Maybe you've been thinking about buying an Acura, but had an unfortunate slip requiring Judge Joe Brown to determine paternity. In that case, the $23,270 RSX Type-S coupe is out the window. Car seats suck, dude. Most definitely, your bad. Instead of forking over $28,980 for Acura's 3.2 TL four-door, you can get car-seat friendly and still maintain some vague street cred with the 2004 TSX sedan. Not a TL and not an RSX, it's somewhere in between, mostly in price, which settles in around $25,000, according to the chummy Acura PR folks who let us loop one around the Michelin proving grounds in South Carolina.
The TSX doesn't share as much as you'd think with the RSX, but it drives with gusto anyway. That's because it's derived from the Accord Honda sells in Europe, where they appreciate things like cornering and handling, not to mention collaboration with the enemy. It's a near-clone of that Euro thrasher, save for the funky Acura emblem stuck on the nose. And it's good stock to breed from -- the lines are way more crisp than the American Accord.
The goods are all Acura, too. Double wishbones at all four wheels give it the fast footwork of a welterweight, and a version of the American Accord engine spools up 200 hp here, instead of the 160 hp it makes in the domesticated car. Getting there is easy for Honda's motor freaks: they just up the compression ratio to 10.5:1, put it on a premium-only diet and push the redline up to 7100 rpm. Peak power comes at 6800 hp and peak torque of 166 lb-ft at 4500 rpm.
As for trannies, well, your parents should have told you more about the gender differences. The gearboxes in this Acura are a six-speed manual and a five-speed automatic. Neither one, as far as we can tell, will encourage you to explore miniskirts, although having an automatic in an Acura tells the world pretty plainly that you should be leasing a Camry instead.
Acura crams a ton of equipment into the TSX, including 17-in. alloy wheels, Vehicle Stability Assist, leather seats, an in-dash CD changer and dual-zone climate control. It's so well equipped and even sharper than the TL, you have to ask how long the current TL will be around. As always, Honda has an answer for that -- but they won't be telling us until this fall. Stay tuned.