Acura TL A-Price

The fourth generation of Honda's luxury mid-size sedan comes with enhanced style, performance and fuel economy. Despite the upgrades, its looks are still lacking.
The 2012 model gets a new six-speed automatic transmission with both engines, which through its high-tech design allows double-kick-down shifts and contributes to slightly better fuel economy.

The TL’s double-wishbone independent front suspension and a multi-link independent rear suspension are effective, but Acura improves ride quality and road-holding further by employing dual-stage “blow off” style hydraulic suspension dampers, hydro-compliant bushings for mounting the transmission and key suspension components and a high-tech engine mount design.

The SH-AWD model receives special rate coil springs and unique damper tuning. When you drive the TL you can appreciate these invisible components going about their jobs under the car.

This TL starts good and just gets better the more you add to it. My SH-AWD model sported both the Tech Package and the Advance Package. The former brings in those sensational and admired seats as well as a fully featured navigation system with voice recognition and real-time traffic and weather. The potent sound system, along with extra insulation for silence, gives you a portable concert hall as you go about your merry way.

2012 acura tl

The Advance Package comprises sporty 19-inch wheels and a blind-spot information system. These systems, which are proliferating the industry, help prevent those all-too-common incidents where drivers don’t see their neighbors and pull into the lane next to them, causing an accident. It’s hard to imagine why you’d buy the TL without these packages, but you can.

The TL is assembled in Marysville, Ohio, site of the original Honda manufacturing plant — the first Japanese auto plant in the U.S. — which opened in 1982. So this Japanese-brand vehicle, made in America, is out to fight the Germans. That’s today’s international automotive scene.



The TL, without any additional stuff, starts at $37,465. My upscale tester, with both packages, came to $45,945. That’s a lot, but the car’s loaded and increasingly offers an alternative to the German sport sedans against which it has been very carefully designed to compete.