Capsule Review: 1998 Acura 2.5TL

Poetry, Wordsworth told us right before he and that dope fiend Coleridge pissed all over English literature with the freakin’ Lyrical Ballads, is “emotion recollected in tranquility.” By “emotion”, he meant having a nice walk in the Lake District, and by “tranquility”, he meant the sweet, sweet song of opium. Hate that guy and his wack-ass aversion to meter. You want to read some real literature, I recommend Pope’s Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot. But I digress.

While Acura struggles with its current beaky big rig, reviewed by Mr. Karesh yesterday, I thought I would recall some emotion in tranquility and detail my drive of the 1998 Acura 2.5TL. Truth be told, though, there wasn’t much emotion involved. Perhaps this is tranquility, recollected in tranquility. Never mind.

It is a five cylinder Acura,

I am in the market for a Passat,

A faux-hardtop like the ES 250,

The engine’s turned north-to-south,

Ugh. I don’t see how Coleridge did it. I don’t see how Acura did it either. We’ve discussed previously how Japanese customers loved the faux-hardtop look for their upmarket sedans. While Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi were content to simply cut out the door frames and fuss with the endcaps to create their yuppie-oriented cars, Honda decided that a really nice FWD sedan should also have a longitudinally-mounted engine. The resulting cars were called the “Accord Inspire” and “Accord Vigor”. The Vigor became the third member of Acura’s lineup in 1992, where it received a reception somewhere between “uncaring” and “actively disdainful” from the market.

The average JDM-phile will tell you that the Inspire and Vigor were in fact derived from the Acura Legend. I’m disinclined to believe it, since the interiors shared too much with the Accords of the day, and dashboard width is a tough thing to change without somebody noticing. If I had to guess, I would say that the subframes and frame horns may have been derived from that of the Legend.

Why did Honda do a longitudinal engine mount? The official reason was that the five-cylinder engine required it, and the official reason for using a five-cylinder engine was to “avoid the waste of a V6”. I don’t believe that either. I think Honda was starstruck by the fabulous “aero” C3 Audi 100 and simply decided to copy it, the same way the original Honda Civic was a product-improved copy of the Mini and the Honda/Acura NSX cribbed extensively from the Ferrari/Lotus playbook. Since the Audi had a front-to-back five-cylinder, the Inspire/Vigor/TL would have it as well.

My initial exposure to the 2.5TL came as I was shopping for Mrs. B’s next whip, yo. She liked the all-new Passat; I liked it too, but worried about maintenance expenses. After seeing a $279/month lease for the TL in the paper, we went over to drive one. For amusement’s sake, and because I had been building a notebook full of driving impressions for a few years at that time, we started with the Integra GS-R, continued with the 2.3CL five-speed, and finished with the 2.5 and 3.2 TLs.

The Integra was a delightful little car; noisy, tinny, torqueless, very Honda-esque. The 2.3CL was a real charmer and seemed worth the modest premium over the equivalent Accord coupe, if only for the short-wheelbase look and the boat-tail. The 2.5TL, on the other hand, failed to impress.

The interior was too obviously that of the Accord and 2.3CL, and it was loud inside. Thrum from the engine filled the cabin, while the doors whistled above eighty mph. Not that the TL was in any hurry to get to eighty — the engine was gutless and the transmission was both late and rough to shift. The automatic was mandatory with both TL models, and that was a mistake for Honda. If I had to make a list of “The Top Ten Things That Suck About Hondas”, No. 2 would be their sad excuses for automatic transmissions. (No. 1 would be the “Mr. Opportunity” regional-dealer ads.)

Ride and handling were a bit on the soft side, particularly compared to the CL coupe. This wasn’t a car to stir anyone’s soul; it reeked of JDM difference-for-the-sake-of-difference and days spent shopping on the Ginza strip. Most annoyingly, the car was just narrow inside, which made it feel cheaper than it was. Still, the price was right, so we agreed that we would drive the Passat and come back to make the deal.

We never returned to the Acura dealership. The Passat was a revelation compared to the Acura: fast, five-speed, spacious, gorgeous, well-equipped, and cheaper besides. When the salesman made his follow-up call to me, I shared my observations with him. “I can’t lie,” he responded, “we can’t give these TL things away, even at $279 a month.”

I will go to my grave thinking the Accords which shared that 2.5TL platform were the best Accords in history. The 1998 Accord was a fat-assed monstrosity, but it was a much better basis for an Acura TL. The ’03 Accord was even worse, but the resulting TL was better yet. The current Accord and Acura TL are sized somewhere between a ’78 Cutlass sedan and a ’77 Cutlass coupe, and that’s too freakin’ big if you ask me. I’m pretty sure you could park a ’77 Seville behind the current TL and not see it.

Oh well. Wordsworth and Coleridge set the English poetry scene free from the straitjacket of iambic pentameter, not realizing that having some restraint in one’s poetry is more help than hindrance. Acura long ago abandoned the chic minimalism that made the Integra such a lovable car. Do you like the result?