Gadgetory

it was the original high-tech car first one I ever did a video on it was a real badass in 2005 but has the state of the art passed it by let's drive the 2011 Acura RL and check the tech you're real unlikely to pull up alongside an RL today or any day the RL is a slow seller only about 2,000 copies a year most car companies pull the plug on a car that sells that few if it's less than a hundred grand in fact everything in its class out sells the RL buy a lot but that doesn't make it a bad car maybe just an exclusive one okay here you can see the biggest problem with the RL I think in the marketplace if you spotted it it prints too small it kind of prints fancy accord which in a way it is but it's a very nice car with some very elegant understated lines but it doesn't sufficiently shout I make more money than you do its competitors tend to do that here's your LCD well set back in a little well in the dash although it's not set back far enough to battle glare all that well which it does succumb to quite a bit but that isn't my biggest gripe my biggest gripe is it hasn't changed in an eon this is the same crappy looking map they've had on Acuras and Honda's good grief since what Carter was in office the typeface is a disaster it's kind of Jaggi sometimes it overlaps black type on a black street so you get this mishmash in some places making things hard to read and no matter where you go in this interface it's just going to play school and Jaggi I mean look at these lines I do better with a blue pencil so I'm very disappointed by this this speaks to an inexpensive car and it's sitting in their flagship vehicle and they've had this thing in this car for ever the screen is fairly far away so of course you wouldn't expect to touch it and it's not a touch mean they don't do that on these Honda Acura rigs you've got this controller which is it's quite good you roll around this kind of proprietary sort of hemispherical interface click on what you want go through the usual rigmarole of city state and all that piece by piece by piece you can also use voice command which can be good or not so good depending on what operation you're trying to play out address address I beg of you address you do have traffic and weather information this guy coming in through XM satellite radio great out on our car because it says these subscriptions expired not sure what that's all about because we do have XM radio working but it is a separate sub for the data feeds that's a good lesson to take away from this here's disc a tox is the most interesting one you've got a cd/dvd player it's a six slot right in here iPod USB you can put a USB stick or an iPod in there obviously that's down here on this little pigtail that goes into this jack in the console you've also got your standard mini jack aux in there bluetooth streaming audio as well as Bluetooth hands-free calling of course phonebook import as well AM and FM does not include HD radio by the way and as I mentioned XM is our satellite radio now your sound settings show you've got a pretty sophisticated Bose rig here the usual bass treble fader balance but you've also got a sub control audio pilot is automatic active noise cancellation it picks up certain harsh sounds in the car cancels those out with competing sine waves that are the opposite if you will and Center Point is a staging technology to put the center of the sound especially with multi-channel stuff in the right place and the oddest thing tied to GPS is this car was the first and may still be the only with GPS linked climate control so it'll know where the Sun is they tell us and adjust the air-conditioning so it's colder on the side of the car that's getting the Sun on it but I don't know that it knows what the cloud conditions are since GPS won't tell you that so I don't know how that works scrolling your iPod is pokey rotate that knob beyond a crawl down your song list and you can easily outrun the interface missing our technologies like lane-departure night-vision front bumper cams all available in this car is sold overseas as the Honda legend but not on the u.s. spec RL now this hmm is not just annoying it's actually what's called a Helmholtz resonator when you do that dumb thing with a bottle a skier I took that technology and built it into their wheels now here's the reason alleles a complicated little noisemaker you've got all these veins and facets spinning through the air at constantly variable rpm it's very hard to predict then that entire assembly is moving through the air in a line as you drive so a whole bunch of busyness comes here that creates noise in the cabin so they built in they say some kind of a resonator like when you blow over a bottle inside there I can't see it but on trust them that cancels out a lot of that noise up front this guy has got a now 3.7 liter v6 and Honda does great v6 s happy willing smooth will get on the road in a minute 300 horsepower coming out of this boy 271 foot-pounds of torque gets his car up to 60 in six seconds flat while delivering pretty good 17:24 MPG the power goes out now through a six-speed automatic up until this year they had a 5-speed automatic that was more suited to a tractor I mean everyone else is on seven and eight cogs now but at least they've now got six and what comes out of that gearbox goes in every RL to super handling all-wheel drive it's standard not an option not a package the first thing I notice when I get into an RL is it's very quiet smooth I mean I'm kind of pushing it hard up a hill here and there's no intrusion of motor noise and harshness all those anti noise technologies I've told you about Plus lots of good old deadening and isolation make for a very serene spot so the RL does in its powertrain in particular is have a readiness that a lot of cars don't have some cars and great piki they do certain things really well in terms of delivering power but they're not always ready to go in any situation this car tends to bias in that direction which makes for a more livable everyday car to me take this turn and put some power to it you can really feel it push the rear end out I think that's AK torque vectoring stuff doing its thing in the back there's some little display I could look at here but look at the road instead little drummy over the really harsh pavement in a way that a car in this price class probably shouldn't be especially one that doesn't have enormous sporting pretensions but it's a very confidence-inspiring car that has ample power and know nothing about it is out of class this patch of gravel in an acute corner at speed is a really good example of super handling all-wheel drive just head in under power steering or Mele don't freak the drivetrain makes it all work out where a lot of other cars would get real dramatic and in elegance okay let's price a 2011 RL bass is 48,000 or so but you're not gonna pay that no I'm not a car dealer because you need some technology in here and that doesn't include navigation for example and as rough as it is you want to get it factory you don't want to go aftermarket on this guy that dashboards not friendly for that so 4154 the tech package that's the nav rig as much as I'm here about it adaptive front steerable headlights you also get heated and cooled front seats and the rear parking sensors the rear view camera kind of pricey for what you get but that's how you get it then there's the advance package which gets you really two things adaptive cruise control and collision mitigation braking system which are basically the same thing in two different modes and for some reason they roll in the power folding side mirrors in that package too