On March 27, 1986, Honda Motor Company changed the automotive world. With the launch of its new Acura Automobiles Division, Honda did what no other Japanese automaker had done before: It stepped up into the realm of superlative luxury, stirring performance, and exceptional refinement that had previously been the exclusive province of the premium European brands. With the launch of its first two cars, the 4-door Legend luxury-performance sedan and the sporty 3- and 5-door Integras, Acura served notice that it wasn't content simply to play in the same realm with the Europeans-it intended to surpass them with advanced engineering innovations, unrivaled quality, outstanding value, and peerless customer care.
To honor their contribution to our corner of the universe, let's take a look back and revisit the highlights of two decades' worth of Acura innovation and accomplishment.
A New Division. A New Name.The words were unpretentious but spoke volumes: "An entirely new car line and an entirely new market." That's how then-president of Honda North America Tetsuo Chino, speaking in the December 1985 issue of Ward's AutoWorld, described the new Acura Division, due to open in just months.
Chino's modest words belied the scope of the undertaking. No automaker had successfully launched a new division-including a separate dealer network-since Ford unveiled Lincoln-Mercury back in 1945. As guidance for their daunting task, Honda executives turned to Soichiro Honda's credo: "Understand how people feel, then present our products to them saying, 'Isn't this something you wanted?'" The team's conclusions: the luxury and sporty-car segments were going to flourish through the 1990s, and that Honda should move its acclaimed, high-quality product line upscale. Engineers began work on two groundbreaking new automobiles-performance driver's cars with "international appeal" and created them with input from North America, Europe, and Japan.
It was uncharted territory for a Japanese automaker. None had yet taken on the established European heavyweights at their own game. Yet according to Shoichiro Irimajiri, the head of Honda of America Manufacturing at the time, Honda had an ace up its sleeve. The auto- and motorcycle-racing experience of the company's top executives and chief engineers, Irimajiri noted, helped give Honda an edge: "They feel that if you stand still one season, you will lose."
Before Honda could take on the big guns, though, the new division needed a name. The automaker turned to San Francisco-based NameLab. Company founder Ira Bachrach and his staff created "Acura" from "acu," a word segment that means "precise" in many languages. Building on this precision theme, the "A" in the Acura logo became a stylized pair of calipers-a tool used for exacting measurements.
Acura opened its doors in March with 60 dealers in the top 30 U.S. markets. And then the glowing press notices began pouring in. "The Legend is a better BMW," wrote Motor Trend in April 1986 after a drive of the new 2.5-liter, V-6 four-door. In August, Car and Drive gushed: "Honda has made a phenomenal leap with the new Acura Legend. It clearly has the stuff to play hardball with the big guys." The following January, Car and Driver named the Integra one of its Ten Best Cars, an award the sporty Acura would win five more times. The new 2.7-liter Legend coupe, introduced for 1987, won the prestigious Motor Trend Import Car of the Year award.
The public was equally enthusiastic. The brand-new division sold a remarkable 52,869 cars in 1986-then more than doubled that total in calendar-year 1987. In 1988, sales climbed again, to 128,238, making Acura the top-selling luxury import nameplate two years in a row. Indeed, in its very first year of business, Acura was ranked number one in the J.D. Power Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI)-a position it would hold four years in a row.
The Best Sports Car Ever Built."To create a sports car for a new era, we should balance human feelings and vehicle performance at higher levels." That was the consensus of the development team assigned to develop an all-new Acura, an exotic sports car combining the user-friendliness and reliability of an Acura Integra with the adrenalized DNA of a Formula 1 race car.
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