During the holiday season last year, I traded in my Golf GTI for a Acura TSX Sport Wagon. Acura, being a luxury brand, means even the base model has lots of features and plenty of attention paid to details. Even though I miss the ‘pocket rocket’ power and handling of the GTI, the TSX is no slouch either despite much longer, heavier and with less torque from the engine. It still drives great and the multi-link suspensions handle bumps way better than the GTI, which become more important with two sleeping babies in the backseats. The increase of trunk space (more than 3X the space GTI has) is the feature that both Leah and I love.

However, couple of minor details remains to be improved by Acura:

1. There is no way for me to change the temperature gauge from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Why? The Canadian version of TSX uses Celsius, so why not offer a configuration setting to switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius?
2. This is the first car I own that has seat memory and it has been so useful when I park in the city. The parking attendent always move the seat back and changes the mirror (to aid the tight parking no doubt). Before I always had to spend a few minutes in the GTI to adjust the seat, the mirror, etc. back to my settings. Now in the TSX, I just push a button and the seat moves back to my preferred position automatically. But not the mirrors. What? Surely that must be a mistake?

Acura, to their credit, has been pretty responsive when I voice my complain on Twitter. They even have someone phone me to follow up and promise my opinion is taken seriously. Would my complain change the next generation of TSX? Perhaps, or perhaps not. We’ll see in four years time when the car lease expires and it’s time for me to look for a replacement.