It rose from the waters. It heard your murmurings. Your audible complaints that once-revolutionary Acura had been slipping into bland anonymity combined violently with declining sales and market share to spawn this mutant from the deep. Like the fearsome giant squid from whom this beak was wrested in an epic battle, this car was going to be respected. This car would show them who was boring and who was not. Except it didn’t.
Sales of the TL fell sharply that first year and never recovered. Beakzilla’s rampage seems to have done more damage to itself than the surrounding automotive metropolis, but for me–someone looking for alternatives to a new VW GTI in 2016–a lightly used TL didn’t look scary at all. In fact, a handling-oriented FWD upscale Honda with a big V6 and only 4 years of use looked like just the ticket. So how did it do?
Now you’ve done it. You’ve made it angry. Photo credit CNET
The TL is here because Acura needed another chance. The 2006 TSX I tried earlier was a generation older than I was really looking for and saddled with the four cylinder engine that put newer TSXs out of contention as well. This TL checked a lot of boxes on paper. It’s roomy, quick, generally reliable, and has a long feature list. Moreover, it was the bargain option of the group, both in purchase price and long-term operating costs compared to the 328i . This one was a 2012 front-wheel drive model with the 280 hp 3.5L V6, 50K on the clock, and it looked well taken care of.
More differentiation, please. The 2008 Accord was a low point for interior quality.
The styling is a bit polarizing. It made a splash at debut, with a giant plastichrome “beak” that climbed up the hood and about 10 acres of angular plastic bumper on the rear. I think it was the ugliest car on the road for a good while, but a midcycle refresh toned down the beak and several other automakers have since yelled “hold my beer!” and carried the flag of vulgarity forward with a flourish that makes the TL a wallflower. There isn’t a single angle from which I find the TL outright attractive, but I’m accustomed to it now so the exterior didn’t sink it for me.
The interior did. Nowhere is the abandonment of Acura’s tasteful and conservative styling more apparent than inside the cabin. The dashboard is a dystopia of tech design themes layered atop the bland architecture of the 2008 Accord. It’s a hovercar out of Bladerunner. A cold, sterile, metallic place fit for navigating the misery and rain and grime of a 22nd century megalopolis. Thick metallic arcs flow flamboyantly across the dash from center console to each door, grey plastic buttons of all shapes and sizes explode across a heavily contoured center stack, unconvincing and easily-scratched imitation grey wood lines the console. The dashboard is a visually-heavy, overwrought edifice, and a dorky F1-style red starter button peers out from it like the Terminator’s eye. There is an uneven panel gap under the center air vent bezel, right in line of sight with the radio and infotainment screen. Was there no adult supervision in here? Big Acuras used to be a mature and sophisticated choice, so this one is rubbing me the wrong way.
This looks like plastic in person and scratches easily
I just don’t know if I could warm up to this. I feel like they were trying awfully hard to make it “cool” rather than focusing on cohesion and quality. The only factors that prevent this interior from being worse than the base 328i from last week are the immediate contact points for the driver: seats, steering wheel, and armrests. The seats are very comfortable, very supportive, and look good clad in the black leather. The steering wheel and armrests feel plush and high quality. All good points, and substantive ones at that. Which is more than can be said about the late-aughts Lexus ES350 that this TL sorta competed against for most of its cycle. Lexus had some real nerve with that one, I’d take this TL if those were my only two choices.
The Acura is already working from a deficit, but the engine earns back a lot of goodwill. It starts and idles quietly and smoothly. I rev it past 6000 rpm when entering the freeway and it is strong, linear, instantaneous, eager, refined, and aurally pleasing. There is usable power below 3000 rpm and above that a predictable and enticing linear increase in motive force. I like it more than the turbo-fours in the 328i and GTI. There is nothing more to ask for and every gripe I had about the TSX’s 4-cylinder has been rectified here. The age of the modern 3.5L V6 is a beautiful one. The TL’s V6 was not equipped with the Variable Cylinder Management that led to NVH issues and a settled class action lawsuit for oil burning and plug fouling in Honda models with the 3.5, so if you needed an extra nudge to spring for the TL rather than an Accord V6 of the same year, there you go.
