Acura logo and Acura history

Acura logo history

Acura is the luxury vehicle division of Japanese car Honda Motor Company. [1] It competes mainly with Lexus and Infiniti, among others in the segment of luxury vehicles. [Edit] The Acura brand has been used in the U.S., Canada and Hong Kong since March 1986 in the Honda's performance vehicles and near-performance vehicles. The brand was introduced to Mexico in 2004 and China in 2006. The Acura brand was introduced in Russia in late 2008. Honda plans to introduce Acura to the Japanese domestic market (JDM) around 2010. [2] With the Acura brand, Honda is credited with being the first Japanese company to tap into the foreign luxury market. Before Acura, automobiles exported mainly Japanese had a reputation to be economical in design and market value rather than luxury.

In 1990, four years after the debut of the Legend and Integra, Acura introduced the NSX, a midship power V6, rear wheel drive sports car. The NSX, an acronym for New Sports Experimental "was considered as the first Japanese car capable of competing with Ferrari and Porsche. This vehicle serves as a halo car for the Acura brand. The NSX was the first production of aluminum, all cars and are also marketed and viewed by some as the "Everyday Supercar" thanks in part to its ease of use, quality and reliability, features that were unknown in the segment in supercar time [3].

Despite a strong start in the market acceptance for the Acura brand, sales suffered in the mid to late 1990s. Some critics attributed this decline in part to less inspiring designs, which were re-specification of the Japanese brand Honda. Also during this time Acura switched to an alphanumeric nomenclature formula, from the legend and the titles of Integra. The 1996 3.5 RL, which replaced the popular Legend, was seen by many as the epitome of this problem, namely because the RL designation was more anonymous than the former title of the legend that has grown into its own religion and still does to this day. [5] Also, the RL 210 horsepower (160 kW) V6 (later increased to 225 hp) with a high price and design copied with the utmost caution and rear engine V-8 Lexus LS 400 and did little against BMW, Audi, Lexus, and other competitors. During this time, the NSX also lost sales as Acura made few changes to its original seat in 1989. A year later, the Integra sedan was withdrawn, replaced by the Acura 1.6EL, which is only sold in Canada as a rebadged Honda Civic. Integra sedan is still sold in the United States until 2001.

Despite these letdowns, Acura gained prominence in the 1990s with a young group of customers: "tuner" enthusiasts. Parent company Honda's reputation with this demographic as a maker of "easy to adjust" and "rev-happy" engines rubbed off in the Acura, and the Integra became a popular tuner car.

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