Acura Integra Type S Excels Even Among Supercars

Mass murders rarely happen in real life. Bookies don’t waste money by offering attractive odds on unpopular underdogs. And bar fights are won by the big, bad guys instead of the villainous heroes. That’s why the Acura Integra Type S arrived at this year’s PCOTY unencumbered by high expectations.

The best performance cars are not the fastest and most expensive, of course. The Hyundai Veloster N proved that in 2020 by taking the PCOTY designation. But the quality of this year’s opposition, even with two awards divided by a line of $ 100,000, made Acura look very vanilla in this famous company. It was the only car with front-wheel drive, the only car with a four-door hatchback and—with the exception of the BAC Mono batch—the only one with four cylinders here. To win, it would need to overcome the many talents of the BMW M2, Ford Mustang Dark Horse, and Nissan Z Nismo—all with power, speed, and rear-wheel drive. It still did, and here’s why.

Because no part of Acura’s daily life was a liability. Even in this illustrious company, it never felt flat or slow or lackluster, spending most of its time confounding the preconceived notions of the judges who suspected it would just be making up numbers, especially on the track. Experience has long proven that whenever there is a pit road full of foreign objects, slower and more conventional cars tend to be used less, especially as time goes by and increasing confidence levels make hunting people more fun. Acura beat the trend, being not only the friendliest way to learn Thunderhill but also a car that made for a repeatable experience.

The Acura’s ability to get traction is close to magical, the low-slip differential helping the front axle bite hard on a chosen line and grip well beyond where almost any wrong-wheel drive would be washing wide. Yes, the Integra will eventually decelerate, but even when that limit is reached, the front tires gradually surrender, and it’s easy and instinctive to get it back on track by easing off the gas or, just as easily, deliberately prodding it to lift aggressively to create weight transfer. On Thunderhill’s long corners, the Integra was almost as tuned as the snappier rear drivers, while still keeping an extra Get Out of Jail card that, if the drift tends to spin, more gas pulls it straight instead of adding extra corner.

Did it feel too fast on the track? In this company, it did not. But even if the laps took longer to roll, the S-Type proved time and time again that lap time is a poor measure of comfort. No driver returned from the station without using every Acura 320 hp peak at every possible opportunity. It stood up to long-term hard use too – the tires and brakes took long periods without fading. Moreover, there was a tactile pleasure of what, against the fierce competition, was the best gearshift here; A clear winner on accuracy and sensitivity. We didn’t all like the auto-recovery match functionality on downshifts, however, with the need for a deep trip into the user interface to turn it off being one of our few criticisms.

But while the Acura S Type may keep up, it will spend a lot of time on the road, and it’s better there. The common instinct of engineers trying to create performance derivatives of classic models is the kind of performance that sees everything turned up to 11. Not so with the Type S. In its default Comfort mode, it’s smooth and compliant, much more so. it’s quieter than its Civic Type R cousin, though it still has a higher opinion. Selecting Sport or Sport Plus mode stiffens the suspension and adds speed to the throttle map, but it doesn’t make the Acura aggressive. (The official line is that the Sport Plus in the Integra is the same as the regular Sport in the CTR.)

On the roads of Northern California, the performance deficit between the Acura and our top competitors was minimized and sometimes completely ignored. The harder the road, the happier the S-type was. On straights it would inevitably fall back; when chasing a bigger competitor, the Acura driver often enjoys the novel experience of hearing another car over the Integra’s four pots. zing. But confidence under braking and power in turns meant few such advantages were banked for long—the S-Type was a mirror image of anything that came before it.

2024 Acura Integra Type S preview: 2024 Performance Car

PCOTY is a test drive, not price or features. The Acura didn’t get an advantage over our other sub-$100,000 competitors for being the cheapest car here. But it’s certainly a big part of its appeal: This is a $51,995 car that feels downright modest given the pricey alternatives. Although dealers try to manage that desirability with the usual fallacy of “market correction”, anyone who finds an Integra Type S near MSRP should feel very weary.

The Integra Type S is likely to be the performance car you’ve ever wanted. But it may be all you need. Even in the most familiar company, it still feels special.

Illustration by Clint Ford

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Our man across the pond, Mike Duff lives in England but reports from all over Europe, sometimes beyond. He has previously held staff roles at UK positions including CAR and evobut his automotive taste tends to be German: he owns a 987-generation Porsche Cayman S and a Mercedes 190E 2.5-16.

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