2009 Acura TSX - Specifications - First Drive

During a brief sprint up the base of the Laguna Mountains before a freak blizzard halted all driving fun, the car displayed admirable cornering grip, superb shifter/clutch feel, the delightful trademark Honda engine note, and familiar TSX performance. Lifeless steering was our only major complaint.

The four excruciating hours spent inching 60 miles back to town afforded ample time to enjoy the optional Technology Package. Its navigation system can reroute you around traffic and weather problems identified by XM satellite presuming a better route exists (one didn't on our drive day). The $3500 package also incorporates a rearview camera, voice control, and a spectacular 415-watt 10-speaker Acura/ELS Surround sound system with six-disc CD/DVD-Audio changer. It'll also control your iPod, but once you've heard 5.1-surround DVD-A music coming at you from every direction, mere MP3 stereo may not satisfy. Another observation: The hopelessly ineffective rear defroster needs about double the power it's getting to cope with a blizzard.

Has the new TSX grown enough to slip a 1 Series competitor like the Civic-based Canadian Acura CSX in underneath? Not a chance, says planning veep Dan Bonawitz. But maybe by the time the family TSX hits 170,000 miles...

Meet Elliot L. Scheiner

The ELS monogram Acura is applying to its high-end sound systems belongs to multi-Grammy Award winning sound engineer and producer Elliot Scheiner. He collaborates with Panasonic to replicate as closely as possible, in automotive interiors, the sound he hears in the recording studio. When mixing the tracks on a Surround Sound DVD-Audio disc like Donald Fagen's "Morph the Cat" (for which he won a 2007 Grammy), Scheiner determines which channel to assign each sound, so it's fitting that he should help position and tune the speakers playing those channels in a car.

Through the years, Mr. Scheiner has worked with a veritable Who's Who of artists, but his relationship with Fagen stretches way back to the early Steely Dan era. Serious fans like us (every Mixmaster Lassa "-of-The-Year" compilation disk has included at least one song from the Steely Dan/Fagen repertoire) will be interested to learn it was Scheiner's Haitian divorce that inspired that Royal Scam album tune of 1976. His lawyer advised him to finalize his divorce before the end of the year, and Haiti provided on-the-spot service. Just bring notarized paperwork, the judge forks over an elaborate wax-sealed document, and then there's a big party. Some years later, Scheiner was set up on a blind date by his pals, as a joke, with a girl 11 years his junior. They had nothing in common, they couldn't dance together, and for heaven's sake, she'd never heard of Aretha Franklin-the Queen of Soul. Yep, it inspired 1980's "Hey Nineteen" released on the album Gaucho.