Is Acura Back 2021 Acura TLX A-Spec Review

What is going on you guys? So right behind me, I have the brand new Acura TLX A-Spec. So we're gonna go fully in depth on this 2021 model, new generation TLX, and we're gonna see what is new for this car. All right, you guys, odd location today to film, but we are gonna go ahead and check out the 2021 Acura TLX A-Spec. Now, let's jump right into the price because for this new generation, it's not this massive price bump like you would expect. This is actually pretty decently priced, and this one starts at $46,250 for the A-Spec trim level. And this one has the $500 Apex Blue Pearl color, and that's gonna put this at $46,750, which once again is not a terrible price for what you're gonna see on this car. Now, let's go ahead and talk about that Apex Blue Pearl. It is gorgeous. It looks so good. It's got tons of flake in it. And I mean, it's a beautiful color. It's got this vibrant, almost a luminescent feel to it. And then paired with that red interior, this is definitely a Superman specification because it just has those vibrant red and blue colors going on. Now, as we come to the front of the TLX, this is where you're going to have the updated features for 2021. It looks very aggressive. I mean, you guys can see just how mean it looks. And I love how the emblem has almost this exploding effect out of the middle. The thing I don't love is, you guessed it, this piece right here, which is not hidden well at all. I really wish Acura would have done a better job hiding that, at least make the emblem bigger, and then put the glossiness inside of that because this just does not look good to me at all. Other than that, you have a bunch of functional venting going around here. You're gonna have this awesome LED daytime running light, which is very reminiscent of vehicles like the RDX, the ILX. So it falls in line with Acura's lineup perfectly. And then you have your jewel eye LED. So at night, this thing looks really good, very, very bright. It makes the car just look elegant and it looks expensive and it looks great contrasting with this blue, especially at night. It's just a really good looking sedan day or night. Then as you move down, you are going to have LED fog lights located down here, little bit of arrow functionality. If you guys can see a little bit of light glimmering through that side vent right there, moving up to the hood lines, very aggressive, thick lines right here, this really light line going down the middle, but it looks elegant at the same time. Now, as we come to the wheels, you have these like dark gray alloys and they're 19 inches wrapped in these Michelin tires. They're gonna be about 255, 40s all the way around. This is a square setup because this has the super handling all wheel drive and you are going to have your A-spec badge located right there. Now, one thing I do wanna talk about about this new generation sedan is it does not look front wheel drive based at all. The hood is really long, the rear end is very short and because of that, you get this just beautiful, almost rear wheel drive looking sedan. It's amazing what they were able to do to it and the silhouette of this thing looks amazing. I cannot stress that enough. You've got this beautiful line, which is gonna come all the way down in sort of like an upward angle right here. It's gonna flow all the way into this rear end. You guys can see that black spoiler here, which is gonna come on the A-spec trim level. Then as we move to that rear quarter panel, you can see the Pacific Ocean right there, very gorgeous. But this back end looks very interesting mostly because it looks very BMW. I don't know if BMW copied Acura, if Acura copied BMW, but either way, the LEDs on here at night look very BMW. Your blinkers and stuff are going to be LEDs as well. So I do like the fact that you have all LEDs, but once again, the design looks very familiar. Now, as you get closer, you have your TLX badge right here, super handling all wheel drive badge located right there, Acura badge front and center, A-spec badge over to the left and then you have these sort of squared off exhaust tips. All right, you guys, so here's your key for the Acura TLX. This is gonna be very simple. It's gonna have your lock, your unlock, your trunk release, your panic right there. Here's a switch to release a physical key to get in and out in case this battery dies or the battery on the car were to die. And then you have your nice Acura symbol located here in the back. Basically the standard key as every Acura, you don't have a new key design for this new generation TLX. Now you can use this key to get in or I can use the touch sensitive areas on the door. There's a little red pattern here. I simply put my finger on that. It's gonna beep once indicating that it's locked and there's a touch pad behind here. It's gonna be twice meaning that it's unlocked. Okay, so sitting on the inside of the TLX A-spec, the new TLX. Now, first of all, these red leather seats, pretty supportive. I've got a good amount of side bolstering here. My shoulders kind of move in and out of the seat. So if you're planning on doing any kind of hard driving, these seats aren't going to be that supportive but they're more than supportive enough for everyday driving if you wanna drive a little bit spiritedly and they're super plush, very comfortable. So I do like that. Now the steering wheel is awesome. It's got a nice thick feel to it all the way around. One accurate signature I love is there's a little indent right behind this part of the steering wheel. So my nine and three grips are very easy to do. I can literally put my fingers right back here, get a nice grip here and then put my thumbs here and it's just a really nice positioning. I love that. Perforated leather here. You're gonna have this red stitching here in the middle. A-spec badge right down here. Then you have a flat bottom wheel. Paddle shifters right back here. On the right side, all of your cruise control settings with your steering assist located right there. And then over to the left, all of your media commands for things like your radio, skipping previous and next through your tracks