Safety

The car has standard dual front, side and side curtain air bags, ABS brakes, stability and traction control, electronic brake force distribution and seatbelt pre-tensionners. The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) awarded the car 5 out of 5 stars (a perfect result) for a frontal impact and 4 out of 5 stars (a good result) for the front passengers and 5 out of 5 stars for the rear passengers in lateral impacts. The IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) has rated it a "Best Pick" in its category in frontal impacts and received a Good rating in lateral impacts.

Conclusion

There is one word that always comes up at Press Conferences: Value. The word value is rarely if ever associated with a luxury car. If ever it would apply, it would be to the TL. For $45,300, no other car offers the same levels of power, prestige, comfort and features than this Acura. On top of being a bargain, it is reliable and fairly inexpensive to maintain. If I compare this car to an Audi A4 3.0 Quattro 6-speed or even the new A4 3.2 and a BMW 330i, the TL comes out on top. Both the Audis and the BMW retail for well over $50,000 when similarly equipped to the TL. Both have weaker engines and shorter overall warranties except that they include scheduled maintenance. Only the A4 would have a real advantage thanks to its AWD system, although not a $5,000 benefit.

The Acura TL is already a huge winner in its category. It has all the bells and whistles and it looks great. It does, nonetheless, suffer from a great downfall: It is a front-wheel drive vehicle. The few days that I spent behind the wheel were both filled with admiration and discouragement. The fact that the TL would pull to one side under acceleration or would begin to understeer heavily into a curve (before the Vehicle Stability Assist would kick in) made me long for rear-wheel or all-wheel drive. Now that the new RL has arrived with Acura's fresh SH-AWD system, we can likely hope to find it in a revised TL or at the very least, in the next generation TL.

The TL, as is, has the potential to give the Germans quite a large butt-kicking. Most driving enthusiasts will agree that spirited driving is best achieved in a rear-drive car so I will cross my fingers and pray. Most cars and trucks today are sold at too high a price with not enough value. It is refreshing to think that a reputable manufacturer such as Honda is able to deliver such a high-class car based on its merits and not by an over inflated sticker price that will make people believe that the car is all that.

Good stuff:
Bargain luxury and prestige
Quality of execution

Not so good stuff:
Torque steer
Drive-wheels at the wrong end