2023 Acura Integra First Drive: A Triumphant Return?
Auto123 gets in a first drive of the 2023 Acura Integra.
Austin, TX – It isn’t every day that a manufacturer releases a new car – a real, actual sedan - with a manual transmission option and traditional internal-combustion power. Rarer still is when the nameplate attached to it marks a return to the ranks of a known quantity.
But Acura ticks off both those boxes with this: the 2023 Acura Integra hatchback (or “liftback”) arrives for 2023 much as it did for 1986, when both it and the Acura brand got their starts in North America.
Not only did that event help debut the brand along with the Legend sedan – back in the days before SUVs and CUVs, when cars were the main event and not afterthoughts – but Acura has since sold over a million Integras in North America, and it has attained mild cult classic status as a result. Everybody has an Integra story, says Acura, whether it be the car you learned to drive a manual transmission on (as is the case for Emile Korkor, VP of Acura National Sales), or your memory of seeing it on the big screen in Ja Rule’s hands in The Fast and The Furious.
That was then, of course. Now, after a 17-year hiatus (or 22 years, if you don’t consider the 2001-06 RSX to be an Integra, though it was so named in some markets), the Integra has returned to replace the ILX, which was roughly the same size but is missing a crucial feature of the new car: a hatchback.
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