The 2024 Acura Integra Type S is a Grown Up Civic Type R (POV First Drive)

When you get into them, I mean it comes down hard. Hey crew, I've got the key to that 24 Acura Integra Type S. We are going to take it for a drive, but first this is Charlie bringing you this first drive of this ultimate Acura Integra. We've got it here in apex blue pearl, very striking front interior with that hood scoop, a bunch of functional air behind that Acura badge. Look at how big that grill is, including that bottom grill for the intercooler. Three inches wider in the front, just under three inches wider and just over a three inch wider track as well. Coming over to the side, looking at that aggressive profile, we can see wider bits above the wheels. 19 inch wheels for the Type S wrapped in Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires that are supposed to be a little bit quieter than those that are on the Civic Type R. Of course the liftback style for the Integra, same as we see for the base Integra. Coming around to the back, seeing those triple exhaust pipes. Custom exhaust for the Type S model of the Integra, different than you get on the Civic Type R as well. Carbon fiber lip spoiler and some diffusers back there as well. What do you all think? Is this too much or is this a handsome and attractive and aggressive look for the Integra Type S? I'm quite digging it. I am a big fan of the Integra in general and I think they did a good job with making the Type S stand out just that much more. Let's take a look inside before even opening the door. Gosh, this apex blue pearl paint looks fantastic in the sunlight and then we can see the white orchid interior. Still some hard door plastics but some leatherette on the doors as well. Leatherette seats. Only a four passenger configuration for the Type S so only bring in four people and unfortunately the headroom restraints are not remedied in this high performance version. You should see even at five foot ten, I'm hitting my head back here so it's not the best place for adult passengers to be. Of course a whole center hump right there but no point in trying to scoot into the center you simply have cup holders. Door close sound. Solid with a little tin. The lift back design for the Integra allows for a large hatch opening exposing 24 cubic feet of storage and if that still isn't enough for you, you can fold back the second row of seats in a 60 40 split configuration giving you a lot of space in the back of this car. I like having a little net back here as well to keep your groceries in place while you're carving canyon corners and of course the ELS Studio 3D subwoofer as well. Any storage underneath? A little bit right there. Well a big lift to get things in and out of so you're gonna have to lift to get them out of the back of the car. Coming into the front, proxy key entry for the driver's door. We see soft injection molding on the doors as well as that orchid leatherette a little bit lower. Auto up down windows for the front as well as power adjusting mirrors. 12-way adjustment for these beautiful ultra suede and leatherette seats. They bolster you nicely. We'll talk about that on the road. Of course the three pedal design. The only way you're getting the Integra Type S. Traction control off button as well. Important there. A perforated or rather what I like to call golf ball style steering wheel with color matched cross stitching there and some Type S badging getting in. I should note we also have manual adjustment, four-way manual adjustment for the passenger seat. Along with the 10.2-inch digital gauge cluster you've got a 5.2-inch head-up display and a nine-inch center infotainment screen that features wired and wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support. All of those are standard in the Type S. As are heated seats. You can get an optional heated steering wheel out We see our air vents that don't go all the way across the dash like the Civic Type R. Physical climate controls which I like to see. USB-A and USB-C ports although C is only for power. Standard wireless device charging. Drive mode selector. The excellent six-speed manual shifter. Cup holders and a center storage area here in the center console. Taking a look around the cabin. Rear visibility is a bit more limited than some of your competitors. Fortunately we do have standard blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic alert. I'm a fan of the cabin. It's a comfortable place to be. It looks good. Everything feels nice in here. I'm a fan of the quality of all of the parts of the vehicle but I'm more excited to get this thing out on the road so Let's bring the Type S to life. Turning radius test. Not fantastic for a compact car. Got a wide front end. A lot of suspension geometry going on and a tight turning radius doesn't seem to be their priority. How about the world famous horn test? Sounds like a nice solid car horn. All right we can't get very far into this review without talking powertrain. This Integra Type S is sporting the 2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder motor from Acura and Honda. We've seen it in a few other products but in this one making 320 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque and I've got to tell you in this front-wheel drive setup with a not super high curb weight of about 3,200 pounds that's a good amount of power. I've had so much fun already driving this thing around today and I can't wait to get it on some roads here and show you all what it's like. Very easy car to drive around the city as well. We've got it in the comfort drive mode. There's also sport, sport plus, and individual. Adaptive suspension, adaptive dampers giving you good ride quality when you need it and then tightening things up when you want it to feel like a race car. Right onto the highway rev match. Auto rev matching for us. This is such a satisfying engine to drive. It really, really is. We've got our blind spot monitoring coming in handy. You're getting some good highway impressions right off the bat here. One of the main impressions, we're not going to, we're not going to make this a Civic Type R to Integra Type S comparison video necessarily but one of the main impressions is that this one does feel a good bit more refined and most importantly quieter than the Civic Type R. That's one of my biggest complaints with the Type R is the road noise and just the general NVH. The Type S really seems to solve that. A little bit of a different tire compound for this one. Let's do that about 70 miles per hour up at speed. Definitely a more refined experience. Ride quality seems better than the Civic Type R as well and that is to say pretty good. A little bit more of some broken pavement here and in comfort mode I'm not being jostled about. That's what's really been standing out to me so far with the Type S is an amazing performance machine that's a lot of fun to rip on but also remarkably easy to live with. Acura's put in a lot of care to make this feel like a luxury sports car in the best ways. You don't really seem to be having much compromise between choosing to