The revised front fascia was quite an improvement
Modest downshifts carefully move me around slower traffic and into the left lane. Plenty of power, the other cars recede behind the Acura without the engine even being audible. Part of that might be the road noise. It’s present. So is a curious dichotomy in the car’s character. At 3800 lbs, it’s heavy and feels it when braking, yet comes off as somewhat insubstantial due to the cabin noise and impact harshness. Not an endearing disparity when the GTI moves with lightness and yet feels substantial. The steering has an odd dead zone right off center that takes some of the fun out of routine piloting, and that matters because most drives do not involve an empty cloverleaf or sinuous two lane where this car supposedly does quite well. Around town it feels big, quick, but a tad flinty and not very engaging. It doesn’t grab my attention the way a few other cars have.
Base TLs have reasonable tire sidewall. Image credit Motortrend
My example wasn’t the mightiest Beakzilla, the SH-AWD. It reportedly corners tenaciously, has an even bigger engine, and could be equipped with a manual transmission. Good luck finding the unicorn, though. I just did a nationwide search on Autotrader and out of 252 SH-AWDs, 8 were manuals and the closest to me was 800 miles away and carried nearly 100K miles of use. That powertrain is unique enough that if I were the only intended driver I might be tempted to bide my time until one came up. However, an automatic is needed for household logistics and with that handicap the powertrain wouldn’t quite overcome the aesthetics and lack of zeal I have for the car. I’d like something with a bit of character and charm around town, something that encourages that tired enthusiast trope of running out to the grocery for a gallon of milk just so you can drive. The TL doesn’t encourage this, at least not with the automatic.
Defeated, the TL drifts back to the briny deep, perhaps to rise again one day. But what of the other mutated monster? What of King Maw? We shall face him next time.
An excellent review! I’ve not had first-hand experience with these – we never received any generation of TL down here – but it’s a car I’ve been curious about. Frankly, the grille doesn’t bother me as much as it used to (and I always thought the weird lines above the front wheels were the worst part of the design) but these were a shock after the extremely well-received previous generation.
I’ve always been curious about just how luxurious Acuras feel. I mean, I guess they’re not priced quite in the BMW/Mercedes league so I shouldn’t set my expectations too high, Acura being a premium brand, but this sounds like it was a disappointment to drive.
If there’s a roomy FWD/AWD V6 sedan in your market that you like, I don’t know if you are missing much by not having a TL. The TL has a lot of positive attributes, and the Honda DNA is evident in ways both good and not so good. Outside the manual transmission option I don’t think it stands out in any way that would tempt me to jump into a different car before I needed to. Which is what this whole shopping/comparison exercise was about.
The revised front is infinitely better. The remains of heavy chrome ‘beak’ are in line with the headlights and visually carry their line across the front like a light bar. The original one just looks mega-weird. And I do like that view of the engine compartment, with the plain plastic panels providing a neutral background to show off the engine. Someone cared, to do that.
Still not an attractive car IMHO.
It is hard to get past the mega beak of the early cars. The revised front end is miles better. Shame everyone seems to be into massive front grills these days.
The interior is not the worst thing in the world but Hondas are definitely odd these days inside. Shame after the very usable and good looking interiors of the 90s and early 2000s.
An excellent review of the Acura. At one point, you had me reaching for the movie popcorn!
Re: that gaping, basking shark maw on the Lexus… my next door neighbor bought an LS500 a few weeks ago. A very nice car, but I am no fan of that front end! In this respect, Lexus styling has taken a turn for the worse.
Those front ends of Lexus are just plain hideous
The gaping maw of the Lexus IS a bit much, especially on one of the larger SUV(s) or CUV(s), but I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it one “The Doomsday Machine” 😀👍
I’m warming to the Lexus spindle grills on some of the cars, it helps if it is the non FSport trim. But the crossovers and SUVs…that pic below of the Enterprise is about right.
I had to zoom in and make sure that was the Enterprise and not the Constellation… you nailed it.
The big beak always reminds me of the Joker’s evil smile. The refresh toned it down to a silly grin. Given a choice of the three, Beakzilla, the toned down beak and King Mah. I would have to go with the silly grin toned down beak. I might visit a boneyard and pick up a spare grill and satin black the upper chrome half and still have a way to go back if it looks even sillier.
I remember dealers painting the maw as an extra cost option in the style of fake ragtops/pinstripes/etc. when these came out!
