Acura Type S Origins
The Acura Type S series comes from the same origins that made Acura a powerful force in the luxury car market. It originated from North America's new craving for the best luxury and performance available after recovering from the economy of the early 1970s that started the American gas crisis. After it was born in the 1990s, the Type S name became Honda's trophy from the race to produce the most cost-effective and best-performing luxury cars for their value.
Honda's philosophy of assembling cars wherever they're sold made them build the first American Honda factory in Marysville, Ohio, in 1980. The first Honda model produced in this manufacturing plant was the second-gen Accord in 1981, also known as the Honda Vigor in Japan. This was when the economy was improving, and the automotive industry recovered from the American gas crisis, which guided the new car market towards high-performance and luxury cars.
The European auto manufacturers made the most out of this new American auto trend, and the new BMW, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz releases became highly sought-after at this time. Although the Special Edition Accords offered a higher standard of luxury and amenities than the previous Honda vehicles by offering a leather interior, it was still clear that they didn't rival the performance and performance of the European competitors. Because Honda dealerships in the US were already packed with business from selling their economy cars, Honda designated a new high-performance division of the brand that was originally known as "Channel 2" by their employees. In the US, this new luxury and performance division became known as Acura. To compete with the other luxury brands in the North American market, Honda had no choice but to begin the design of a bigger, more powerful, and more luxurious sedan than the Honda Accord. This sedan was eventually released in 1985 as the first Acura Model- the Acura Legend, the first Honda-made vehicle to feature a V6 engine.
Honda's fight to produce the best luxury and performance vehicles on the market inevitably created an even more specialized division- the Type S sub-model. The cutting-edge, high-performance design of Japan's 1997 Honda NSX Type S was the first of the Type S series to be made. The essence of this JDM NSX Type S was transplanted into the first Acura Type S sub-models: the 2001 Acura CL Type S coupe and 2002 Acura TL Type S sedan that had a 260hp 3.2L VTEC V6 J32A engine and 5-speed automatic transmission with sports-mode style manual shifting, and the 2002 Acura RSX Type S that has the 200hp 2.0L K20A2 with the first-ever application of i-VTEC, which was exclusively offered with a close-ratio 6-speed manual transmission.
This new lineup of Honda sub-models outside of North America and the sub-models released under the Acura name within North American became a game-changer in the eyes of the North American performance vehicle industry and continued to fuel North America's new love for the tunable and high-performance Japanese cars of the early 2000 years.