have a fun weekend canyon carver car and choosing to have something that would be very easy to commute through town in. The shifter weight is just right to feel satisfying when you push it down. It's not like the normal Integra that feels like an on-off switch. Very artificial. This shifter actually has some weight. The clutch pedal feels good. The shifter itself feels fantastic. The knob is this nice kind of very similar material actually to the steering wheel. You can see the golf ball characteristics going on there but Acura will actually give you a full metal shift knob as well. Harkened back to older Integra models. You can get that out of the accessory catalog but regardless of the knob that you've got affixed to your Type S this is one of my favorite shifters on the market. Even as a front-wheel drive car it's so satisfying to throw back and forth between the gears. Couple that with the auto rev matching and when you're just driving this thing in comfort mode and then the adaptive dampers soften up it's such an easy car to drive. Plenty of customization available in the center instrument cluster. Right now I've got the turbo boost gauge up but you've also got throttle and brake indicators. You have a g-meter and you've got seat belt indicators, maintenance, tire pressures, safety, and of course your fuel displays. So it does say we've been getting about 18 miles per gallon over this 50 mile trip but the car was idling quite a bit as well so I know that was that would bring fuel economy down. Let's go all the way up into sport plus now that we've got a little uninterrupted highway. One of the things you're going to notice between this and the standard Integra is not having to downshift as aggressively just to do something like a passing maneuver there. You really have to be in the right gear of that 200-some horsepower normal Integra or the Civic Si but when you're dealing with this big boy motor no no you can be in something like fourth gear and still lean on it and even up this hill accelerate with purpose. There's sport plus thought I was in it already. With this one into three exhaust setup Acura has actually designed a different exhaust system than you get in the Civic Type R. This one has less sound deadening up front and when you put it into sport plus mode it sends a lot of exhaust noise straight through the center pipe and will even give you some pops and burbles. We'll see if we can get some of those here. The fake noise also isn't as bad as you get in some of the other Honda products. A little bit. I'm sure we'll get some once we get a little bit more spirited driving later on today. When you're up in sport plus mode the steering does weigh up a lot. I'm not a huge fan of how that feels. There's it feels like you're steering through some thicker peanut butter. I'm sure if you're on track it would feel good and it's got a novelty to it but realistically what I like the ability to do is hit individual mode and you can customize your engine your steering your adaptive suspension and your gauge cluster and that allows me to have light steering very precise and nimble calm suspension but still get these sporty engine characteristics. Getting into some good twisties here. The Acura Type S is just such a gem in these corners and and more than that I think gem is a little too uh a little too nice. This thing has a bite and it's one of the few newer cars that you could actually find yourself getting a little out of sorts because when you get on it and the steering will I mean it pulls you it's rabid. This is a rabid bulldog dressed in Versace. What do fancy dogs wear? Whatever that is that's what this car is wearing. Oh look at this a little opening for a quick zero to 60 run. AC off. We're facing a little bit downhill so take this one with a grain of salt. Let's see what a sort of launch I can do. Spun him a whole bunch. Let's try one more time. This pavement's a little lean up. Did you hear that massive crack back there on that one? That was great. This thing is so stable at speed too. We had some higher speed more sweeper type corners earlier today and Acura has done a ton of work with this car to improve the aero on all sides of the car. Top, bottom, left, right to make it a stable car at speed. Coming up to the stop sign let's talk brakes. Don't be misled by other things that you see or hear about the Integra Type S. It does have Brembo brake calipers but it's just the front calipers and that's it. Just enough for Acura to intentionally say that they're using Brembos but the pads and the rotors and everything and the rear tire brake assembly that's all just going to be in-house Honda. Which is not to say it's bad. They're very good brakes. In fact I'm a really big fan of the tuning. There's a little bit of softness right on top just to keep them from being jerky but you get into them and it comes down hard. Way up top the artificial but overall the engine sounds better than what you and in theory it should sound better than the Civic Type R because of that unique exhaust to the Type S. I love the fact that the Type S could be just as much home on a country club race course as it could be in the city as it could be in these back roads. They really did tune this thing well and the charisma that the car has is something that you don't get in a ton of new vehicles. So where does the Integra Type S fit in? At about $52,000 you are talking other luxury sporty cars and I know that this interior and the features and the materials things like the infotainment being much more basic that's not going to speak to everyone getting ready to drop $50,000 but for me the bandwidth of the Type S is what really sells it for me and if I were someone who was looking for a daily driver car around this price point and I wanted a manual transmission I mean this would kill it for me. It really would. The fact that you got a good sound system, wireless carplay on Android Auto, heated seats, an easy to use dual zone climate control, all the the driver ergonomics are right there, great transmission. I would love driving this in all sorts of driving situations and I do believe it's worth the price premium. Plus the Civic Type R is super cool but it looks boy racer. You can't get over the fact that it looks like a car that's trying a little too hard that looks juvenile. If you're someone more grown up and mature the Integra styling is probably going to speak more to you especially if you get a little bit more subtle color. I mean it makes a statement but at the same time it's more subtle and classier than what you get with the Civic. But what do you all think? Does the more precise and classier Integra Type S speak to you? Is it worth that price premium or is it just a more expensive Civic Type R to you and would you rather save your money and go with the H badge on front? Let me know down in the comments and I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did hit that like button, send it to someone that you know and if you're not already subscribed hit that subscribe button, sign up for notifications and we will see you on the next one.