Car Auto Magazine

Sporty new Type-S broadens line of near-luxury sedans.
Interior Designing
In keeping with Acura's heritage of functional Japanese efficiency, the TL's interior emphasizes practicality and useful features rather than sumptuous luxury. At the same time, a sure sense of graceful design and the use of impeccable materials make the TL's cabin appealing.

The TL's interior has a clean, spare look, and its open, uncluttered feel makes this a relaxing place to spend your travel time. Leather upholstery is standard, and it meets a high standard of quality, though it's a little firm and cold. The interior of the standard TL mixes leather, aluminum brightwork and wood trim in an effectively sophisticated presentation, while the TL S-type incorporates carbon fiber in place of wood.

Acura puts a lot of emphasis on human-factor engineering, and the TL's interior has a special goodness as a result. The driving position gives you a commanding view, with the extraordinary panoramic visibility that is the hallmark of Honda engineering. The thick rim of the tilt/telescope-adjustable steering wheel fills your hand, while the switch gear is easy to find and simple to understand. Anyone can take the driving position in the TL and feel immediately at home.

An eight-way power-adjustable driver's seat is standard, as is a four-way power-adjustable passenger seat. The configuration of the front seats is inspired by the best high-performance designs, with supportive hip bolsters and an elaborately shaped seat back that supports your back and shoulders without being constrictive, plus new high-damping foam cushions. The rear seat is comfortable, although it's clear that Acura has provided a fairly short seat squab as a means of getting a lengthy measurement of legroom.

The instrument binnacle is protected from glare by a pronounced hood over three instrument pods, and the back-lit LED read-outs against new spun-metal faces are easy to see. The instruments of the standard TL use blue ambient lighting, while those of the S-Type feature red light.

Aside from instrument lighting, the S-Type's interior is detailed with lots of high-performance cues. These include carbon-fiber appearance rim, more prominent and supportive seat bolsters, stainless-steel pedal covers, and color-contrast stitching for the leather upholstery of the steering wheel, seats, and door panels.

The Acura TL's sophisticated ergonomics enable you to take advantage of its equally sophisticated electronic convenience features without confusion. The center stack between the two front seats uses switches, knobs and electronic buttons for the ventilation, audio and navigations systems in a way that prevents a nightmare of electronic confusion.

Topmost in the center stack is the LCD screen that displays the climate control and audio settings as well as the optional navigation system. With the navigation system comes a line of PDA-like buttons and a central, cursor-style controller arrayed beneath the screen. Bracketing the screen are perpendicular rows of large, finger-friendly buttons for setting climate preferences for the dual-zone air-conditioning system. It's also simple to adjust the interior temperature or change the force of the ventilation fan because the climate control can be operated by physical buttons instead of just the touch-screen inputs.

Acura continues to offer the most user-friendly on-board navigation system that we've ever experienced. It's easy to program and it gives clear and accurate descriptions both visibly and audibly. The large LCD display uses attractive, easy-to-understand graphics, and the combination of context-sensitive screen menus and external hard buttons simplifies operation. Still, you have to call up a screen menu to change radio stations. The voice-recognition system can recognize nearly 300 verbal commands, including adjustments to the audio and climate controls, and the DVD-based navigation system offers a selection of more than 7 million points of interest across the country. The navigation system supports Acura's real-time traffic reporting feature, which provides the latest traffic reports from 44 cities across the nation. This system works exceptionally well, highlighting jammed roads in red, fast traffic in green.

The audio system that comes standard includes everything you want in a premium setup, including a 225-watt amplifier, eight speakers, a six-disc CD changer, a cassette tape player, iPod capability and an AM/FM tuner that is set up to receive XM satellite radio. Most important is the system's DVD-audio capability integrated with ELS 5.1 surround sound. DVD audio incorporates more than 500 times more audio information than a standard CD, and effectively delivers six-channel sound instead of conventional two-channel audio. We found the sound to be breathtakingly rich, not just loud. Acura has also specially engineered the TL with thicker glass and substantial acoustic insulation to help you get a home-quality audio experience in an automotive environment.

Bluetooth technology is built right into the TL. In fact, the Acura TL was the first car to incorporate a telephone with Bluetooth-enabled, cell-phone compatibility. The system offers a hands-free, wireless telephone interface to reduce distraction. Acura has long been the leading automotive innovator with Bluetooth. For 2007, it can integrate the user's mobile phone book, which provides an alternate to the voice recognition system.

Interior storage is abundant. There are slim storage slots integrated into the back of the front seats as well as map pockets mounted in the front doors, although don't hold as much as you'd expect. The center console is a deep, bi-level affair, with a power point in the lower level and a notch in the upper tray to accommodate a cell phone cord.

Trunk space is just 12.5 cubic feet, and the opening is somewhat small, further limiting the size of parcels it will accept.