2009 Acura RL Road Test Ratings

Racy feel for a luxury car with excellent all-wheel drive for inclement weather. Terrific telematics and driver assist systems, but many will find the styling to be a dealbreaker.

3.7L 24 valve SOHC V6 with VTEC variable valve timing is smooth and free revving and makes good power throughout the rev range.The engine growl and exhaust note are racy for a luxury car, but it requires premium fuel and we averaged only 17 mpg during testing. While the car feels subjectively fast on the road, this seat-of-pants feeling doesn't translate to quick during instrumented testing. Five-speed automatic has well-spaced ratios and excellent steering wheel mounted paddle shifters. During everyday street driving, the brakes had good control with a firm pedal feel and short stopping distances. But at the track we experienced considerable brake fade. Steering is accurate with good effort build-up and overall feel, but there's a slight dead feeling just off-center. Mostly neutral handling, but understeer appears with harder driving. Performance advantages from the Super Handling All-Wheel Drive (SH-AWD) system were hard to discern during spirited dry-road driving. Very racy for a luxury car, with an excellent balance between a comfortable ride and sporty handling.

It's very quiet and there's an excellent balance between ride comfort and good handling. There is also a great balance between seat comfort and support, with headrests that are some of the most comfortable made. The rear area has sporty bucketlike seats, very good legroom, but slightly tight headroom and a pressure feeling from the area near top of the door. It's easy to find a good position and the power four-way tilt-telescoping steering wheel feels great, but the diameter is slightly large for its sporting capabilities.

Projector HID (high intensity discharge) lamps have swiveling AFS (Adaptive Front lighting System) feature with a good pattern and reach. Excellent forward and rearward visibility with a great back-up camera. Excellent and easy to read gauges with clear legible fonts, but the blue cartoonish dial styling looks like they came out of a Civic.The HVAC and audio controls have a very logical layout, but are a bit too busy with many small, similar-size switches crammed into a small area. There are also very easy to use audio controls within the big 8-inch Navi screen. The secondary controls are intuitive, easy to use, and have excellent feel. Nicely finished trunk with simple, elegant hinges, and a low liftover height.

Relatively plain exterior overall: could be mistaken for an Accord except for the bold, ugly grille. Simple and very attractive interior with tasteful wood trim, but too many switches throughout the cabin. Perforated leather front and rear seats, perforated leather and wood steering wheel, expensive looking interior surfaces. Very good feeling from all switches.