The Acura TLX Is Dead But Will Anyone Miss It?

Another sedan bites the dust. The Acura TLX is ending production this month, marking the end of a midsize luxury sedan run that started with the first Acura TL back in 1996. For those of you keeping track at home, this means the Integra will soon be the only Acura that isn’t a crossover, and it probably doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to deduce what Acura is pinning its midsizer’s demise on.

The TLX and its predecessor, the TL, served an important role for Acura brand for much of the past 30 years – with nearly 1.2 million units sold. However, since the initial success of the model, sales have been in a gradual, but steady decline as consumers increasingly turn to crossover utility vehicles.

Indeed, the most successful year for Acura’s midsize sedan in America came in 2005, when 78,218 TL sedans found homes across the country. Since then, the decline has been mostly steady with some inflection points. Between 2007 and 2009, annual sales fell by 24,925 units as the one-two punch of Great Recession austerity and the controversial styling of the third-generation TL walloped sales figures. An unusual resurgence happened in 2015 when the first-generation TLX came online, but the second-generation TLX failed to repeat that success. I reckon the success of crossovers played a role, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

When the digital sheets came off the second-generation TLX in 2020, just about everything seemed great. It looked fantastic, thanks in part to a long dash-to-axle ratio for a car with a transverse layout. The silhouette was just sharper than the old car, and standard power was up big time thanks to a turbocharged two-liter inline-four as the base engine. Add double-wishbone front suspension and the return of the Type S trim for nostalgic types, and the internet’s appetite was whet. The new TLX looked hot and had serious promise on paper, but as I’ve said time and time again, cars aren’t driven on paper.

Before even driving it, one obvious flaw appeared, and that’s Acura’s much-maligned True Touchpad interface. Unlike the cursor-style system used by Lexus, which also drew flak, Acura’s implementation didn’t work like a laptop touchpad at all, but instead each point on the touchpad directly corresponded with a point on the screen.

Then, when you put tire to tarmac, it became apparent that the tuning of the standard car made it closer in spirit to a Lexus ES than a BMW 3 Series or Cadillac CT5. I remember it being cold when I first drove a second-generation TLX, a two-liter turbocharged four-cylinder model with all-wheel drive. Cold enough that the all-season tires weren’t in their happy zone, but the biggest standouts were weight and a sense of squidginess. Weighing around 600 pounds more than a loaded Accord, it didn’t take long to realize that the TLX didn’t have a particularly eager front end, with plenty of body movement, and little more than an audible warning that you were approaching the limits of grip. Sure, the all-wheel-drive system did allow for some power-on rotation once you got the car turned, but the TLX didn’t feel quite like it wanted to do sport sedan stuff. Maybe the Type S would be the answer?

Nope. Alright, so 355 horsepower from a turbocharged three-liter V6 is decent grunt, but a curb weight of more than 4,200 pounds means that the end result isn’t as quick as you’d expect. Zero-to-60 mph in about five seconds isn’t slow, but it isn’t in the same ballpark as a BMW M340i or Lexus IS 500. Add in suspension that’s still too soft and a chassis balance and stability control calibration that’s allergic to fun, and the TLX Type S is more a conceptual approximation of a sport sedan than a real contender for keen drivers. It sort-of falls to pieces when you hustle it, and at $59,245, that’s a bit of a problem. Nearly $60,000 gets you into a more playful machine like a loaded Genesis G70 3.3T or a non-Blackwing Cadillac CT5-V, which renders this enthusiast trim a difficult thing to justify.

The second-generation Acura TLX still looks great and is a comfortable cruiser, but it was just never as resolved a sports sedan as it needed to be in order to justify its existence alongside a strong lineup of crossovers. It had a lot of potential, but once you combine its dynamic foibles with some quirks like a weirdly small interior for the size and the annoying infotainment system, it was a difficult car to recommend. With only 7,478 sold last year, it’s time to close the curtain. On the plus side, if you want a really fun Acura sedan, how about an Integra Type S?

Top graphic image: Acura

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