Gadgetory

for a century luxury automakers have been putting big engines in their cars and natural materials like wood metal and leather in the cabins but now there's this idea that city dwellers want a smaller luxury car Acura's answer to this question is the 2016 ILX now this is the smallest car wearing an acura badge and it's based on the Civic Platform and that's not a bad thing it's got a relatively small engine and instead of old-growth timber and hand of fur in the cabin acura tries to make this a premium or luxury car with high-tech features for example acura fits the ILX with these LED headlights that's a standard feature not an option it's not something you really see in the compact segment the cabin of this acura ILX feels kind of like a high trim standard car rather than a luxury car premium car we do have soft touch materials on the dashboard this is nice metallic trim here no wood of course and the suede seats here in the console here I've got the 8-speed dual-clutch automated manual transmission now that's one at a high-tech feature that puts us in that premium category I've got my standard Park reverse neutral Drive and a sport mode plus I've got paddles on the steering wheel here that will get how that works in a minute I've got my infotainment Center in the dashboard here or here or well I've got two screens and a set of buttons a very confusing system so I push one of these buttons down here does it do anything to this screen it does something to this screen up here these buttons control this screen touchscreen is in the middle of it all and has no relation to any of these things another example of bad design here I'm looking at my audio control screen here I've got satellite radio up right now I can choose different stations that's cool I pushed this audio button here and I get another screen for my audio sources my audio control up here which I can control with this so which one do I use and they're totally different formats to which it's just I mean that's just bad design I've got a decent navigation system here hard drive based so the maps load pretty quickly a live traffic and little route around traffic dam so that's good a hands-free phone system that's hooked up to my phone through bluetooth audio sources I can choose from this screen here or this screen here HD FM I've got a hard disk which I can store music on a USB port for iOS devices and drives Bluetooth audio Pandora and aha for right app connectivity another example on the instrument cluster here I've got to display and I've got a green label that says lkas that sends for lane-keeping assistant systems that's one of the high-tech features of this car so it's green that should tell me it's on but I actually have to push this button on the steering wheel it lights up these little Lane lines on the display and that actually means it's on that I have a button on the left side down here that's the road departure mitigation system it's a different system but kind of similar and so these buttons are all over the place with different labels I'd really have to read the manual to understand how to work this at all out of the hood we have a 2.4 liter 4-cylinder engine that's driving the front wheels this engine has direct injection which is a nice modern piece of efficiency technology but we only get 201 horsepower 180 pound feet of torque out of this engine sand that hugely powerful fuel economy comes in about 25 miles per gallon city 35 miles per gallon highway average is gonna be about 30 miles per gallon not bad now there's no idle stop feature on this car and that might save some fuel the suspension here is pretty comfortable accurate does a good job with that it's also pretty stable in the corners that when you're pushing it in a bit but one thing I noticed is a lot of engine noise here a lot of sound in the cabin and that just tells me that a cure didn't really put a lot of sound dampening materials here which is kind of a shame because it really brings down the apparent quality of this car the ride quality of the car one thing I do get though that is premium are a lot of driver assistance features I've got a blind spot monitor system so that flashes little icons in the side mirrors if there are cars in my blind spots either side that's a nice feature to have and with that lane-keeping assist in system i pointed out earlier this cart will actually recognize the lane lines and i'll actually turn the wheel a bit under my hands so it does some of the work of keeping the car in its lane but it is very close to being a self-driving car the base price for this model goes to twenty thousand eight hundred twenty dollars that's with destination factor doesn't really do individual options so this car with the technology plus package and with the a spec package that puts it at thirty-five thousand eight hundred and ten dollars with destination now the cabin tech in this model is not nearly as good as an audi a3 a competitive compact luxury model but the driver assistance features are really good the cabin is a bit noisy though and that's what really keeps this car from hitting that luxury or premium level