From various columns —
This $35,000 front-drive sedan — pitted against entry-luxury choices like the Lexus ES 330, Audi A4 and Saab 9-3 — is one lulu of an automobile, no doubt about it. The TL carries on Acura’s tradition of engine-intensive performance, unimpeachable build quality and irresistible value. I drove the car to Tucson and back in 72 hours and would gladly have done another lap. Everything works, everything fits, everything goes like hell. What’s not to like?
Then again, what’s to love? The cars we love say something about us that we ourselves are desperate to say. I’m fun and unconventional (BMW Mini). I’m a wheel in Hollywood (Bentley Azure). Ask me about my grandkids (Mercury Grand Marquis).
What does the TL say? I subscribe to Consumer Reports? I use a discount brokerage house?
*****
The BMW-built 2004 Mini Cooper is not a perfect automobile. Let us just take a moment to let that understatement reverberate: The back seat is the automotive equivalent of a spider hole in Tikrit. The ride is rough enough to disqualify you from future organ donations. Compared with the amniotic hush of a Lexus LS 430 or Volkswagen Phaeton, the Mini’s warbling, static-filled ambience sounds as if it was recorded in Sam Phillips’ Sun Records studio.
But the Mini — especially the John Cooper Works edition I drove recently — is a righteous piece, a snubbed-down, amped-up, hot rod Hobbit that turns the most galling stop-and-go errand into an occasion for joyous gear-jamming and games of Diss the SUV. I defy you not to love this car.
And in Los Angeles — ohmigod — the car flat-out dogs traffic.
*****
But what makes the Crossfire work is its surface detailing: the Art Deco fluting, polished strakes, raised spine and sculpted surfaces, which make the car look like a piece of precision-milled machinery.
This is the kind of car that makes you set your alarm clock early so you can go stare at it in the driveway. It’s gorgeous.
Ah! to write like that.