2022 Acura TLX Type S _ Back From the Dead

**The Acura Type S: A Car That's Almost Too Good to Be True**

I've had the chance to drive the Acura Type S, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. As an enthusiast who values manual transmissions, I was excited to see how this car would perform in sport mode. Unfortunately, that's where things started to go wrong.

Ever since I first heard about the Type S, I've been eager to try it out for myself. The promise of a high-performance automatic transmission has always piqued my interest, but as soon as I got behind the wheel, I realized that there's a catch to all of this. This is the best automatic transmission that Honda's ever produced from a performance perspective aside from the NSX dual-clutch. Yes, and the deal with it is you cannot drive this in manual mode if you leave it in sport or sport plus mode.

The transmission's behavior becomes apparent as soon as I tried to manually control it. It falls to pieces, refusing to allow me full manual control. Rev matching downshifts are present, but they're not enough to make up for the lack of driver engagement. The paddle shifters are a poor substitute for real manual gear shifting, and even with them, the transmission's behavior is still disappointing. I've had cars before that were quick to respond, but it was always short-lived and unsatisfying.

This got me thinking - what if Honda wanted to create an automatic transmission that truly prioritizes performance? What if they could find a way to make it work without sacrificing any of the driving experience? That's a question I wish I had a clear answer to. All I can say is that the current implementation falls short, and it's a shame because the Type S has so much going for it.

**The Good: A Ride Quality Like No Other**

Despite my disappointment with the transmission, I have to admit that the ride quality of the Type S is truly exceptional. Even in comfort mode, the car feels like a luxury sedan - smooth, quiet, and composed. The body control is good, and the only road noise you hear is the typical Honda pinging in the tires. This is exactly the type of car you want to drive as a daily driver.

Of course, there's one major catch: the price point. At $53,000, this is still a very affordable option compared to many other high-performance cars on the market. But at this price point, you'd expect to get something truly special - and in some ways, that's what you do get. The Type S offers 99.9% of what the S4 and 3 Series offer for a fraction of the cost, with lower running costs to boot.

**The Not-So-Good: A Transmission That's Almost Unusable**

I've tried to come up with ways to criticize the Type S, but it's hard to do so when you consider its incredible value proposition. However, there is one major drawback that keeps it from being truly great: the transmission. I'll admit it - I'm an enthusiast who values manual transmissions. But even I have to acknowledge that this car has a lot going for it.

The problem is that the transmission just doesn't work well in certain situations. It's not tuned right, and it can be finicky at times. For example, if you try to manually shift into first gear, it will rarely let you do so unless you're stopped dead still. And even then, it might short shift or refuse to engage the gear altogether.

I've tried to imagine why Honda would do this - maybe they want to ensure that the car doesn't get too much abuse from enthusiastic drivers? Maybe they're trying to make up for some perceived lack of manual transmission refinement? Whatever the reason, I wish they had just gone with a more traditional automatic transmission instead. At least then we could have a clear understanding of what we were getting ourselves into.

**Final Thoughts**

Overall, I'm still trying to come to terms with the Type S's performance transmission. It's a shame that it doesn't live up to my expectations - but at the same time, it's hard not to be impressed by how well-rounded this car is as a whole package. From its incredible value proposition to its luxurious ride quality, there's a lot to like about this car.

But let's get real - if you're an enthusiast who values manual transmissions above all else, then this might not be the car for you. I'd argue that the best experience comes with putting the transmission in automatic mode and enjoying the benefits of the Type S's logic-based driving system.

