Acura dealers embrace upmarket move

Acura dealers have been waiting for several years for Honda's premium brand to remake its aging lineup to better compete with fresher rivals. The new year brings it two steps closer, with new generations of the TLX midsize sedan and MDX midsize crossover.

With hopes that the coronavirus will begin to fade in 2021, Acura is accelerating its rebirth around the tag line of Precision Crafted Performance. It's also reviving Type S performance variants to take on the sporty trims offered by German and Asian competitors.

Acura dealers are ready, said John Connelly, chairman of the Acura National Dealer Advisory Board and owner of Acura Columbus in Dublin, Ohio — even with the inevitable jump in sticker prices that comes with developing better-performing, more luxurious vehicles with the newest technology.

"Acura wants to be in the same conversation with the Lexus buyers and the Mercedes buyers and the Audi buyers, so there's no sticker shock with those buyers," Connelly told Automotive News.

"If you bought a TLX a few years ago, you can see this as a bump. But what we're looking for is new customers — trying to grow our base and sales."

The new-generation TLX hit dealership lots late last year as a 2021 model, and the MDX is arriving in showrooms this month as a 2022. The Type S models for both will come later this year. The RDX compact crossover was redesigned for the 2019 model year.

As Acura dealers await a redesigned compact sedan to replace the aging ILX, dealers are also lobbying the brand to add more crossovers to its current core lineup of two cars and two crossovers.

"Acura has so much equity in their SUVs that it would make complete sense to have both a crossover that would slot below the RDX and slot above the MDX," Connelly said. "I think there is plenty of room there for that."