Acura is a Japanese automotive company which is the luxury division of Honda Motor Company. The company introduced the Honda in March 1986 in the U.S. market, Canada, and Hong Kong. Then also introduced in Mexico in 2004 and China in 2006. But the new Honda will introduce this brand in the Japanese market sometime in 2010. With the Acura brand, Honda made himself as the first Japanese auto manufacturers into the luxury car market abroad. Before Acura, Japanese cars exported more emphasis on simple design and low prices rather than a luxury car. Headquartered in Tokyo.
After approximately a decade of research, Honda opened 60 dealerships in North America in 1986 to support the Acura automobile division. Acura is the first Japanese luxury car brand is introduced, with the launch of the Acura Legend and Acura Integra. Legend is the development of the Honda Accord and Honda Integra is a development of Quint. Honda’s success makes other Japanese manufacturers take to make its luxury car brand (like Toyota’s Lexus and Nissan’s Infiniti, they founded in 1989).
In 1987, a full year sales of Acura, they can sell 109,000 units of vehicles, with sales reaching 55,000 units Legend sedan, and the rest Integra. In 1990, Acura managed to sell 138,000 units of vehicles (compared to sales of Mercedes-Benz 78 000 units and 64,000 units for the BMW and Lexus).
Today we are going to talk about the material which Acura currently uses in the production of its cars. Some people will be rather surprised to hear that this well-established car maker still gives more attention to the steal instead of the aluminum. We will look at this situation from the example of the currently popular Acura RLX model.
The design of the new items used steel. Even though it is rather heavy element for the parts, almost 55 percent of the body is made out of it. More popular element and raw material is aluminum and many sports brands use only it to make the car lighter. But the Acura company decided to make it more stable, as sports is sports, but the real life driving experience is in now way that much interested in the lower weight of the car. Thus aluminum was used for the front fenders, hood, front subframe and door panels. Even though they all look very safe and solid. Weight of the model is 1783 pounds. Which if truth would be told is not critical, because even though it cannot compete in lightness with some other models of other companies, but it still is within the norms and will be perceived as the normal weight of the car.
Even though the German car makers also have some doubts in turning to the aluminum fully, they would be more ready to leave 30 percent of the body made out of steal, while the rest would be done out of other new materials.
