Mind you it has competitive power for its market at 225 hp and 231 lbs-ft of torque with a very flat curve. Cars like the Lexus GS300 have only 220 hp and 220 lbs-ft, with the basic Audi A6 possessing similar engine output figures. But the RL is saddled with an extremely heavy weight for a FWD car - nearly 3900 lbs. That's almost 250 lbs more than a GS300 for example, and it shows. Additionally, there is no top end verve in the old C-series engine.

Relatively benign power and excess weight become bigger issues when you don't have enough tranny ratios to play with. Because the RL uses the old C-series engine, it also uses the longitudinal layout dictated by that engine, and its old 4-speed automatic tranny. Now, the tranny shifts just fine while cruising, but ask it to help you make a move in traffic and it's rather lacking. Downshifts take a long time, and because the car wants to spend all its time in 4th gear for economy, it often finds itself having to make a downshift to 2nd gear which takes even longer. Leaving the car in D3 (which is still quite a tall gear) helps a lot. Manual shifting helps even more, but the tranny response is quite slow and a bit jerky in the U-shift-it mode and the gate is a copy of the old Mercedes staggered pattern with the occasional downward push required - it doesn't make life easy.

During performance testing we found that the RL didn't really seem to care how it was shifted. It repeatedly clicked off 0-60 runs in the 8.1-8.2 second range all day long. Brake torquing didn't help at all either (it rarely does with Honda automatic transmissions). Now, 8.2 seconds isn't _that_ slow taken without reference points. But when every Honda Pilot, Odyssey and Acura MDX made in recent history can pull away from the RL (with the same size engine no less and more weight!), there is something horribly wrong. In fact, the only Honda or Acura automobiles that won't pull away from the RL are the Hybrids, D-series Civics and perhaps automatic AWD Elements and CRVs. Every Accord made will show its taillights to the RL, even the automatic K24s.

So, what to do with the RL? To be honest, even 5 years ago it was a pretty good car and it still has some very competitive features today. I think, were it more aggressively marketed and updated a little more frequently, that Acura could have sold a lot more of them. But next to the competition, and even its Honda and Acura descendants, it simply doesn't add up anymore. Its styling is two generations old, its powertrain is weak and its chassis just doesn't do everything as well as people expect from this class these days. Yes, it has a top notch interior and a good feature set - Acura would do well to use this interior as a baseline for the new RL, but when you look at its pricing of $45k next to cars like the Lexus GS ($39-$44k) that interior simply isn't enough. Honda and Acura have often gotten away with a little less on the luxury side because of a better value, but with the RL that argument isn't there either.

My recommendation to Acura is this - remember what you did well with the RL and build on it, but never forget that you can't let a car wither away like this either. It's bad for the model and it's bad for the brand. We've talked about a new focus and direction at Acura for the last couple years, and it looks to be continuing with the upcoming RL - but the lifecycle decisions made with the RL (and to a lesser extent the Integra and NSX) must not be allowed to happen again.