The reborn Acura Integra goes on sale this spring. But buyers won’t follow the usual procedure to buy one. Instead, Acura will sell the sporty compact through a Tesla-style reservation list.
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A Refresher on The Integra
For the uninitiated (read: readers under 30), the Integra was the spiritual heart of the Acura brand from 1986 to 2001. It was a sporty luxury compact built on the bones of the Honda Civic, retuned for performance. Sold as a 2-door and a 4-door hatchback, it was the least expensive product in the Acura lineup.
It became a legend for relatively low-priced performance and the muse for generations of tuners who modified them extensively. Later editions helped introduce Honda’s VTEC engine lineup and Acura’s high-performance Type R sub-brand.
Acura retired it in 2001, replacing it with the RSX, which never quite caught on with enthusiasts the way the Integra had.
A Civic in Expensive Athletic Wear Again
Acura plans to resurrect the beloved nameplate for the 2023 model year. Like the Integras of the Clinton era, the next model will share a chassis with the new Honda Civic. It will appear as a 4-door hatchback with a 1.5-liter 4-cylinder turbo engine and an available 6-speed stick.
That’s nearly all the information Acura has released about the new Integra. Pricing, performance specifications, and whether there will be a 6-disc CD changer in the trunk for old times’ sake remain a mystery. Expect a starting price of around $30,000.
We’ll learn more specifics in the coming weeks as Acura prepares to take reservations for the car.
Buy a Reservation to Buy the Car
And that’s the real big news in today’s announcement. In a press release, Acura explains, “prospective Integra buyers can get on the list to be among the first to reserve a limited number of production units when the model goes on sale this spring. Customers can visit Acura.com/Integra to get on the list and be notified when reservations open.”
The move makes Acura the latest in a string of automakers to move toward an order model for new cars. They aren’t quite selling cars online like Tesla or Rivian – the press release notes that reservations will be “handled by participating dealers.”
But, after a year of new car shortages, Acura will apparently experiment with a sales model that asks buyers to order the car they want rather than buying from what the dealer has in stock.
The model is growing more common as automakers struggle with a worldwide microchip shortage keeping production below demand for some popular models. It could mark a long-term shift in the way Americans buy cars.
Reservations Have Become a Charged Issue
But the early days of the order model have proven fraught. Car shoppers grew accustomed to negotiating with a dealership over the price of a new car. They know to expect the dealer to make a certain profit from the deal.
Everyone involved is less clear on how pricing works when a car gets sold through a reservation system. Dealers have experimented with several ways to price in their profit, and automakers aren’t happy with some of the moves they’ve made.
Ford has found itself in a squabble with its own dealerships over how to set the price of a car that buyers order. GM has experienced the same thing with its low-volume Corvette Stingray.
Will the Integra prove as popular as it did a generation ago? And, if it does, will the battle over dealer markups spread to Acura as well? It’s an evolving story we suspect we’ll be tracking all year.
