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2009 Acura TL SH-AWD review: 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD

2009 Acura TL SH-AWD

Wayne Cunningham Managing Editor / Roadshow
Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began covering technology and the Web in 1994 as an editor of The Net magazine.
Wayne Cunningham
9 min read


Photo gallery:
2009 Acura TL SH-AWD

7.2

2009 Acura TL SH-AWD

The Good

Making an angry growl over 5,000 rpm, the 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD's engine provides good power and decent fuel economy. Highlights of the cabin tech include hard-drive-based navigation, onboard music storage, and a good iPod connector.

The Bad

The instrument panel and steering wheel of the TL SH-AWD are button-happy. While the five-speed automatic is better than previous versions, we look forward to an upcoming manual transmission option.

The Bottom Line

The 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD tries to strike a balance between comfortable commuter car and weekend sport driver, but leans towards the former. Cutting edge cabin tech increases the comfort level and gives it a practical edge.

Acura showcased the RL in 2005 as a tech powerhouse, introducing innovations such as live traffic in the navigation system and DVD audio, but over the intervening years that technology became run-of-the-mill. Now Acura is back with a whole new tech package in the 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD, building on the advances we saw in the new Acura TSX. The TL SH-AWD is the upper end of a bifurcated TL line-up with two cars differentiated by drive train and suspension, representing a new direction for Acura.

With the new TL SH-AWD and standard TL, Acura restyled the exterior of its midrange luxury sedan, taking the controversial step of accentuating the beak on the grille. The belt-line also takes on prominence while the fenders get smoothed into the body, mimicking BMW's flame surfacing. The TL SH-AWD gets a trunk lip spoiler, a bigger engine, and power to all wheels, making it the sporting brother of the pair, while the standard TL remains a comfortable commuter car. Both cars meet, if not surpass, today's cabin tech cutting edge.

Test the tech: Scenic drive
A new feature of the navigation system that really intrigued us is called Scenic road information, buried under a menu labeled Info. Choose it, and you will see the states listed in alphabetical order, showing the number of scenic roads under each. To test this feature, we chose California, then picked the closest scenic road to San Francisco, labeled as Big Sur Coast Highway, and set it as our destination. The navigation system said it was 99 miles away, so we figured we were in for a pleasant half day's drive.

The new navigation system in the Acura TL lists scenic roads in almost every state in the U.S.

As we got rolling down the freeway, the navigation system suddenly started showing that our destination was 199 miles away. This change was odd, but we had all day. During the drive time, we tested out the audio quality by plugging in a USB drive full of MP3s to a port in the console that can also be used for iPods. This stereo was the upgraded ELS premium system with 10 speakers, including a subwoofer, centerfill, and two rear surround speakers on the rear deck, and a 440-watt amp. This system is designed for surround sound, and delivers a really immersive experience in the car. As we've found with ELS systems in other Acuras, it seemed to work best with acoustic music, as bass is underemphasized. Fortunately, you can turn up the sub, eking a little more thump out of it. The system is also pretty good on clarity, making it possible to hear individual instruments pretty well.

As we continued on our drive, listening to music, traffic started to slow, so we used the navigation system to check for nearby incidents. Sure enough, there was an accident a quarter mile ahead. The navigation system gave us the option of detouring around it, but we would have appreciated a more proactive response from the system, warning us before we got caught in traffic. We weren't slowed for too long, though, and continued on our route. The navigation system suddenly told us it made a change to our route, lopping off about 70 miles. Strange, but we didn't mind cutting down on our driving time.

The TL led us to some particularly spectacular coastal scenery.

After a while, we were driving down the incredibly scenic Highway 1, south on the coast, but still not at the destination set in the navigation system. We enjoyed the coast-scape while gritting our teeth at slower tourists on the road until we hit the scenic road destination. And that was it. We had hoped that the scenic road information would be a series of waypoints laying out some really phenomenal drive, but instead it just plunked us about halfway down what was truly a magnificent road. We like the concept, but think this feature could use a little more work.

In the cabin
The interior fit and finish in Acuras has been very good over the last five years, and none of that lacks in the 2009 TL SH-AWD. The materials all feel good to the touch, and everything seems solid. But Acura has never really done luxury, so expect a lot of plastics and synthetic materials in the TL SH-AWD. For a touch of sportiness, the engine start button is metallic red, making it stand out from the rest of the interior.

Acura pioneered integration of traffic information with navigation, but the system is improved in the TL, now offering dynamic routing.

The TL SH-AWD's cabin tech interface has been improved a bit from earlier models. Although it uses the same big multifunction knob in the middle of the stack, the buttons around it have been reconfigured, making the layout a little more logical. The onscreen interface has also been redesigned, but more for improved aesthetics than usability. There are still plenty of buttons all over the steering wheel and instrument panel, but Acura has cleaned them up somewhat. The voice command system is also very usable, with commands such as, "What time is it?" or "What's playing?" that tells you the current audio track, along with the usual navigation and audio commands. Strangely, voice command didn't seem available for the Bluetooth cell phone integration.

We're impressed by the hard-drive-based navigation system, the first in an Acura. It's easy to enter addresses, and there are plenty of options for destinations, including a very full points-of-interest database. Traffic reporting is built in, with data delivered by XM NavTraffic. The system does dynamically route around bad traffic, but not specific traffic incidents, as we found out while testing the Scenic road information feature. Weather reporting is also built into the navigation system, similar to what we saw in our review of the TSX.

