Back in 2006, I did a very unusual thing: I ordered an Acura. While ordering your car is always unusual in this country, doing so for an Acura (or Honda) is even stranger given how few combinations of color and options there are. The chances of finding what you want at a dealer are high. Despite the odds, though, I needed to order my 2006 Acura TSX with the combination of Arctic Blue paint, touchscreen navigation and, crucially, the six-speed manual transmission. Three months later, it was in the driveway.
Fifteen months later, however, it was out of the driveway. I had just got my dream job as an automotive journalist and no longer needed a daily driver. A nice young man named Chanc flew to LA with a check in hand. He slid that manual transmission into first and off my TSX went to its new home in Utah never to heard or seen from again.
Until Christmas Eve of last year. I pulled out my phone to find I was tagged in an Instagram post by someone named Tyson Hugie. Somebody handing over keys to an Arctic Blue Acura TSX with a red bow on top.
TranscriptJAMES RISWICK: I'm Autoblog senior editor James Riswick. And that is my 2006 Acura TSX, or rather, it was my TSX. You see, back in early '06, I ordered that car because no dealer was ever going to carry anything like it. Specifically, Arctic blue, manual transmission, navigation. It was a cool car. And as it turns out, it was a rare car.
However, a little more than a year after I got it and only about 5,500 miles, I got my dream job as an automotive journalist. I was not going to need a daily driver anymore. I was going to drive all of the cars. So I sold the TSX, never to hear from it again until Christmas Eve of last year. That is when I got an Instagram message out of the blue from someone named Tyson Hugie. And I'll let him take the story from here.
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TYSON HUGIE: I'm an Acura brand aficionado. They call me an Acura addict. I've been a fan of Honda and Acura products since the late '90s. I got my driver license and promptly sought out an '89 Prelude. So whenever I come across or learn of a particularly rare model, it kind of stays with me for a long time.
So fast forward roughly to 2011, Acura threw a big red carpet party for me when I rolled half a million miles in a Legend. I then sort of started collecting cars. And my brother had a classmate who was a friend of mine from Southern Utah a year younger than I was. And I knew as of about 2013 that he had a blue 2006 TSX, six speed manual. And that car always sort of was one that I had on my checklist, just in the back of my mind.
How cool is that color? Because you just never see them. Anyway, he and I met up in 2013 in his driveway in Cedar City, Utah. I was driving my red '92 NSX back from Salt Lake to Phoenix where I live. And I stopped at his house. He had a Black Integra GSR, this TSX. And there was my red NSX in his driveway for a photo shoot.
This car still looked pretty darn nice. I mean, it was only what? Seven years old at the time. But the following decade or so wasn't as friendly to it. My friend ended up replacing the car with an EV a few years ago. The TSX was relegated to side parking at his house. And the sun in Southern Utah was not friendly to it.
This paint got absolutely destroyed. I don't think the car was actively exercised as much. So obviously, that also contributes to some deterioration. So I was kind of after Chance, my friend, to just let me give this car a good home. I know you're sentimentally attached to it. But I'll fix it up. And I'll do it justice because I know how rare it was.
So finally pried the car out of his hands in December of last year. And we agreed on a price that was maybe a little bit too much for a car that needed a full restoration. But I also recognized how special the car was. It made the 400-mile trip from Utah to Phoenix flawlessly.
And I kind of started doing things just via prioritization after that. So obviously, I wanted the mechanical bits to be reliable before I spent a dime on paint. So tires, brakes, fluids, those were some of the first things that we looked at. Beyond that, I started just saving up a few pennies here and there to do the exterior bodywork.
So I have a great shop in Phoenix that worked on the car for about maybe two, two and a half months. And we kept it the original Arctic blue. I sauce did not make it on uber rare Accord Euro R body kit, which is really kind of subtle. But it's definitely upgraded. So other than that, the car is 100% as James drove it off the showroom floor 2006.
So 189,000 miles I rolled yesterday. I drove it out from Phoenix for the Acura Integra Type S press event. And it's the second longest trip I've ever taken in the car. And it didn't skip a beat. So I think this car has easily another 200k left in it. It might not have great infotainment or rocket like acceleration. But this K24 Japanese built platform with the manual is one of Honda's most crowning achievements. I mean, if they could sell this car as the Accord in Europe, which they did, you know they had a lot of faith in it, because that nameplate carries so much weight.
