Whether you want to call it a delusion of grandeur or pulling one over on the man, there’s something immensely appealing in the thought of buying a heavily depreciated flagship luxury sedan. After all, you’ve worked bloody hard, so why not get yourself something nice as a reward? However, flagship luxury sedans usually come with problems. They’re often too complex for their own good, made worse by how they eventually end up owned by people who couldn’t give a hoot about maintenance. The Acura RL SH-AWD is a bit different.
This four-doored sanctuary is a case of the Honda Motor Company doing what it knows best, and thanks to the magic of depreciation, can now be had for genuinely sensible used car money. Best of all, it’s a flagship luxury sedan that’s unlikely to let you down, provided you stick to its factory maintenance schedule, it’s less obvious than a Lexus LS, and it comes with a killer all-wheel-drive system. Daily driver duty? Bring it on.
Welcome back to Beige Cars You’re Sleeping On, a weekly series in which we raise the profile of some quiet greats. We’re talking vehicles that are secretly awesome, but go unsung because of either a boring image or the lack of an image altogether.
Pulling on the door handle unlocks an artfully designed wood-clad cabin with a waterfall-style center stack being the absolute centerpiece. Even today, this is a great looking interior, and one that holds up rather well thanks to Acura’s focus on quality. Speaking of the cabin, it’s hard not to mention the sheer number of toys on offer here. We’re talking about navigation, a 10-speaker Bose stereo, an electric rear roller blind, a power-adjustable steering column, GPS-linked solar-sensing automatic climate control, active noise cancellation, and a proximity key system, the RL still feels luxurious in today’s era of gadget bloat. However, the big gadget is something that lies beneath the skin.
The party piece of Super Handling All-Wheel-Drive was and still is a fancy torque vectoring rear differential. In the Acura RL, a set of electronically controlled clutch packs paired with a planetary gearset could overdrive the outside rear wheel when accelerating out of a corner by sending up to 100 percent of rear axle torque to one wheel. However, that wasn’t the system’s only party piece. In fact, cross-axle torque split could also be varied on deceleration to ensure cornering stability, and up to 70 percent of the engine’s torque could be sent to either the front or the rear axle. The result was a two-ton transverse-engined all-wheel-drive sedan that didn’t handle like a two-ton transverse-engined all-wheel-drive sedan. As Car And Driver found out, it’s actually a fun system to play with.
Our 0.87-g skidpad performance reveals a system working miracles to keep 4030 front-heavy pounds aimed in the right direction, especially on the RL’s standard 17-inch wheels and 245/50 Michelin all-season tires–pretty tame shoes by today’s standards (an 18-inch wheel and summer-tire package will be sold by dealers). Out on the road, the RL glides through bends without a trace of plow, the steering wheel a taut linkage that is lightly weighted but alive with information. The more stupid the corner speed, the more the system shows its stuff. Stomp the gas, and the back end starts pushing, the rear rotating, the smiles widening. It’s not silly oversteer–it’s Super-Handling!
While fine details may have changed in newer SH-AWD systems since, Acura is still using this torque vectoring tech to make the vast majority of its vehicles more engaging. Speaking of engaging, there’s also lots of highbrow stuff going on beneath the Acura RL. Aluminum front and rear subframes cut weight, while double wishbone front suspension allows for better camber curves throughout travel than a MacPherson strut setup. While we’re looking at the front axle, aluminum monoblock four-piston fixed brake calipers clamp onto beefy 12.6-inch front discs, providing ample stopping power. Nice.
As for propulsion, these RLs started out with a 3.5-liter J35A8 V6 making 300 or 290 horsepower depending on whether we’re looking at a 2005 model year or a 2006 to 2008 model year car. The only difference? Revised testing procedure for how horsepower was calculated. Yes, this J35 V6 will require timing belt replacement and valve adjustment at some point, but so long as you stick to the recommended maintenance schedule, it won’t leave you high and dry with unexpected problems like you may find in the German competition. Remember, BMW’s N62 V8 eats valve stem seals, early Mercedes-Benz M272 V6s had balance shaft gear problems, and the 3.2-liter FSI V6 in the Audi A6 of the time can occasionally eat timing chain guides.
For 2009, the Acura RL got an engine upgrade in the form of a 3.7-liter J37A2 V6 making, well, 300 horsepower. Sure, a gain of 10 horsepower doesn’t sound massively impressive, but an extra 15 lb.-ft. of torque and the addition of VTEC on the exhaust valves proved more useful in the real world. Speaking of useful upgrades, bigger anti-roll bars and faster paddle shifter response enhanced the drive, while the addition of cooled front seats and deletion of the pesky Michelin PAX tire option made ownership a bit more pleasurable. However, the facelift came with controversy.
Around the turn of the 2010s, Acura was taking a big styling risk with something it called the “Power Plenum” grille. It looked a bit like a vegetable-slicing implement, and drew vitriol on everything it came on. Of the 2009 Acura TL, Automobile wrote “not even a mother could love this car’s face.” Perhaps this odd facelift was part of the reason why the 2009 RL wasn’t exactly a best-seller, with just 2,043 sold that year, less than half as many as in 2008.
For 2011, the beak was revised, but the big story was the addition of a six-speed automatic transmission that replaced the old five-speed. Not only did this deliver a handy fuel economy boost, it added a sizeable dose of modernity. However, it’s not the coolest thing about the 2011 RL — that would be the set of noise-reducing wheels, with a polypropylene Helmholtz resonator in each unit targeting resonance between 100 and 500 hertz. Acura claimed these wheels helped contribute to a 1.3 dB decrease in cabin noise, and since decibels sit on a logarithmic scale, that’s significant. If you can get around the styling, the 2011 to 2012 models really were the best of the breed.
So, if you want a slice of flagship life that won’t make you car poor, how much outlay are we talking? Well, it varies considerably based on model year and mileage, but it all works out to be fairly reasonable. If you’re cool with a relatively early car, here’s a 2006 model with 90,412 miles on the clock up for sale in Florida for $7,882. Sure, the headlights could use a polish, but this is a lot of car for less than $8,000.
If you want a nice low-mileage 2012 model, the last of the breed, here’s one with 86,015 miles on the clock up for sale in Salt Lake City for $16,995. That’s pretty much the top of the market, and it’s still less expensive than a gently used Honda Civic. Except it’s not a sensible economy car, it’s a flagship luxury sedan.
So, if you want a winter-ready depreciated slice of the good life but find that unexpected repair bills aren’t your sort of surprise, why not take a good look at an Acura RL? Smooth, punchy, traction-abundant, and well-appointed, it’s a left-field luxury pick with a promise of rock-solid dependability.
(Photo credits: Acura, AutoTrader sellers)
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