Short Take Road Test
It's tricky updating a car that's fine as is. A car we've called "a scalpel for carving up the road" and "a jewel...uncorrupted by froufrou" ["Four Wedges & a Bubble," C/D, May 2002]. A car that was the decisive winner in the wedges-and-bubble battle, and also a 10Best choice in 2002 and 2003.
Clearly, the RSX team had something that wasn't broken. But with three years in its logbook, the RSX wasn't new anymore. And since new is the essence of the car biz, they fixed it anyway, a midterm update that can't be called a major makeover but is too comprehensive to be called a mere freshening. Sure, it includes the kind of minor tweaks common to most updates-the industry equivalent of plastic surgery, nips and tucks aimed at preserving youth. Examples: A rear wing has sprouted from the decklid of the Type-S model, the front fascia has been honed to a sharper edge, the headlights are new, the visible portions of the front and rear underbody are wider, there are new side sills, and the static ride height has been dropped 0.3 inch-all of which makes the car look lower, wider, and more aggressive.
All the foregoing, plus some interior touch-ups, is classifiable as cosmetic. But the bill of fare also includes a number of updates in the realm of function. For example, the platform guys went through the body shell and made some selective stiffening; the front spring rates are 10 percent higher; there's a little more negative camber front and rear; the rack-and-pinion steering ratio is a smidge quicker; and adjustments were made to improve steering feel.
The Type-S also gets a little more rubber-215/45R-17 Michelin HX MXM4s on 7.0-by-17-inch aluminum wheels versus the 205/55R-16s on 6.5-by-16-inch alloys previously employed. And the all-disc brake system has had updates to improve pedal feel. Bigger footprints, augmented by wider wheels and suspension tweaks, ought to add up to more grip, better transient response, and better stopping. And they do, although not, shall we say, dramatically.
More on that in a minute. First, let's peek under the hood: reprofiled cams, an intake pipe with an 11-percent-wider diameter, and a larger tailpipe and freer-flowing catalytic converter that increase exhaust flow by 10 percent. Result: Horsepower goes from 200 to 210, and torque is up one pound-foot, to 143. That's not enough to make a discernible difference on its own, but the engineers also dropped the final-drive ratio a bit, to make the RSX a little quicker.
The payoff? Acura claims the revised RSX delivers performance favorably comparable with that of "European sports cars." We have to wonder just which European sports cars the press materials are referring to, since the RSX operates in a class composed of small, $25,000 front-drive sports coupes.
Still, the tweaks do add up to measurable results. The '05 Type-S sprints to 60 mph in 6.2 seconds versus 6.3 for our '02 comparo car, and it covers the quarter-mile in 14.9 seconds at 95 mph versus 15.0 at 94. These are respectable numbers, but we frankly expected them to be a little more respectable. Could an increase in curb weight of 68 pounds-attributable to body-shell stiffening and added sound damping-retard forward progress? It could.
The numbers are a little more decisive in the area of chassis dynamics. Our '02 test car pulled a ho-hum 0.83 g on the skidpad and required 196 feet to stop from 70 mph, the worst in that test. The '05 version improves skidpad performance to 0.86 g and reduces the braking distance by 15 feet, although 181 feet is still far from exemplary. On the subjective front, steering response and feel are distinctly improved, and the updated car attacks corners with more zeal and perhaps a little less body roll.
The RSX still won't let you forget it's a front-driver. Its defining trait continues to be understeer. As with the original, a limited-slip diff would mitigate this and also enhance corner exits, probably more than the sum of all the chassis changes.
But that's a track day sort of footnote. For all-around use-an "everyday sports car," as Acura calls it-the RSX is tough to top. It's quiet, comfortable, handsomely finished, good to look at, fast enough to dissect traffic, agile enough to be entertaining on your favorite stretch of back road. The Type-S was already top dog in its class. The improved version puts it even further ahead of the pack.
