drivetofive

Odometer (Legend):  521,628

Odometer (ILX):  33,775

Sometimes, history can be fun.  When the Acura brand was born, I was just 5 years old.

“Acura’s Bargain Birth” is a 2011 article on the beginnings of the Acura.  Here’s a link to the page.  The Acura concept was initially called “Channel 2.”  The thought of bringing a car with a V6 powerplant and a pricetag of over $20,000 to the Honda family of automobiles seemed by many to be crazy in the early 1980’s, but that was the idea.  In February 1984, a press release announced the creation of the second brand, which at the time hadn’t yet been named.  I thought this excerpt regarding the Acura name itself was fairly interesting:

The name came from NameLab’s Ira Bachrach, whom Elliott described as “a nutty linguistics professor, with an office on a houseboat in the San Francisco marina.” NameLab proposed a derivative of the Latin word “Accuratus,” which means, “careful, accurate, exact.”

Acura didn’t have a logo until three years after its launch. Initially it was a set of widely stretched mechanical calipers, with a cross-beam that made the logo look more like an “H” than an “A,” in tribute to Honda.

But when Munekuni showed the logo to Soichiro Honda, the company founder said the calipers should be closer together.

“Mr. Honda had no problem with the brand having a different name,” Elliott said. “Actually, Mr. Honda regretted putting his name on his car. We took the Honda name off all Honda products in the U.S. at about the same time as Acura launched. We talked about not putting the Acura name on the car, but it was a new brand, so we had to have it.”

Acura’s first dealership was in Claremont, California and it was called Metro Acura.  Today, there are 272 dealers.

The man at the helm of Acura’s public relations during those formative years was Kurt Antonius.  I have a bunch of old press materials in my literature collection, and one of them is this Press Release dated October 4, 1991 announcing the features of the 1992 Legend.  Kurt’s name is listed as a contact in the header.

Kurt has since retired from the Honda organization but in September 2010, I had the privilege of meeting him at a special Honda S2000 event at the Honda / Acura Headquarters in Torrance, California.

To me, he and the others who led the early efforts of creating the Acura brand were pioneers.  Acura truly did trailblaze the way for other Japanese luxury brands that soon followed suit around 1990 (Lexus, Infiniti).  This is a picture from the February 1989 Chicago Auto Show when the revolutionary all-aluminum NSX sportscar was unveiled.

Thanks Ryan for sharing the article.

Twenty seven years after its introduction, the Acura name to me is still synonymous with precision and performance.  My 2013 ILX 2.4 is a great example of that.  It was a big jump for me to take a 19-model-year leap forward when I retired my 1994 Legend from daily duty and started driving a 2013 ILX.

This week, I had a friend in town from Salt Lake City, Utah for a few days.  At 6’6″, Jeremy doesn’t fit in very many cars, but the ILX seemed to accommodate him well.  He borrowed the car during his Phoenix visit.  He’s owned his fair share of Acuras and definitely joins me in appreciation for the brand.

My car is now 1/3 of the way to 100,000 miles already!

Jeremy sent me a picture of the iMid display showing a call from me.  That was kind of a trip.

Last night, we took the ILX to the “Old Town” Scottsdale for dinner with a couple of friends. The underground parking deck off Camelback Road was eerily vacant but it made for a photo op that was too good to pass up.

On the Legend front, aside from cleaning off the bugs that I picked on my way home from Utah this past weekend, I haven’t done much with it.  I’m getting excited for the Arizona Legend Meet that’ll be held two weeks from tomorrow.

Anybody looking to be my stunt double?  There’s a twin to my Legend and it’s for sale currently in Florida for $3,800.

The ad copy is shown here.

That interior doesn’t look half bad for its age!

For those who are still hungry for a little more of a history lesson today, several weeks ago, I came across an old CD-ROM in my literature collection called the “1995 Acura Advertising Planner.”  It was full of treasures.

This one is my favorite:

Here are some of the others that I enjoyed.

And finally, I feel inclined to share on the blog these latest renderings of the 2014 Acura RLX, courtesy of Dillon – aka “Hondatalover.”  With a few enhancements to the already-handsome RLX design, he has made the conservatively-styled car into a show-stopping hot rod.  Look at those gigantic split 5-spoke wheels.  I love what he’s done there.

The RLX is now, by the way, on sale as of a couple of weeks ago!  I might head over and build & price one of my own on Acura.com shortly.

Thanks Dillon for sharing these!  Hope everyone has a great weekend.

This entry was posted on April 5, 2013 at 6:01 pm and is filed under ILX, Legend, Throwback. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.