In any case, I'm willing to forgive Honda for their transmission mistakes in favor of the Type S's numerous strengths. It may not be perfect - but it's a car that's almost impossible to dislike once you've spent time with it.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe acura tlx type s this has been a long time coming this won't be a cookie cutter video we're going to discuss the engineering the changes and the mindset behind the creation of this so get yourself ready many have waited a long time for the new type s's arrival the tlx brings it back in great form it's rare that we discuss the exterior styling of a car especially a sedan the front and the rear have been slightly altered it has such an amazing road presence from the blacked out elements this has to be one of the best blue paint colors you will ever find on any car at least in an affordable price range so on the interior cabin this is a mix of what we talked about on the tlx advanced the mdx and basically all the new acura products carry over a lot of this design from the steering wheel the center stack the screen the door panels all of that is unified now across all of the updated and new acura products ergonomically it's amazing the comfort and usability is good speaking of that take a look at the door panels there's an interesting use of different textures which acura has great marketing lingo for i can fit a huge bottle in the door it's easy to grab the doors don't open so far that i have a rotator cuff tear trying to close the door the speaker grills are a nice touch overall you'll notice all of those little pieces of attention to detail without making it gimmicky now in terms of technology there isn't much that's been updated you still have an infotainment using a touchpad that uses a forked version of android in the meantime the audio system is an els 3d setup and it is amazing i'll talk about that during the final thoughts but you might want to know what's different with the type s well you have this mix between the a spec with the seats that have adjustable bolsters you can get these so tight if you're a larger person it will literally pop your kidneys out they it has such great support and if you want to back it off and go into more of a touring car mode you can in terms of the other parts of the interior space you're never going to forget that you're driving a type s because there are so many types badges plaster all over the place from the door sills to the headrest to the outside you know what it is speaking of which what other neat little things that they do here the gauge cluster is a throwback to their older acura products you have a digi analog setup here they look like analog gauges for tachometer and speedometer and they use a very subtle center screen for all your multi-function indicator stuff other than that really there is not much here that you haven't seen already and we're gonna now crush your mind with all of the technical information about the type s that you probably want to know we are underneath the brand new type s jack before we get started with the technical discussion we need to cover what is type s so it was taking a regular sedan injecting a little bit of personality performance while still giving you that luxury car feel and a lot of value type s does not equate type r correct they actually have three core pillars from a marketing perspective type s means it improves stop go and turn and if you yeah it's it's hard to swallow and if you look at a lot of the marketing for the vehicle itself you have it going around laguna sega drifting around corners and about 10 seconds behind the wheel of this thing you realize this is not a substitute for a type r vehicle this is not a track car they designed this to compete as a value proposition the segment that is the non-amg amg c-class the audi s4 and the bmw m340i which this undercuts incre in price dramatically and they do that by adding a whole bunch of standard features that you don't get on those cars you have to pay a significant amount more like heated and cooled seats here a true torque vectoring differential a mechanical unit you also get premium audio you get all of the adaptive dampers here so all this is baked in at around 53 000 to start so to get that in those competitors you're spending quite a bit more than that that is why you're buying this so back to what you said the marketing the launch event they're trying to show we designed this on the track and it is track capable i'm going to just flat out say it you have to put that on your mind that is not what this car is about nor are you going to take it there and it's not going to be a car that you're going to drive like that this is a pure street car with a little bit of edge and a little bit of performance and it's pretty damn fun to drive much like it's competitors an s4 a m340i those vehicles are not track cars correct let's talk about what this is this is largely based from a body structure and suspension standpoint on the regular tlx it is the same it is identical and the reason why is they built the tlx at the start knowing they were going to make a type s yes so everything was over built everything was overbuilt from the start so when they did a type s they didn't have to change control arms knuckles some of the main things that this car has so that's just ready to go but they have had to make some improvements so you're going to detail a lot of that so there are some exterior changes which i'm going to talk about very quickly the front and rear fascias are entirely different and the front grille is far larger to basically help with the cooling and airflow required for this single turbo v6 so when it comes to the suspension tuning in the front one of the things i will bring up when is compared to something in audi s4 or the bmw equivalents not all of this is aluminum when it comes to body improvements from the regular tlx and here we'll throw up this chart here what they did is they added rigidity by adding the x brace and the rear trunk area behind the rear seats and added strut tower bracing up in the front so this thing is like i believe about 13 more torsionally rigid than the regular tlx and there's a couple other reinforcement pieces but really what they're trying to do is reinforce bulkheads yes and because you're putting so much extra