Several months ago we had the TSX in a near-premium sporty sedan throwdown that included several otherFWD contenders (see archives, January 19, 2007), and I liked it so much that I decided I wanted it again.
While I, personally, didn’t think it ‘won’ in every category, or in any category outright (okay, except the gearbox), I couldn’t argue that it was probably a close second in almost every category (except power), reason enough to crown it as our overall pick. Between brand status, sporty performance, luxury features and technological sophistication, it gradually inches ahead of anything in that group (Mazda6, Volkswagen Jetta 2.0T, Volvo S40 T5), and after having it as my personal transportation for a week, I would have to rate it as one of the best luxury compacts on the market.
While Audi’s turbocharged A4 2.0T has an edge in power, it also prices itself out of reach of so many working families once you get a sniff at the feature list. Pretty much the same goes for anything from Mercedes, BMW, Infiniti and even Lexus to some degree. In the luxury compact class, the TSX is the clear value leader, the entry price of $28,090 providing such an amazing array of equipment that I have to list it (I swear I don’t get paid by theword). The list includes perforated leather seats, a power glass moonroof with sliding shade, HID headlights, a dual-zone climate control system, HandsFreeLink wireless phone interface, an auxiliary jack for digital music players, steering-wheel mounted switches to control the standard 360-watt sound system, 6-disc in-dash CD changer, cruise control and functions of the nav System. I won’t pretend that I configured each of the competitors and priced them for comparative analysis, but with a fully loaded price of $30,090, which adds an easily mastered navigation system with voice recognition to the mix, most of the others are just starting to upgrade to leather seats.
So it’s the cheapest, so what? It sure didn’t feel like the cheapest when sat in the contoured leather driving seat and gripped the wheel for all it was worth as I pushed way past the level I would normally have expected understeer to kick in at, and push the car off line. It also didn’t feel like thecheapest when I was talking to the ceiling over the Bluetooth connection or using the voice-command to set the nav system—okay I didn’t do that last one, but I could have if I had needed directions anywhere. Sadly, I knew where I was going all week long. Shame on me.
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