Acura 20 years of Honda Luxury
In March 2006, the Honda Motor Company celebrated an important milestone: the twentieth anniversary of their luxury brand, Acura. Created to give Honda fans a luxurious make that they might be proud of, Acura has successfully expanded the organization’s reach far beyond more prosaic models like the Civic and the Accord. Today, Acura is a totally different brand than the company that was birthed in 1986. We’ll take a glance at Acura’s past, their present line up, and what the following twenty years may bring for this esteemed Japanese automaker.
Back in 1981, Honda saw a break opening up for itself that no-one in Honda’s headquarters wanted to miss out on: building and selling luxury automobiles to Yankee clients. Mercedes and BMW were both gaining traction in the U.S. as American luxury brands Cadillac and Lincoln sputtered and lost market share. Honda was already receiving widespread customer acceptance and critical acclaim for the 3 models it was then selling in the U.S, so the choice to market dearer and upscale cars was viewed as a robust possibility.
When Honda management made a decision to go with the upscale brand, they did this knowing the cars would ultimately have to stand except for Honda in order to command the higher prices. Simply selling up market Hondas as Acuras would not work. Instead, each vehicle was outfitted and retuned to compete directly against the number one top end cars of that time.
The first two models to be sold as Acuras were the Legend, a V6 powered sedan and coupe, and the Integra, which was fundamentally a three door coupe based on a Honda Civic platform. Later, the NSX two seat dragster was brought out to battle Porsche and the Vigor sedan was introduced to fill the gap between the Integra and the Legend.
Over time, the diverse model names were dropped and replaced by autos with 2 or three letter designations. The Vigor became the TL, the Legend became the RL, and the Integra the RSX. Today, the MDX SUV, RSX sport compact, and TSX sedan, join the three other models to comprise this Acura line up. A little smaller SUV, the RDX, will be joining Acura’s line up later in 2006.
The future of Acura looks bright in spite of robust worldwide competition. Though Honda jumped into the market some years before Nissan rolled out it Infiniti division and Toyota its Lexus line, Acura has trailed its Jap rivals for more than a decade now. Some critics have said that this misstep has hurt Acura, whilst others see it as a characteristic conservative Honda decision to grow the Honda brand instead.
Future changes for Acura are flaky, but model changes will likely include the introduction of diesel powered automobiles and more hybrid offerings. Some car critics have recommended that Honda has the capacity of outflanking BMW and Mercedes by manufacturing super luxury sedans and sports cars. Renowned Honda quality mixed with EU styling, luxury, and engineering have fueled Acura’s success so far. An expansion of this theme to even bigger and/or sportier models could vault Acura forward.
Truly, Acura has helped reshape the first perception that many motorists had about the Japanese brands, by delivering autos that are high in luxuriousness, tops in engineering, and robust in refinement. If the last twenty years have proved anything it is that fans can expect much more from Acura over the following twenty years. Kudos to the Honda Motor Company for developing a brand which has been so well received.
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