The RL never caught on except with buyers heavily engaged in technology.  Adding the Super Handling All Wheel Drive System as an optional drive package helped handling, but was very heavy.  The engine did not have the oomph to handle all the weight.  RL sales slumped into the range of hundreds per month – an unsustainable level.

Now we come to the introduction of the Acura RLX Sport Hybrid in Spring, 2014.  The front wheel drive RLX was launched in early 2013 as a 2014 model.  The RLX is arguably better styled than the RL it replaces.  However, it is still a very heavy car (3,933 lbs base) and with its standard 310-horsepower 3.5L V6 it is a lot of weight to push around.  The solution?  Add a Sport Hybrid model as the new top-of-the-line RLX – the Sport Hybrid system adds 350-lbs to the weight of the car, but the power of the hybrid powertrain more than offsets the weight gain..

Officially, the hybrid is a mouthful – Sport Hybrid – Super Handling All Wheel Drive.  The hybrid absolutely transforms the car.

With one of the most technologically advanced powertrains in the industry, the RLX hybrid puts out a combined 377 horsepower.  Impressive.  We won’t go into the details of the technology much beyond the fact that it has Honda’s Earth Dreams Three Motor Hybrid System combining the RLX’ 310-horsepower 3.5L V6 with one 47-horsepower and two 36-horsepower rear electric motors.  The resulting 377-horsepower combined with the 7-speed Dual Clutch Transmission makes the car into a dancer.

Think of Disney’s Fantasia.  The front drive RLX can be the dancing hippos in tutus.  The Sport Hybrid with SH-AWD plus DCT in sport mode becomes a completely different car.  A star.  The transmission downshifts in the blink of an eye anticipating what you want it to do.  Fantastic!

The Sport Hybrid adds equipment not available on the front wheel drive car:  larger front brakes, electric air conditioning, power distribution monitor added to the 8-inch color display, head-up display, Chestnut wood trim, premium audio system with 14 speakers, electronic gear selector, unique wheels, smoked chrome plating for grill.

The front wheel drive base car gets 20/31/24 (City/Highway/Combined) mpg with a city range of 370 miles and highway range of 575 miles from its 18.5 gallon fuel tank.  The hybrid is rated at 28/32/30 mpg giving city range of 425 mile and highway range of 475 miles from its 15.1 gallon tank.  While the hybrid does get much better city fuel economy, its smaller fuel tank hurts its maximum range.  Clearly the hybrid in the RLX is about technology and performance, not maximum range.

While Acura has not released pricing the the hybrid, the 2014 RLX with the top of the line Advance Package is priced at $60,450, $12,000 higher than the base RLX.  Given this price range it’s reasonable to expect a price of between $65,000 and $70,000 for the RLX Sport Hybrid.  Given the dynamic improvement the hybrid system gives the car, this may be worth every penny.