As with most hard drive navigation systems, space is left over for music storage, and the car supports ripping CDs.

Although we couldn't use voice command with the phone system, this is better phone integration than we've seen in previous Acuras. Once you have paired a phone, you can choose to copy your phonebook to the car, making all of your contacts available on the LCD.

You can also use a paired phone to play music, if it supports Bluetooth streaming. Acura includes Bluetooth as an audio source, and we've found that you can go seamlessly from playing music off of a phone to accepting or making a call. Acuras have had a CD/DVD drive for a while now, which reads DVD-audio discs and MP3 CDs. But in the TL SH-AWD, you can also rip a CD to the car's hard drive. We found it pretty easy to use this feature, as the car's music database immediately recognized a CD we had in the player, and gave us the option to rip it. The USB port is also new, a very convenient feature that lets you plug in an iPod or USB drive, but with the latter you can only browse through folders; it won't organize music from a USB drive by artist, album, and genre. XM satellite radio is also present, of course.

Under the hood
The main difference between the standard TL and the TL SH-AWD is the engine, a 3.5-liter V-6 in the former and a new 3.7-liter V-6 in the latter. That 3.7-liter engine, using Acura's VTEC variable valve timing, delivers a peak 305 horsepower at 6,200rpm and 273 pound-feet of torque at 5,000rpm. That torque comes on a little late for our tastes, as the TL SH-AWD starts off the line with some sluggishness before it builds up a surge of power. But once it gets going, and the tach needle flies over the 5,000rpm mark, the engine makes a delightfully aggressive sound.

Acura not only builds a good engine, but knows how to package it.

That power is channeled through a five-speed automatic. In the past, we've been critical of Acura's transmissions, because they seem to mute the power edge of a fine engine. But this transmission is improved, although still not perfect. In the TL SH-AWD, the gearing seems better and the shifts, at least in sport mode, happen quickly. The TL SH-AWD also gets shift paddles on the steering wheel, making it easy to go into manual mode from sport. In manual mode, the programming lets you hold gears right up to redline, with no intrusive shifts. In sport driving, we found that third gear offers a wide enough power band for a lot of roads, although in severe twisties you can take it over 60 mph in second gear, and get treated to that aggressive engine note. While we were reviewing this car, Acura announced it would offer its six-speed manual on the 2010 TL SH-AWD. We've been very impressed by Acura's manual transmission, and think it would be worthwhile to wait for the 2010 model, if you enjoy a sportier ride.

The other big difference between the TL and TL SH-AWD, noted in the model name, is that the latter gets Acura's Super Handling All Wheel Drive, a system designed more for sport driving than slippery conditions. It biases torque to the front wheels, but moves it to the rear as needed, and also throws power back and forth between left and right rear wheels. In hard cornering on some serious switchbacks, we felt some understeer going into the turn, but the traction was excellent--power going to the proper tires to keep the car on its line and responding well to the acceleration we applied.

Paddle shifters suggest the sporting aspirations of the TL SH-AWD.

Letting us down a bit in this type of cornering were the suspension and transmission, at least in sport automatic mode. The transmission doesn't aggressively downshift, so it's better to use manual mode, and the suspension shows some travel--not a lot, but enough to keep the TL SH-AWD from feeling like a real screwed-down sports car. That suspension travel results from tuning that's geared just a little more towards comfort, something the TL SH-AWD succeeds at. Cruising down the highway, the car delivered a good ride--not soft, but with solid damping of jolts and bumps.

The TL SH-AWD earns an EPA-rated 17 mpg city and 25 mpg highway, the latter an impressive number for a car lacking a sixth gear. While driving along the freeway, we saw the average economy on the trip computer hit as high as 25.5 mpg, but our tank average with the car came in at a solid 21 mpg, which really isn't bad for an engine of this size. The TL SH-AWD also does well on emissions, earning a ULEV II rating from the California Air Resources Board.

The TL SH-AWD also gets the best safety ratings from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) of any car, getting the top rating in all of the Institute's crash tests. Because of these test results, and the fact that the TL SH-AWD has a variety of electronic road-holding gear, including traction and stability control, the IIHS named it a Top Safety Pick.

In sum
As with other Acura models, the 2009 TL SH-AWD is sold as a trim model with or without tech, each trim coming in at a single price. So our 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD with tech came in at a base price of $42,235 with no options. Add on $760 for destination, and the total comes out to $42,995. By contrast, the standard TL with tech runs $38,685. For about seven grand more, you can get an Audi A4 3.2 with Quattro all-wheel-drive, a car that we feel offers a more sporting drive but inferior cabin tech. Or for a hardcore sport all-wheel-driver, there's always our favorite Mitsubishi Evo, which has a similar price to the Acura.

In our ratings, we consider the cabin tech excellent, as it offers some cutting edge and useful features. There are a few quirks here and there, though. For performance, the TL SH-AWD is very good, making a nice compromise between a sport and daily driver. Design is good, but not great, as it suffers from too many buttons on the instrument panel. The exterior might face some criticism, but it's easy to get over the initial jolt of the heavily beaked piece over the grille.

7.2

2009 Acura TL SH-AWD

Score Breakdown

Cabin tech 8Performance tech 7Design 6