power and torque through the car makes a lot of sense the other thing that they changed up front is the front subframe is different and that is just because of the engine they couldn't reuse the same subframe for the 4-popper versus the v6 that was not there for light performance when it comes to the suspension tuning it is entirely different so your front spring rate is dramatically higher things like 30 or 40 percent stiffer in the front your front sway bar is nine percent stiffer with the rear sway bar and like the 31 range and your dampers are also entirely re-tuned to be stiffer and more capable than the regular adaptive dampers found on the tlx advanced and these are also done by zf you also have different brakes and steering so this has a i believe a four piston brembo setup and unlike the brembos found in the type r it is not a two-piece rotor design correct and you go up from the regular 4-popper tlx with the 2-liter they have just 13-inch traditional traditional rotors and calipers this is a four piston unit so you're gaining an extra inch in overall rotor diameter but they're also thicker so there's more thermal capacity there for braking the other part is the steering in this car the eps unit which is a belt driven unit has been revised to be more direct and give you a faster ratio and it is still a variable ratio as well the rack is the same that you get in the tlx advance pack variable gear ratio the difference here is it's quicker so when you get to this point it speeds up versus you have to give it a little bit more steering input on the regular tlx and its overall ratio is quicker so it just makes it feel like it wants to respond or turn in quicker it gives a far more nimble perception behind this automobile and this still has sh all-wheel drive so it is a torque vectoring front-wheel drive bias all-wheel drive system so it will send up to 70 of the torque to the rear of the car and then it will send up to a hundred percent of that torque that was sent to the rear of this car to either wheel to help rotate you out of a corner so the way this works is because this is double wishbone i'm going to quickly explain this suspension kinematics the front end will load up when you're in a corner when you lift off when you lift off the gas the car then will start to rotate as you give it more gas it will torque vector in the rear to get the rear end to move around just subtly to pull you out of the corner without inducing horrific understeer and the 70 of the torque sent to the rear can happen in any mode from comfort all the way to sport plus now you have to be more aggressive in the lower modes it's not going to just send torque to the back so you have to be really aggressive on the throttle to get that that power to transfer but in sport plus it's more eager to do that in in acura claims it's more rear-wheel drive feeling because it's sending power to the rear more often now the main question we had is why not just start with a rear-wheel drive architecture if you're gonna send all that power to the back all the time an accurate thing was we were able to create a better handling car than our competitors while still sticking to front-wheel drive there's no limited slip in the front but they are still using vsa their vsa system vehicle stability assist and torque vectoring by brake to kind of get this car to turn in so you have torque vectoring and that system working together and this is their fourth generation sh setup so what that means is it's way quicker to respond than the previous generation so that torque that electronic control happens much faster than it used to and it does handle despite its weight extraordinarily well this for a mere mortal we're going to talk about this in the drive is every bit as capable as what's found on the audi s4 not unlike something like the rear wheel drive competitors you can do incredibly stupid things in this car and it'll make up for that lack of driving skill and honda is and honda and acura to be fair to them they've mastered front-wheel drive yes and now they're trying to take what they're good at and then give you a mechanical torque vectoring system in the back to give you basically that the best type of all-wheel drive experience that they know how to do and i guess we're gonna find out if it's they did that here all right let's get underneath the hood mark sounds good under the hood of the type s transmission jack what do we have we still have a honda developed 10-speed automatic however it is 30 percent faster to shift than the regular gearbox found in the more normal tlx the torque inverter is much stronger it is a different unit and the gears have been reinforced and when you are in sport plus mode it shifts forty percent uh faster than it does in regular mode the gear shift logic changes based on what drive mode you're in and this is all been done because they want to give this a more aggressive character when driving and there is an enormous difference the other big thing to talk about mark is this all-new single turbo v6 this is a twin scroll unit that produces 15.1 foot-pounds of boost makes about 355 horsepower and about the equivalent amount of torque delivers the torque nice and low like around 1700 1400 rpms and it looks if you look at the chart for the power output that's like flat all the way up to like five or six thousand rpms it's it's crazy how flat it is but that's the whole point of this new engine design and acura and honda have just been very transparent about what this is gone is the days of the old peaky naturally aspirated motors and there's two reasons for it one it doesn't suit the character of what they wanted to do here they wanted refinement they didn't want you have to wring this out and what they're saying is most of the customer base lives in that 1400 zone to where that torque that torque curve is or lack of curve that ruler flat torque delivery is and that's what people want now if you're coming from the past honda products and you're excited about this you have to level your expectations this is the same as what we're seeing with most manufacturers doing turbocharged units it's that all or nothing performance that hits you right out of the gate and then gives you the refinement but doesn't have that crazy edge it doesn't have that sound that is all missing now and that