and voice commands as well. Now, in terms of your stocks, you have your wipers, automatic lights to the left with your fog light ring located in the middle. Coming to the gauge cluster, if you guys saw my review on the RDX, it's basically the same thing. Very simplistic, though very sporty. So right over here, you have your tach. Over to the right, you have your speedometer. And then right in the middle, that's where I can use the buttons on the right side of my steering wheel to go through and see basically different menus here. And it's just really simplistic. So if you like that simplistic setup, this is a really good setup for you. Now, moving up here, you're going to have your tablet style screen. It looks really good. Your hazard's located right below that along with some faux leather here on the dash with some nice red contrast stitching. Now, as you move down, you're gonna have dual zone climate control here. All of your modes, sorry, zones right there. Heated and cooled seats with three different settings for both driver and for passenger. And then you have your drive mode right here. I love this little knob. It feels very tactile and it makes this cool noise whenever you switch through. Listen to this. And if you guys can see the animations on here, they look really high quality. So that's comfort, normal, sport. And if you push the middle, that'll take you to individual, which is a really, really cool look right there. So I quite like what Acura did there. And moving back, you have your push button shifter, park, reverse, packet camera's gonna come up, which could be a little bit higher resolution. I'm not gonna lie, but you have different views you can scroll through and see through here. And you know, it's a decent camera. You don't have a 360 view. You have 360 sensors right here. And I do wish the resolution was a little bit higher. That's pretty much all I'm gonna say about that. Neutral right here, drive, and you hit it once more to put you into a sport setting, which basically makes the transmission shift, you know, stay in your lower gears. That way you have more torque, more power, things like that. Automatic start, stop, brake hold right over here. And as you come down, you have this interesting touch pad with your back button located here, your home button. You're gonna have your options. You have this to control things on the right side of your screen. And this is going to be not a typical mouse where you slide around, but it's actually going to control the screen based off of where you touch. So for example, if I touch on the top left of this pad, it's going to highlight this area. If I touch on the bottom left, it's gonna highlight that area. If I touch on the top right, it's gonna highlight that area and same thing with the bottom right. So it's based off of where you touch and it's not the most intuitive. I'm not gonna lie. I do like the concept behind it, but it just takes way too long to get used to. I've used this a few times and I'm still not used to it. I would even dare to say it's almost as bad as Lexus's system, but I will let you guys be the judge of that. Volume knob right over here, previous and next, which is in this tiny little button, which is kind of funny because there's all this real estate around these two little buttons. I find that quite hilarious. A nice little arm pad right here, wireless charging pad. So if I take my phone off and put it back on, guys can probably see there charging. There we go. Two cup holders, nice soft red leather arm rest. You lift that up and you're going to have two USBs in there. You'll plug that in for things like Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and you actually have a very deep amount of storage space in here. So I'm very pleased to see that. Now moving to this area up here, you're going to have basically a frameless mirror with your home link located right underneath that. Lights right under here, LED lights, which is nice to see. Now, speaking of lighting, this does have ambient lighting. It looks really good at night. Actually the entire interior looks awesome at night and it's just a really beautiful setup. And I'm glad to see Acura putting some nice, solid ambient lighting inside of their cars. Moving back up here, you are going to have your sunglass holder, vanity mirror with a light. It's not going to be LED, but at least you have a light right there. It is going to come out. And then finally you have your moonroof located right up here. Just to let in a little bit more light on a nice day. Pretty much going to wrap up the inside. Let's go ahead and check out the back seat. Jeez. Okay, so getting inside the back of the TLX A-Spec. Now, I don't have a ton of room back here, if I'm being honest, even though this is a new generation, new platform, things like that. I really wish they would have put a little bit more passenger space here in the back. I'm six feet tall. This is where I would sit. And I probably have like maybe an inch between my knee and the seat. As you go down, I've got a little bit more space down here, but right at the top of my knees, you guys can see I barely have any space right there. So I would like to see an improvement, hopefully, obviously on the next generation. But if you're above six feet tall, you're not going to fit back here comfortably, especially if the person in front of you is equally as tall. You have two mat pockets right here. You're going to have two vents located here. The middle hump is quite high. So if you plan to fit a third person here, they will have to slightly straddle this hump right here. And then folding down your armrest, you're going to have two cup holders, a little bit of storage space located here. And the whole thing is pretty solid. It looks very nice. And this area here in the back is very soft. So I can easily rest my arm right here and it's nice and comfortable. Other than that, you've got two speakers located here on the top, LED lights up here on the top. And that's pretty much going to be it. Door material quality is pretty good. You have soft touch here, soft leatherette here in the middle. Same thing with the armrest. You're going to have