2015 Acura TLX – A sports car in sedan clothing

The 2015 Acura TLX has a secret lying just under the hood and it becomes extremely apparent when you put the petal down in Sport+ mode; this thing is a beast, a sports car in sedan clothing.

The TLX is a $45,595 4-door with an intelligent all-wheel drive (AWD) system and adjustable sprotyness through the Integrated Dynamic System (IDS) and plenty of room for your needs, whether they be child- or adult-sized.

The front seats are both heated and cooled, have power seats (10-way for the driver, including lumbar support, and 8-way for the passenger, but doesn’t have lumbar controls). The safety features include airbags for the knees, airbags in the vents, side curtain bags that deploy in case of a rollover and a radar-assisted breaking system.

Safety is key in this car, but so is the engine’s sporty performance and ensuring a comfortable driving environment.

The direct injection 3.5L VTEC V6 engine puts out 290hp and has variable cylinder management that will decrease the number of firing cylinders depending on driving conditions, such as fewer cylinders for highway and more for track time.

While I’m not to keen on push-button shifters, Acura makes up for that with responsive flappy paddle shifting with the dual-clutch transmission and their IDS (Integrated Dynamic System) options to differ engine responses depending on driving. There are four modes: Eco, Drive, Sport and Sport+.

Sport+ is the best. No, seriously.

I had heard of a local car meet that drives some backroads of the Puget Sound area and decided to take this car there. During the driver’s meeting, participants had the option to split into three groups; cruisers, normal and spirited drivers.

On a whim, I chose spirited and the Acura TLX kept up with the likes of Corvettes, Lotus’, and Porsche’s. On a track they would have toasted me, but on the backroads there was no getting away from the TLX.

The soundtrack wasn’t as earsplitting loud as the other engines around me, which is a great thing. While they can’t ‘turn off’ their engine noise, when a driver is done being sporty in the TLX it goes back to a tame, eco-friendly (ish), kid-carrier.

Ready, at a push-button’s moment, to tear into the world via flappy paddle fun.