This isn’t your average dual-clutch automatic. The weakness of most such applications is the initial throttle tip-in response from a dead stop. Clutches can be jerky and/or slow engaging. The ILX is unusual in that has a torque converter, yielding yacht-rock smoothness off the line with quick, solid upshifts. From behind the leather-trimmed wheel, you’d never know this automatic has three times the coupling devices of a manual transmission. In other words, the new gearbox is forgettable, though in a good way.
The altered tranny adds time to the track-test numbers compared with the old manual 2.4. With a 6.6-second 60-mph time and a 15.2-second quarter, the ’16 model is 0.2 second off the mark of the last 2.4-liter ILX we tested. Adding the extra hardware also helped inflate the curb weight by 164 pounds over the old 2.4, but the 3134-pound sedan, here in A-Spec form, doesn’t feel any heavier. Steering is appropriately light for an entry-level luxury four-door.
The old TSX wasn’t a BMW, but it was hard-core Honda, with a balanced chassis and perfectly satisfying controls that spark happy memories even years later. As with so many Acuras of late, there’s no interaction with the jejune ILX that we think we’ll remember in a decade. On the road, it handles competently enough, the understeer gradually building well before the tires lose grip. There seems to be more real-world adhesion than the 0.83-g skidpad score suggests, and the ILX glides through corners with surprising confidence and body control, at least some credit belonging to the A-Spec’s slightly wider tires.