the soft leather here on the armrest, decent cubby space, and then that really nice ELS speaker located back here. But that's pretty much going to wrap up the back seat. Let's go ahead and check out trunk space. All right, so as we come to the back of the new TLX. Now to get in, you can use your key. That'll pop the trunk. One of my favorite ways is just using this little button located right here. You're going to push that and it's going to pop right open. Now you have a decent amount of trunk space and the opening is very wide. So getting things in here shouldn't be an issue unless you have items that are pretty tall that can't clear this area here. Now you do have a 60-40 split. So you can fold down the rear seats if you guys need even more space. And then as we lift up the floor right here, this up here, you're not going to have a spare tire. You just have a fix-a-flat area located underneath there. But most cars, unfortunately, are coming like that anyway. So it's nothing out of the ordinary, to be honest. Once again, you can fold down the seats using these triggers here, or you can do it from the inside. But that's pretty much going to wrap up trunk space. Here's the cubic feet. If you guys want to know exact specs on this, let's go ahead and see what's under the hood. Okay, so coming under the hood of the new TLX A-Spec. Now every TLX is going to come with the same engine transmission combo aside from the Type S. This is a two-liter inline turbocharged four-cylinder with VTEC. This is essentially the same engine used in vehicles like the RDX, the Honda Accord, the Honda Civic Type R. This is going to be most directly related to the Honda Accord, but just know this is the same foundation and basis as the Honda Civic Type R engine. So this one's going to make 272 horsepower, 280 pound feet of torque, hooked up to a 10-speed automatic transmission. And with the A-Spec model, this one has the super handling all-wheel drive. So that means power is going to be sent to all four wheels. Now I'm very excited to see how this new chassis, engine combination, transmission combination all translates to the road. Here's the fuel economy's figures if you guys want to see that, but let's go ahead and get driving. Well, everyone, unfortunately I had the worst thing happen. So it looks like my footage from the TLX A-Spec review, at least my driving footage was corrupted and I have already deleted the footage. So unfortunately it's one of the worst things that has happened and I apologize, this never happens. However, I don't want you guys going away from this review with zero idea of how the car drove. So I'm going to tell you exactly how the TLX was to drive because it was very, very good. Now we can't talk about the new one without talking about the old TLX. The old TLX, it wasn't very good. I mean, it was okay. The V6 felt a little sluggish. The transmission wasn't great. The car felt very front wheel drive based, which technically it was. And it just had like a lot of understeering and felt very sporty by any means. It felt like slightly sporty, but nothing compared to any of the German rivals or anything like that. This new TLX, much different. I think hands down the number one surprising thing for me in this car was the new chassis mixed with the updated tuning for the super handling all wheel drive. There were times when I was taking a corner and you can pull up a screen where it shows you where the power is being distributed. And I caught like 60% of the power being sent to just the rear left wheel mid corner. And it literally helped the car turn in so, so well. It was very agile mid corner, exit, entry, all of it was very good. It felt very flat because remember this one is lower and wider and you can really feel that in the driving. The steering was fantastic and the car felt just very good. I think my biggest complaint would be the 10 speed. It was hunting for gears a lot. It never really was quick to respond whenever I had it in any mode. Whether it was comfort, whether it was sport, whether it was individual, I can have the transmission in normal drives or I would floor it and it would just take forever to downshift. And when it did downshift, it never felt like it downshifted into an aggressive gear. So I had to take control myself. And then when I did take control, we can really feel more of the punch from that turbo I like this turbo for a lot more than the V6 because you can really feel that torque. It makes the drive more exciting. You can also hear turbo spool, waste gate. There are times that whenever the car is on like wide open throttle, it feels a little grainy, but I kind of liked it because when you're right foot, it gives you this little bit of tingle and it's just a little bit something more to interact with whenever you're driving it. But overall, I think the car was a huge, huge improvement and it set a very, very high standard for what I expect the Type S to be. If the Type S is working off of what this A-Spec had to offer, it's going to be an amazing car, especially if Acura takes the time to tune the super handling all wheel drive specific to that car. Plus you have more power. I really think it'll be an exciting car to drive. And the A-Spec, I felt like was a good entry into that. So let me know what you guys think, but let's go ahead and wrap this video up. Well, everyone, that's going to wrap up my review of the Acura TLX A-Spec. This is a really good car. I do wish that it felt more like the 272 horsepower. I'm not really sure what's going on there, why it doesn't feel quite as potent as the RDX, but either way it handles significantly better than the previous gen TLX. It definitely has more of a sportier characteristic to it. And that's what I've been looking for in Acura for a while. So I'm very pleased to see that. It looks great. The interior is well appointed, but let me know what you guys think. Comment below, would you get this new Acura TLX? And if you're new to my channel, I'd love to have you guys subscribe. Hit the red box and don't forget to hit the bell. That way YouTube will alert you. Also follow me on Instagram and TikTok, and I'll see you guys in the next review.