A Late Boomer and Friends Try Out the Acura ILX

I was born in the penultimate year of the baby-boom era, so I realize my impressions of the 2013 Acura ILX are not germane. This Acura is designed to appeal to hip faux-hawked and tattooed Gen Y-ers who have somehow managed to get themselves off the couch and out of the coffee shop long enough to amass the kind of wealth and income it takes to lay down roughly 30-large on a car. So when it came time to pair up for the ride-n-drive, I latched on to the youngest guy in the room — 22-year-old Joe Gustafson of Bullz-eye.com (full disclosure — Joe’s hair is normal, and no tattoos show, wearing normal clothes).
Right off the bat, Joe expressed reservations over the car’s pleasant but ho-hum exterior design. His generation likes to draw some attention with its wheels (and hairdos and body art, presumably), and this one didn’t seem to be drawing any. Not that it matters, but I’m right there with him on that assessment. The interior’s buttony center-stack and traditional forms didn’t move our gee-whiz meters much either — especially when rendered in monotone black. More manufacturers are taking risks with interior design, and cars aimed at youthful audiences are the canvasses on which to try such new things (see the 2013 Dodge Dart). This made us wonder if the youth-marketing target was baked in from the start or added on during the car’s roll-out.
We started out in the ILX Hybrid and were both disappointed in the way the Acura’s engine impersonated some far less happy mill, moaning under the whip. The only real hyper-miler coaching aid provided is a little green ball display between the gauges, whose diameter varies with pedal position — great big for good-boy coasting, a virtual pinpoint when at full moan. Even with the much-ballyhooed extra sound deadening and dual-rate amplitude-sensitive shocks, small inputs generated a loud report that may have tricked our ears into thinking the car rode rougher than it did. Our test car included the $5500 tech package (heated leather seats, a bunch of amenities, plus navigation and the ELS stereo), which brings the price to $35,295. That struck Joe as a total no-sale. Me too.