How bout Lexus LC? Thank you for doing this. These magazines are never in bookstores and you can't access it online even if you pay to subscribe.. I've tried.

 

We’re talking today, not 20+ years ago.

Point is they’re very similar, not worth the trade off in quality and features when there isn’t any additional reliability there.

You can access CR data if you subscribe.

They won’t have LC data, not enough units.

 

remember their 'reliability' data is only from subscribers who bother to fill out the surveys. i'd be surprised if they got more than 5 back on the LC

but i'm sure the pre-'24 infotainment would be deemds not 'reliable' because it uses the track pad.

CR stats are basically worthless in the modern age. just look up youtube videos for cars with however many miles you're looking for.

 

I wouldn’t say they are useless, any data is helpful. I just wouldn’t use them as your only decision making data point

 

Oh I'd love to try one. They're in lots of cars.

 

I just want to make sure the first year is okay bc we may end up with a 2018.. Lexus is historically mostly fine with that.

 

How is it that Honda manages to make the transmission in the Acura so problematic when compared to the Honda Accord?

 

I can't recall a time over the last 20 years or so that I haven't had at least one car with a ZF transmission. Absolutely the gold standard IMO.

 

It maybe reasonable to put this on the SH-AWD system the Acura uses, wheras the Accord I think was always FWD only. So they may not share the same transmission.

 

Because people who can afford the better cars are more demanding, something that would go unnoticed by the typical Honda buyer may be very quickly detected as annoying by an Acura buyer.

That's another reason I don't really out much stock in these reports since standards of buyers are so diverse

 

i know this is pretty much the truth, however the first and only ZF transmission equipped car that i've done major seat time in was the 2016 MDX with that shoddy 9-speed so my personal opinion is pretty much the opposite lol

however since then i've driven my friend's 2019 540i with the 8-speed and THAT is a wonderful device... i guess it's a case of longitudinal applications = good, and transverse applications = bad

 

so you don’t put much stock in them because of an assumption (possibly a wrong one) that YOU have made. I’ll take an aggregate over a single all day everyday. Besides, these are problems under TRANSMISSION MAJOR which can’t be ignored.

 

The 1st gen V6* TLX had the 9-speed ZF, which was not a great performer for any brand. But Honda/Acura did a particularly horrific job with the shift logic, moreso than other manufacturers. If you've ever driven one, it just feels "broken" all the time because it is literally never in the right gear and takes forever to find the next one. I don't believe it's actually unreliable, just terrible to live with. To make matters worse, the 2015 TLX was the first vehicle they put it in, so it didn't even benefit from some of the later refinement that made it less awful. By contrast, the Accord of that era had Honda's ancient and very reliable 6-speed auto.

The 2nd gen TLX and 10th gen Accord both have Honda's 10-speed auto, which thus far has proven to be solid AND a good performer.

*The 4-cylinder TLX actually had an 8-speed DCT which I don't know a lot about, but DCTs do have a tendency to be rougher than torque-converted automatics, so that may have contributed to these models' "unreliability" also.

 

haha yes that's right, the 9 speed wasn't their finest moment by all accounts. I've never had a car with that particular ZF so have never driven it, but the 8 speeds I've had have all been excellent.

 

Think about it this way....a hesitant cold shift from 2-3 would be ignored by most but a guy who bought a "performance" spec Acura would constantly notice and complain to the dealer that something is wrong. A soccer mom doesn't even know how many gears the car has and since it move around and feels like a normal car she will never complain

Even for my own cars I hold them to various standards, I don't expect the same behavior or level of performance out of all of them. An "issue" on one of the nice ones that would lead me to replace the whole subsystem to return to the factory feeling would be outright ignored on other cars.