Probably the first dealer option that was actually an improvement.
I drive a third-generation TL (base, automatic), and the driving experience of the fourth generation doesn’t seem too far off according to your account (never driven one). The seats and power train are great, but it does feel heavy around town, and city MPG is disappointing (think 17 MPG on a nice day). The car is much more at home on the highway in terms of “feel” and MPG (you can get 30 MPG if you’re careful). It’s been extremely reliable, though it’s had the infamous Bluetooth module battery drain issue (unplug it or buy a new one). I still get compliments from people thinking it’s much newer than it is.
I think I would have liked it better had it kept the sharp styling of your third gen. I always liked those, it was an excellent design.
I said this in the last Acura posting, but this is way too close to the Accord to be worth the premium. If I’m spending that kind of money, I think the last Acura mentioned started at 33 and the driven one was 46, I’m getting either two accords or going with one Accord and a fun car like a used mustang convertible. 46 buys a pretty sharp cpo really luxurious car still under warranty as well. I bet you could get a very lightly used Genesis/equus for that much. Also I find the black and grey interiors dour and cheap, not warm and luxurious. I’ll put up with a black interior in a $25k charger but not a $33k Acura. Yah $33k would buy you a 300 with panoramic sunroof, v8, a better chassis, and loads of bells and whistles.
I too considered this when shopping to replace the totaled Outback, and drove a used 2009 AWD version at an Acura dealer. I ended up liking it MUCH more than I thought I would. The engine was willing, it was comfortable and I found it quiet and relaxing but without being completely coffin-like. I think I even offered a price of maybe (at most?) 10% less than the Acura dealer was listing it for but they preferred it stay on their lot and weren’t even willing to discuss pricing…I looked at a couple of others but the first one was my favorite.
Here’s what I actually had to say about it right after I drove it from this post https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/wdjb-what-did-jim-buy/ : “Then I found an Acura dealer there since my closest one is an hour away. They had both a 2011 RL as well as 2009 TL, both with the AWD system and a V6. I drove both and liked the TL better and have to say the styling is not nearly as jarring to me as it was when it debuted.
The one I drove was a dark red with black interior as pictured above. (As a matter of fact all of the pictures are of the actual contenders if I said I drove them in this article). I actually made the dealer an offer and was ready to buy it. However he was completely stuck on his price so I decided against it. But it was close! I could have been happy with it, it’s quite underrated, I think the looks turn people off before giving it a chance.”
Honestly, I thought it was a good car. Depreciated after 4-5 years and it is an excellent car. It just didn’t quite capture my interest at the time. Hard to put a finger on.
Wow Jim, I just read your linked article and you had quite the cross-shopping experience! I like the 300 that you chose. V8 RWD luxo bruiser cruiser. A great blend of the modern and the “good old”. Very nice.
Thank you, it was a very good experience but was only to last for a year…But it did leave me with a very good impression of Chrysler, and actually it was AWD, what turned out to be the last year of the V8/AWD combo in a 300 due to the 5-speed. The whole experience of shopping was interesting as I really was wide open, any one of the options would have worked for me. I would have wanted a big V8 American sedan eventually anyway had it not been that one at that time.
Here’s the rest of them if you’re really bored. I think we reran the series just before you arrived. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/jim-klein-the-complete-cars-of-a-lifetime-coal-series-all-45-to-date/ It’s current but for the Jeep and one more that I haven’t written about yet.
Looking at the maw of the Lexus, I’m waiting for someone to paint fish scales on one, then it would look like some kind of mutated large mouth bass. Shades of the radiation inspired monster movies of the 1950’s. Both of these are two of the ugliest automobiles out there.
Great writeup!
I appreciate your ability to convey the “feel” of the car, and I get exactly what you’re talking about when you say heavy but not entirely substantial and flinty suspension.
An aside: the inevitable happened yesterday. Driving home from Meijer, the Audi starts to bog and jerk around violently, I dive off the main road onto surface streets thankfully just a few blocks from my house. Something is obviously wrong, the car doesn’t want to idle at all, stalls at every intersection. By the time I hobble home the CEL is on.
Thankfully it was something very silly, and no fault of the Audi per se. The aftermarket intake put on by a previous owner had disassembled itself, the filter+MAF housing had slipped off the pipe, resulting in wonky MAF readings. Reattached the hose clamp in 2 seconds and all was well. But boy did that give me a good scare!
