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Video: Acura Integra Prototype: Up Close
By Cars.com Editors
November 17, 2021About the video
We get our first look at the Acura Integra Prototype. Watch our video to find out more.
Transcript
(upbeat music) Few nameplates in the history of Acura are as beloved as the Integra, that's a sport compact that was around for three generations from the 1986 through 2001 model years in the United States, and then lived on overseas as the Honda Int...
egra until 2006, that's the car we knew here as the Acura RSX. Folks, I had to get every single part of that right, because if I didn't, Integra fans would destroy me online, that's the amount of enthusiasm there is for this nameplate, and it's set to come roaring back here, possibly with the reinvigorated 2023 Acura Integra. The vehicle, Acura says, will start around $30,000 when it goes on sale. Hey, if you adjust for inflation, that's about the same as it costs last time around. Now, this is technically the Integra Prototype, that means it doesn't have an interior we can look into yet, but if you know anything about Honda and it's Acura luxury division, prototypes generally are pretty close to the production vehicle that you're gonna eventually see hit dealerships. Now, the Integra is gonna have underpinnings based on the just redesigned 2022 Honda Civic, that's Honda's very popular compact car, and we're told this car is actually slightly longer than the Civic sedan, which is currently the longest version of the Civic you can get, there's also a Civic Hatchback, obviously. In terms of paint colors, Prototype here is indie yellow pearl, now that's a paint also offered on the NSX, but it's a throwback to the 2000 to 2001 Acura Integra Type R, which offered a phoenix yellow. Now, front end styling emulates that of the recently redesigned TLX, so you get things like a diamond pattern grill here and Acura's chicane style kind of LED signature lighting. A few differences here for the Integra Prototype though, the diamond grill actually has an inverted pattern versus that of the TLX, it also doesn't have a frame, TLX does have kind of a thin framework around it, and finally, these LED signature lights here are actually above the main kind of projector LEDs here on the Integra. On other Acura products, the chicane signature lighting actually sits below the projector, so a few differences there. You get around the side, the Integra has 19 inch alloy wheels with Brembo brakes, but the elephant in the room here is gonna be the body style. This is a four-door hatchback, a liftback as Acura likes to call it, that's actually a body style the Integra hasn't had since clear back in the first generation, the 1989 model year. So for those of you who are hoping for kind of a cleaner appearance here with a really horizontal trunk and a traditional sedan body style, that's not what you're getting, the Integra is coming as sort of this hatchback thing. Love it or hate it, hey, that's what the comments are for. You get to back here, and there's one more bit of sort of trivia, Integra here is stamped into the bumpers themselves, the passenger's side rear bumper, the driver's side front bumper. Again, that's a callback to another generation of the car, in this case, the third generation 1994 through 2001 had that, this one appears like it's gonna reprise it as well. Now, the Integra will have a turbocharged 1.5 liter engine with DTEC, that's the first turbocharged Acura Integra, at least from the factory in the history of the nameplate. It'll also have a limited slip differential and automatic transmission with specific still to be announced, and an available 6-speed manual transmission. It will be front wheel drive we're told, that's a staple of the Integra throughout just about all of its global iterations, so not entirely, and we can make some educated guesses about a few other things, because of the Civic lineage. Now, the Civic just came out with a Civic SI that will have, you guessed it, a 1.5 liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine that makes 200 horsepower, 192 pounds feet of torque. So the Integra could make similar power, perhaps a little bit more, again, we don't know yet, we should know all of that and plenty more closer to the 2023 Integra's on sale date, which is gonna be in the middle of the 2022 calendar year.
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