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JAMES RISWICK: So Tyson has so kindly let me drive My old TSX for the weekend. And I've driven it a fair bit at this point. And I must say that after 16 years, I'm a little grayer and well, so is this car. The brakes, a little squishy. The front suspension does feel a bit knackered. And it's hard to just how much that's impacting the steering because maybe I have rose-tinted glasses for just how good the steering was on this car, but either it's not as good as it used to be or it just wasn't as good as I remembered.
And that said, this engine, just superb. It feels and sounds brand new. Still revs sweetly to 7,000 RPM. There's 205 horsepower, 164 pound feet of torque, which means that the power delivery is definitely old school Honda, unlike the turbocharged engines we've come to kind of love today. You do have to go down probably one more gear than you are expecting.
It really is a testament to just how good Honda builds an engine and how well maintained the person I sold this car to and the previous owner kept it. The other thing I want to talk about is this manual transmission. It is just utterly fantastic. Couldn't be easier to shift. It feels exactly the same way it did when new.
And Tyson didn't do anything to this gearbox. And if you're wondering about the lineage of the Civic SI, and Type R, the Acura Integra, those wonderful manual transmissions that we go on, and on, and on about, well, I would say that their lineage started with this gearbox. I've driven Hondas before it. I drove the contemporary TL V6 with it. And they didn't feel as good as this, no, no. This feels like today's Acura and Honda manuals.
So besides driving it, I want to talk about the interior because it really is impressive. And not just because of the wonderful job that, again, the previous owner and the person I sold it to did in maintaining and keeping this car nice. Now, besides its current state of condition, I want to talk about just how well the TSX's interior has held up from a design perspective after all these years. Obviously, there's some dated elements.
But specifically that touchscreen navigation system I went out of my way to order, that's a-- I haven't got my tape measure out, but that's about 7 to 8 inches, which is kind of the basic touchscreen today all of these years later. And I want to point out this screen here because really, yes, it's navigation.
But I didn't buy it for navigation back then. I bought it for the functionality of its satellite radio system, which was a whiz bang wow thing back in the day. I loved it then. I still love it now. And the key elements here, radio presets on the bottom and the information of the song that's playing.
That was amazing at the time. And I still like that. Any audio interface today that doesn't have those on the screen at once, I get annoyed at. The other thing is physical menu buttons and as well as a tuning knob and a volume knob. These days, any time that a car does not have the combination of a touchscreen and physical controls, we get pretty annoyed because this car kind of laid out the recipe for what worked very well.
The other thing I like is there's this redundant element up here that tells you what your radio station is, the time, and if the car was on and the climate control was on, what the left and right temperatures are. I like that. Gauges, really, they're traditional gauges. They still look pretty good. Perhaps the fonts are a little dated. You do have a trip computer that you can go through various modes using the steering wheel down there.
But in general, I still like this interior. It's still very easy to use. And oh yeah, one more thing, because there's only a few very obvious signs of wear. Not surprisingly, the seat bolsters and the seat bottom here. And the seat is a little softer than originally was. But 189,000 miles, I've seen cars with 80,000 that look worse than this. And this right here, the turn signal the little off, that has been smudged away a bit.
Otherwise, all of these buttons look brand new. They operate as if they are brand new. I just love the kind of record etching in this knob. All these buttons look great. The shift knob, the top of it, it's a little pitted. But still feels great. The leather looks good on it. Oh, and this button right here. But again, dude, 189,000 miles.
So that is the story of how I was reunited with an old automotive friend and how that friend has held up, in more ways than one, over the years. This truly has been a once in a lifetime, truly special experience. And I guarantee you that everyone watching this has some old automotive friend they would love to be reunited with.
And I sure hope for your sake, there's a Tyson Hugie out there who's going to snap up your car and restore it to its former glory. Because it really is something cool. So I'm going to go drive in a few more times before giving it back to Tyson. Seriously, thanks, buddy.
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