Why there are no more stick-shift Acuras - RoadandTrack.com (blog)
If you were at all car-aware in the 1990s and 2000s, Acura was squarely on your radar. From the brand's first Legends, to the iconic Integra, to the follow-up RSX and the halo-status NSX, Acura's lineup always included something for the gearheads among us, complete with honest-to-goodness manual transmissions. Come the 2016 model year, the only three-pedal vehicle left in Acura's lineup—the somewhat slow-selling, Civic-based ILX—will lose its six-speed stick in favor of a dual-clutch automatic. That's a strange shift for the brand that helped define the affordable end of automotive enthusiasm in North America these past three decades. "The trend is clear for Acura as it has been for virtually every premium brand as well as mainstream brands," Sam Abuelsamid, senior analyst at Navigant Research , told R&T. "There has been a shift in the marketplace away from cars to crossovers... Climbing out of that ditch means Acura has to focus on moneymakers, not fringy enthusiast offerings. "As car sales volumes have continued to shrink over the past decade, and emissions and fuel economy regulations get tighter , it gets increasingly difficult to justify the resources necessary to engineer, calibrate and certify a manual... "Honda still sells plenty of manual transmission cars. Why can't Acura. Source: www.roadandtrack.com