might be a deal breaker for some but this is the future regulations emissions and fuel economy standards have dictated and handcuffed the engineers on how they could make this and most internal combustion engines going forward and that's where most people honestly live this thing only revs to 6200 rpm which is not a bad thing it's not saying that this isn't a great motor it's got a square boring stroke and it's got forged internals it also has cylinder deactivation and this is a first for a turbocharged application for honda or acura the way they've gotten around some of the nvh associated with that is their active mounts and they have to be there because of the cylinder they remove the resonance and the frequency of going from six cylinders to three so back to that you're trying to build a performance machine or a little bit of a performance car and you have to add all these things back because like you always say this car has to be everything to most all people while still meeting their requirements it's a very difficult task the there's a couple other things i want to bring up before we head up head out on the road this motor was built here in the united states in ohio the head design is far more compact than the prior generation naturally aspirated v6 and then the cooling they have not forgotten about that this has a dedicated transmission cooler which is front mounted it has a oil warmer it does not have a dedicated air to air oil cooler and this has no differential cooler on this car and they got to they got around adding active cooling for the torque vectoring differential by making sure that the aero panels underneath the asphalt panels had channels to flow the air to that that differential and when you look at the underneath of it which we didn't talk about it's really wide open back there so it's getting plenty of air the trans cooler will allow you to drive this all day and they talk about the track stuff all the time but they're saying that you could really push this on a circuit for a little bit or on a a back road and not get any warning lights for overheating the transmission which is great because you're probably going to drive this a little bit more aggressively yep so with that mark let's head on the road sounds good jack tlx type s this is acura's apparent return to form for the sports sedan don't worry about that man that feels like precision crafted performance mark yeah you're not kidding so i'm going to leave this mostly in automatic and we're going to be in sport plus most of the drive for the viewers enjoyment traction control will be off or vsa stability assist so let's talk about the car as a whole jack so this is anchor's attempt like they've done in the past to create a value proposition in the sporty business mobile luxury sedan segment it's competing with things like the s4 c43 an m4 m340i you know it's 53 grand well equipped but i think dynamically at least in the engine and transmission segment of this vehicle or part of it it's kind of a letdown yeah i think it's it's a tough call here because i had a different expectation coming in of what they were trying to do with this car and i think i expected something far different in terms of transmission performance and engine performance with this and i think what i get is it's this is not the honda of pastimes you know it has off the feeling the look all of that but because the engine is turbocharged you have what is essentially a 4000 rpm power band from 2000 rpm all the way to 6000 rpm where this thing will auto upshift itself every single time regardless if you put this in manual mode and i think they've stripped out about 25 of where that edge that needs to be here and we talked about this in the shop type s is not like type r it's not supposed to be this is not an m3 competitor no it is not so the edge that you want from being able to manually control the transmissions not here that kind of peaky like old school feel from honda motors is not here but what it does do extraordinarily well is handling yeah acura has mastered or honda north america has mastered the front wheel drive dynamics yes it says torque vectoring all-wheel drive but honestly on the street you do not miss a rear-wheel drive architecture what this car can do particularly with its weight is mind-blowing under braking you can get at the trail brake and then if you use the power as you're leaving the corner it will rotate just like you did so it won't under steer it won't oversteer it is a very neutral car and you can be a ham-fisted with this thing yes and it'll just pull you out of anything the bar for entry to driving this fast is so low you can be in you can be anybody get in here and drive like a maniac and it's so stable all the time some of that is the all-wheel drive system you can clearly tell that they were building in a high level of accessibility for the owners that we're going to have this so you can drive flat out and i would had this conversation with somebody else about the type s is you when you look at this on paper you look at the gauge cluster like only revs to 6 000 rpm it's the typical turbocharged engine problem where there's not a lot of character to it so when you're going in a straight line and i'm just going to come to a stop here i'm kind of going to walk you through this so in sport plus it raises the revs to 1000 rpm in sport it's about 800. when you're in comfort or normal it lowers it so they're trying to give you a little bit of pre-boost here when you launch there is a dead spot in first gear all the way up to like 3 000 rpms it completely dials back power in first gear from a dead stop so you feel like this car is way slower than it really is but the thing is is when you start driving it in corners and you're driving it fast and not purely in a straight line you are absolutely flying in this so basically second gear up in corners this car can carry a lot more speed than some of its rear wheel drive competitors because it is so balanced and it can put down all of the available power so while it may not be a rocket ship in a straight line every single amount of horsepower and torque is put down to the wheels and managed properly so it's not a messy driving experience so for those who are looking at this car and you go take it out for a test drive and you put it in first gear and you