Acura Integra A-Spec Tech
Any well-dressed car under $40,000 feels like a bargain these days, and the tasty new 2023 Integra especially so. Honda says 65% of Integra buyers are ordering the 6-speed manual transmission.
Honda/Acura has always been a master of Feng shui ergonomics, somehow placing airy and spacious large-car cabins into small cars. In addition to a long, long list of features, our sample A-Spec Integra Tech also came with the red-leather Parisian Bordello interior.
Any well-dressed car under $40,000 feels like a bargain these days, and the tasty new 2023 Integra especially so. Honda says 65% of Integra buyers are ordering the 6-speed manual transmission.
Honda/Acura has always been a master of Feng shui ergonomics, somehow placing airy and spacious large-car cabins into small cars. In addition to a long, long list of features, our sample A-Spec Integra Tech also came with the red-leather Parisian Bordello interior.
To help re-boot its sedan business, which industry-wide has been submerged by a tsunami of SUV sales, Acura reached into its archive for a storied badge: Integra, which in the late 1980s was as revered by Gen X as the Acura Legend was by us, their Boomer parents.
(The Legend, if I remember right, was the first Acura—Acura being Honda’s upscale brand, like Genesis is to Hyundai, Lexus to Toyota, Infiniti to Nissan, etc.)
This Integra, a 2023 model, is a new car that replaces the ILX, a small Acura sedan that never sold as well as it should have. The marketplace will eventually decide this car’s fate too, but if I get a vote, it’ll be a thumbs-up. Especially for this one; presumably it will be followed someday by a higher-performance Type S, but this A-Spec version is here now, and quite tasty already.
Up front (and driving the front wheels) is a 4-cylinder turbocharged engine that displaces just 1.5 liters—about 92 cubic inches—but produces 200 horsepower and 36 highway miles per gallon of gas. That’s efficiency. Also fun, as this is the first car with a clutch pedal that I’ve seen in eons. (I sat in the driveway wondering why it wouldn’t start until I realized there was a clutch pedal that had to be depressed before the ignition would catch.)
A continuously variable automatic transmission is standard, but the stick shift and clutch—part of the Tech Package, which also includes an adaptive suspension and different driving modes, and is available only on the Integra A-Spec—perfectly suit the car’s nature. It turns in eagerly, stays flat in corners, stops hard and progressively, and tangos like a willing partner.
Another way to say it: With 192 pound-feet of torque, the Integra isn’t especially quick off the line, but if we do our bit—balancing engine revs with the throttle and clutch and feeding smooth, positive energy into steering and braking—the A-Spec rewards us handsomely.
What more can we ask for? Well, how about comfort, active and passive safety features, and digital technology and connectivity? All are here in satisfying quantity. Just ask Alexa, who is on board.
The base price of an Integra is $31,895; the A-Spec variant starts at $33,895 and, with the Tech Package, Liquid Carbon paint ($500) and shipping ($1,095), our sample tops out at $37,395. According to Kelley Blue Book, the average price paid for a new car in the US in July reached a whopping $48,182. This makes the new Integra, even fully optioned up, an amazingly good deal. In addition, Acura now throws in maintenance for the first two years, or 24,000 miles and the warranties extend to four years/50,000 miles on the vehicle and six years/70,000 miles for the powertrain.
