sandiegan

I generally do not either, but I find the facelifted 3-series to be far better looking than the car that originally bowed in 2006

urbanglowcam

I agree. They stand out so much to me (in a good way). At least someone's trying something different.

ionlylive

not surprised

curiouz_G

i wouldve swapped 2nd and 1st place around.

XtC-604

[QUOTE=ZDan,May 27 2009, 11:30 AM] Yeah, I did read, I know the Acura was AWD.

ZDan

I like them fine. Neither of them pretends to be a serious sport sedan, they are both econo-car-based awd turbo funmobiles. But I'd greatly prefer there to be a rear-wheel drive car in that segment with closer to 50/50 weight distribution. I'd probably actually buy one of those. Here's to the coming (hopefully) Toyobaru...

I totally agree that the end result, how it all works, is the most important thing. Where the engine is placed has a pretty big impact on the car's front/rear weight distribution and polar moment of inertia. Having the engine entirely in front of the front wheel centerline, which manufacturers pretty much have to do for fwd cars in order to keep a reasonable amount of load on the drive wheels while accelerating, is NOT the ideal placement for overall car balance or responsive handling. That's what I'm calling a fwd layout. Porsches do have what I would call a rwd layout, but so do front-engine awd BMW's.

AWD cars that have the engine mounted typical FWD-style suffer from this. The Audi actually has a north-south engine layout that is only *mostly* slung out in front of frontwheel centerline, and manages to achieve 54.9/45.1 front/rear split. The Acura is typical transverse fwd layout, and has a f/r split of 59.4/40.6. AWFUL (to me, anyway). Meanwhile the rwd (which is my preference anyway) G37 and the BMW have 53.6/46.4 and 50/50 f/r splits respectively.

Another pet peeve of mine is excessive weight, and the Acura weighs 3975 lb.!

A few of the values that attract me to the S2000 and my other car, a 1971 240Z:
* relatively light weight (or at least not obscenely overweight)
* excellent front/rear balance (both ~49F/51R with driver and half tank of gas)
* responsive handling

These are also qualities that I want in a sports sedan.

The Acura TL seems to have been designed expressly to NOT have these qualities!

I don't understand how anyone who fully appreciates the S2000 would have any kind of warm fuzzy feelings for this pig of an Acura TL, even with SH-AWD. "Super Handling All Wheel Drive"? Yeah, right...

Ultimately, maybe they will be able to make "pigs fly" via continuously variable l/r braking distribution and other gimmickry, but I'll STILL prefer cars that are actually lighter-weight and better-balanced. This Acura emphatically ISN'T.

Much as I hate to agree with Car and Drivel, my order of preference is the same as theirs. BMW first, followed not-terribly-closely by the G37, with the Audi a good long distance back from the G, and the Acura somwhere over the horizon behind the Audi.