Old Audi limps you home and it is just a loose hose clamp? And some people think there is no God!
Those aftermarket intakes are the dumbest things ever. They’re an underhood dunce cap that says my owner also buys premium gas even though the car doesn’t need it because it’s “better” and pays to have my tyres filled with nitrogen cos Nascar.. They don’t improve performance, are probably detrimental compared with the stock air filters. The manufacturer has probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars optimising the stock air flow for your engine and hood configuration. Stop it. Then the oil coated ones gradually coat the mass airflow sensor with oil and burn that out.
I agree SavageATL, I rather despise these cheap setups that ultimately filter worse, for minimal if any horsepower gains, and risk contaminating the MAF if you accidentally over-oil the filter element. If I happen upon a stock setup in the junkyard I’ll probably grab it. The only silver lining is that it is very simple to take off to access other engine components when wrenching.
I love the variety of descriptions for the front of the TL. To me it always looked like the pointy end of the old “church key” style of can opener.
In this era of oddball CAFE-hobbled engine and transmission combinations, a smooth, torquey V6 with a decent 5-ish speed automatic would fill the bill no matter what the inside or outside looked like.
The early years of the Lada 2108/2109 (Sputnik/Samara) earned the nickname “Zubila” which means chisel in Russian, for their distinctive pointy front grille.
Your write-up was hilarious! Do you suppose the manufacturers put out this disfigured stuff because bad attention is better than none at all? Or so they can go back and “fix” it and get attention that way? I find it hard to believe that they actually think these styles look attractive. I once worked for a company that used Army Counterinsurgency Manual methods to fend off attempts to unionize. Seriously. The book was referenced and used openly and explained in a seminar I attended in 2004. This same corporation employed the tactic of making a high-profile mistake in order to be noticed tending to it quickly. It is supposedly better than never making a mistake and being taken for granted. I know this stuff sounds weird to many but since I’ve experienced these things personally I wonder to what extent more powerful companies use these methods to manipulate customer opinion. Just because you’re paraniod doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
LOL
What was most disturbing about the new “octopus beak” TL was that it replaced the previous TL which possessed what was the most classic design ever concocted by Acura. These cars still look great today, as sharp as a neatly pressed suit. And they go for a premium on eBay.
I was going to post exactly this. My friend still has his in great shape and it looks just as good today as it did ten years ago.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I will try.
To me this is one of the most attractive cars made in my lifetime. I believe it will be a future collectible on looks alone. Shocking how quickly it all went wrong.
No, your comment is still better. But since I typed one I’ll keep it posted anyway.
What you wrote was perfectly correct. There was no reason to change what was a timeless design. I think Japanese car manufacturers were reading too many wise-ass reviews in Car & Driver about boring cars and went WAY overboard, just like GM in 1959. The 1996 Audi A4 was also a classic and has Audi veered too far from that look 23 years later? Nope. And for a very good reason—it still looks good. Acura should have done the same thing.
Personally I think the Vigor is Acura’s best styling effort, but this would be a pretty close second.
Beakzilla over Angry Gaping Catfish maw ANY DAY!
The Lexus grill looks like a Baleen whale filtering krill out of tons of seawater.
Spot on, the Acura “beak” is the main reason my mother replaced her 2003 TL with a loaded 2013 Accord. Saving some money by buying the same platform with lesser nameplate didn’t hurt either.
Personally I don’t bother with Acura or Lexus since “prestige” nameplates don’t interest me and Mazdas are more fun to drive and less expensive.
Bought a 2010 SH-AWD TL new when no one was buying cars and got a heckuva deal, traded a 2005 C300. Several things: 1) it’s a bagel slicer, not a beak; 2) the LS350 and the MB E class come standard with vinyl interiors, if you can believe that nonsense; 3) the ride was a bit harsh but it handled like a go kart; and 4) it had a hard drive that holds 200 or more cds. I really miss that feature, I never had to listen to “Fear the Reaper” for 8 years. Road noise was my only complaint, the original Michelin Pilots were really noisy, the Michelin tires I bought to replace them were much quieter. I traded it last summer because I wanted something quiet and soft.
The car I have now has a touch screen for a lot stuff, I’d much rather have all those buttons the author complained about.