Crapwagon Outtake: The Wine Dark TSX

The best part about working at TTAC has very little to do with the constant press car access, the barely-disguised graft known as “new car launches” or having various varieties of invective spewed at you by tens of readers each day. No, the real fringe benefit is that you are paid to spend a fair amount of your waking hours reading and researching about cars, and that includes browsing the online classifieds for strange and obscure cars.

I came across this gem during a break in a search for some oddbals to post on our forum’s Used Car section. I really like the TSX. It’s not the fastest, or the sharpest handling car money can buy. It’s certainly not the most prestigious, and it won’t impress the superficial types. But it just feels right, in a way that the ILX 2.4 (a very similar car on paper) does not. The fact that it’s an Acura is also re-assuring. This is the kind of car that you can hang on to for 15 years, safe in the knowledge that if the stereo conks out, your car won’t be immobilized either (see: BMW E46).

There’s a surprising number of manual transmission TSXs available near me, but this one jumped out due to its price and condition (both great, as far as I can tell) and for how awful the color and specification are. Whoever ordered this is a real oddball. It’s painted in a ghastly shade of purple that could charitable be described as “Merlot-from-a-screw-top-bottle), while the cloth interior fabric is as bland as it gets. But it also has a 6-speed manual.

This kind of car is arguably the least desirable TSX, from a retail perspective. I know this because I first saw an ad for the car in September. At the time, I put aside any notions of buying another car, let alone getting rid of my Miata.

The latter option is still unpalatable, but Jack’s accident has made me revisit one of the reasons I sold my first Miata (much to my regret): there’s a good chance that a collision with a modern car, truck or SUV would be very ugly for myself and any passenger I was carrying. Almost as ugly as the TSX’s color.

Of course, I am not the typical retail used car buyer, and for an enthusiast like me, that salesman’s floorplanned folly is a great opportunity for me. Cloth seats and purple paint aside, big draw is that it’s a relatively affordable and reliable car with a manual transmission that is fairly fun to drive. Of course, if anyone asks, it’s burgundy, thank you very much.