mash the gas and you're like okay that's it it's auto up shifting and first gear at a lower rpm it doesn't really rev out that much you have to really push this in some corners and get it out where you can enjoy the chassis balance and all the tuning there the suspension kinematics for in this car are excellent it rides really really well the front end because this double wishbone will load up in corners again it will trail break which is rare in a this kind of sedan a more luxury based sedan but my problem with this car is the drive train and it's not even something that it isn't proficient like when you're going and you're on the highway and you're making a pass the available torque is excellent it makes good power and the numbers are pretty decent it is a fast car just if you're coming from prior generation honda type s cars things with the j series engine you're used to this sonorous noise yeah that doesn't exist in this and even when compared to the other drivetrains in this segment the b58 from bmw or the three liter turbocharged engine and the s4 both of those cars either rev out higher in the b-58s case or they have more of an emotional soundtrack like you get in the s4 then lastly the 10-speed automatic to me i was waiting to finally pass judgment on this gearbox until we got into this type s this is all the proof i need that honda should have just went with a zf i never feel like on a back road like this it's in the right gear you don't have enough rpm to work with and on a tight technical back road you're either too high up in second where it immediately up shifts or too low down in third gear i mean that's my problem with this gearbox on the highway it's great it's super smooth you know it doesn't have any real quirks but on this back road i don't feel like we're ever in the right gear so i will argue that point with you because now that i've driven this more there's a catch to all of this okay this is the best automatic transmission that honda's ever produced from a performance perspective aside from the nsx dual clutch yes and the deal with it is you cannot drive this in manual mode if you leave it in sport in sport plus the transmission and sport in sport plus it does everything for you it knows preemptively before you come into a corner to downshift it knows when to downshift in braking zones and it keeps the optimal gear better in automatic as soon as you try to manually control this thing it it falls to pieces yes it rev matches downshifts yes it's quick to respond but it will never allow you full manual control it will rarely let you set get in first gear unless you're at a dead stop and it auto up shifts way shorter redline in second gear oftentimes it will short shift or it won't go into second gear it just it's not tuned and they purposely seems like they purposely did this to maybe for longevity they do not want you manually controlling this so if you want the best experience you have to put in automatic and to me losing a manual transmission means that they need to put more effort from an enthusiast part in giving you a lot more manual engagement with the paddle shifters and that's that's the biggest problem i have with this car is not even the motor i can get over that in the modern turbocharged era it's it's not the ride quality because the ride quality is unbelievably good in here even in comfort it's like exactly the type of car you want to drive as a daily driver sport plus doesn't beat you up the body control is good the only road noise you hear is the typical honda pinging in the tires like there's it just they can't isolate that out but everything is at such a high level here i wish that they would just carve out that extra like i said 25 to give that true enthusiast a little bit more rawness in this experience and that's that's pretty much what not that's not what the type s is as like johnny german car of this channel i will admit this car at the price point that it's at at 53 000 is mind-blowing this is the clear value in this segment it offers 99.9 of what the s4 and the 3 series does for a fraction of the cost and lower running costs as well and if all you're doing is driving on the street on the highway which 99.9 of people are going to be doing and what you need is a good riding car that is plenty quick has a great audio system and doesn't beat you up this is the de facto choice i think i would agree mostly with that but let's get into the final thoughts jack and we'll talk about the pros and cons of this entire package final thoughts on the type s let's cover the pros and the cons there's a lot at 53 000 to start you're getting way more than the competitors are throwing at you when you get on the interior heated and cooled seats a good audio system an all-wheel drive with a true mechanical torque vectoring differential and that's rare everything's done electronically by break these days so the audio system that's something i didn't talk about during the interior traditionally when we tested on other acura products it's pretty neutral overall but the sound signature of this car favors bass and a lot more of it so if you're somebody that likes that you're gonna love this however to get it neutralized we had to lower the bass level by negative four and the dts setting we had to disable because it completely throws off uh the tonal balance of the car and throws off the sound stage completely i have the charts up here you can look at the harmonic distortion as you ramp that up it's a lot higher as well in terms of volume this is not like as isolated as what you get in like the mdx and it's not trying to be so it is what it is let's talk about the rest of it because the type s is not a true hardcore performance card there are trade-offs and we didn't quite get an answer from acura why they nerfed the transmission so much but this was their decision that they made so if you're driving in an automatic the logic is exceptional if you take over a manual like we talked about not so good when you start driving this fast on some corners that's where it really stands out from the competitors it is quite the experience and you have to spend a little bit more time in your test drive to really appreciate all the things that acura is doing here but i'm going to leave it at that in this point thanks for watching i'll see you next time you\n"