My 2000 Acura TL: A Dependable Companion For Family Life

By early 2000, my wife and I were comfortably settled in suburban New Jersey, commuting by train to Manhattan for work. We rarely drove during the week but because our town was almost entirely residential with few commercial options, we did rely heavily on our Maxima on weekends.

Major changes were afoot, though. My career kicked into high (or at least a higher) gear a few months earlier, after I landed job at a major consultancy. Not long thereafter, we learned we had a wee ‘un on the way. My wife worked for the first trimester but riding the packed Midtown Express, feeling queasy, to a job she didn’t particularly like took a toll. In April, she called it quits and settled down at home, preparing for motherhood. It also meant that a new car, one I hadn’t initially considered, was about to enter the picture.

With a higher paying job in hand and a big new responsibility looming, I started giving serious thought to a new car. Lousy brakes aside, the Maxima had been good to us but, as a ’91, was feeling long in the tooth. I knew that most cars had become considerably safer throughout the 90s, which suddenly was a very practical concern.

I hadn’t been in the market for a new vehicle for a decade so needed to catch up on options. Fortunately, online shopping had just taken off, making research easy and convenient. (In this era of the dead internet, it’s hard to convey just how novel and fun it was to go online back then.) I wanted something nice, so looked up BMW first – and quickly moved on when I saw MSRPs and cost of ownership calculations.

Because I liked the Maxima, I checked out Infiniti. Based on what I read on Edmunds, the i30 seemed like a more upscale version of the current Maxima and was within our budget. I went to a dealer in nearby Summit, found the experience very pleasant – lovely showroom, friendly salesman, no pressure whatsoever – and left somewhat disappointed with the car. It was handsome, with a nice interior, but the driving experience was a bit underwhelming. I didn’t rule it out but clearly needed to do more research.

Despite having had a first-generation Integra, which I loved, and my mother having a second-gen model, which I liked, Acura wasn’t on my radar initially. I’d seen first gen TLs and RLs and was unimpressed. The little bit I’d read about them confirmed my impressions. But I learned online that there was a new, second gen TL that had garnered very positive reviews, looked good, and offered as standard equipment features most other automakers made optional or didn’t provide at all.

My wife and I drove to Springfield Acura. It wasn’t as nice as the Infiniti dealership and the overly boisterous salesman made us slightly uncomfortable. However, he quickly gave me the keys to a new TL and told us to enjoy ourselves. No spiel? No shady tactics? Hmm. Maybe this was going to work out okay.

Sure enough, the car felt great. The cabin was tighter than the i30’s but also sportier. The same was true for how it drove. Highway 22 is one of the worst roads I’ve ever had the misfortune of driving on and yet the TL made it bearable. The car was nimbler and more responsive than I expected, and if it felt only somewhat more planted than the Infiniti, it made our Maxima feel like an empty paint can. Cars really had improved over the previous decade! When we returned, the salesman immediately offered us any TL on the lot we wanted for a couple of hundred dollars less than the Edmunds TMV (true market value) price. We were sold. We picked a black one with tan interior (no nav) and took delivery a few days later.

We kept the car for the next six years, primarily as my wife’s vehicle as she shuttled our daughter to and from school and activities. It did everything at least passably well, was expectedly dependable, and had a low cost of ownership. Routine maintenance was all it ever needed to remain running trouble-free. I know the transmissions on the TLs and CLs earned a reputation for self-destructiveness, but we never had any problems with ours. Brake pads and rotors did seem a bit short-lived – I replaced them at least three times while we owned the car – but that may have been a result of my wife’s braking habits. She was always nervous and edgy behind the wheel. (Sorry, hon. Love you!)

I’ll describe in a later post what replaced the TL, but will wind down here with some impressions of a 2002 TL-S I saw parked at a nearby curbside about a year ago. What immediately struck me – other than seeing a TL of that vintage at all – was how small the car is by contemporary standards. The beltline and roofline in particular seemed very low. And the cabin that was snug back then looked downright tight by current standards. However, the greenhouse, which seemed rather slim in 2000, is proportionally airy compared to many newer cars.

All in all, I think the TL of this vintage has aged well. Late 90s Honda design language was clean and functional with just enough angularity to give an impression of speed, and the TL was slightly racier than most of its stablemates. I remember reading in reviews of the time that the second generation TLs were the true successors to the sorely missed Legend – the salesman matter-of-factly said the same thing – and I think that was a fair assessment. Honda has inconsistently managed the Acura brand over the decades – I’m frankly not sure why the nameplate even exists anymore – but it got this (and the next generation) right.