Yahoo Autos 2010 Acura TSX V6 vs. Buick Regal CXL Turbo, VW CC 2.0T R-Line
TESTED
Tom Baldwin is downsizing. He’s shucked the ’83 Porsche 911 Turbo, the ’55 Ford Thunderbird, the ’99 Lamborghini Diablo, and the ’91 Acura NSX—the latter, “my favorite car of all time,” he says, flashing a stunning bulwark of diamond-white teeth. He’s pared back to a black ’93 Dodge Viper and a selection of mud-splattered Chevy Suburbans.
Baldwin, a 54-year-old commodities broker, is standing in a spacious office where three computers are humming and a massive flat-screen TV is tuned to various Wall Street tickers. His office is on his home’s second floor, next to his wife’s office, which flanks their birch-trimmed bedroom, which hangs precariously over blue-black waves ramming a sea wall 40 feet below. Circling just beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows are ravens who’d do Edgar Allan Poe proud.
“I’ve been maintaining this place for nearly 25 years,” he says. “It’s like a living thing, but it’s often wounded. I’d like to take a rest.” It’s a sentiment anyone can understand. But there’s no need to feel sorry for Lucian Thomas Baldwin III.
That’s because he owns, lives, works, and plays at Granot Loma, a 50-room Adirondack-style mansion on the granitic shore of Lake Superior, 14 miles north of Marquette, Michigan. You’d never find it without detailed instructions. Now a National Historic Landmark, it was originally built by banking baron Louis Kaufman between 1919 and 1923. Kaufman, bless his fiscally inclined soul, invented branch banking.
Luckily for us, Granot Loma is for sale. If it weren’t, we probably wouldn’t have been invited to use it as a comparison-test destination—probably wouldn’t have been invited to stay in the piggery, even. Depending on what your bank manager says, G. L. can be yours for $20 million—well, $40 million if you want the outbuildings and the estate’s full 5000 acres [see here]. We say yours, because no C/D editor can afford either the $52,000 annual real-estate taxes or the $20,000 heating bill. Being rich requires a commitment.
On the other hand, pretending to be rich—well, let’s just say near rich—is simpler. You can accomplish it by buying one of the near-luxo sports sedans gathered here.
In truth, this comparo was centered around Buick’s handsome Regal Turbo, the newcomer on the block. We flanked it with the slightly less-expensive Volkswagen CC (whose turbocharged inline-four is but one cubic inch smaller than the Buick’s) and the more expensive Acura TSX fitted with the optional 280-hp V-6. Yes, we might’ve clutched fast to the base TSX’s 201-hp inline-four, but Buick is making a fuss about how its turboed four will tackle virtually all V-6 comers. So we decided to find out.
Note: This is almost certainly the first comparo in Car and Driver’s history to have been photographed entirely at one guy’s house.
“This is a Buick?”
Granot Loma’s Tom Baldwin asked that question, as did a passel of other Michiganders. This Regal’s sheetmetal appears to have been yanked taut over animate ribs and sinew, lending it an about-to-pounce mien. Its cockpit is bright and airy, with an interesting blend of surfaces and colors. All in all, a lovely automobile to behold.
Unfortunately, Buick’s turbocharged, all-aluminum four-pot—more or less an architectural ringer for VW’s iron-block four—lets it down. Producing 20 more horses than the Vee-Dub’s, it was strangely unable to keep up. The Regal was 1.1 seconds behind the CC to 60 mph, 0.7 second behind in the quarter-mile, and lagged behind in 30-to-50 and 50-to-70-mph top-gear sprints. This Buick’s 3772-pound mass explains most of the lethargy. But, jeez, how could the Regal’s engine be thirstier than the Acura’s monster V-6?
Equally disappointing, there’s a grittiness here that, combined with the turbo’s part-throttle hissy whistle, aurally wends its way too freely into the cockpit. It isn’t that the engine is loud—it isn’t. Rather, it’s a murmuring metal-on-metal hubbub that registers the moment the starter is engaged. At any speed, this engine announces way too proudly that it’s a four-banger.
The steering is delightfully light, a bonus in city driving, and is satisfactorily communicative. The Opel Insignia–derived platform is, in this iteration, as solid as Upper Peninsula granite. And the Regal’s compliant ride—a “European” ride that is never sloppy—doesn’t come at the expense of body roll.
On our handling loop, the Buick rarely nudged its limits and had no trouble maintaining the pace. However, it felt like it had the highest center of gravity, and it is, in fact, the narrowest and tallest car in our trio. Moreover, the front seats allowed the driver’s tailbone to sink into the cushion, leaving the side bolsters to suspend him by his thighs. In the end, the Regal never established a visceral relationship with its driver, that instinctive link that manifests in, say, a BMW 3-series or a Mazda 3 or an Audi A3. That’s a lot of threes.
Said tech editor Michael Austin, “You’d only go fast in the Regal because you had to, not because you wanted to.” Still, the Buick missed second place by only six points.There are six badges on this car’s tail—“pieces of flair,” associate online editor David Gluckman called them—rendered in three different scripts. It’s as if Buick is experimenting with sports-sedanhood, treading a little fearfully. Too bad, because all the right parts are present and accounted for. They merely require more massaging.
With a 60-horse edge on one competitor and an 80-horse edge on the other, the TSX V-6 predictably carpet-bombed the drag strip, besting its competitors in every accelerative event—save 30-to-50 passing potential—right up to its 131-mph top speed. Connect all that forward thrust to what is the shortest car in this group, and you’d summon some sort of deviantly agile missile, right?
Didn’t turn out that way. Despite our test trio’s similarities in dimensions and mission, the TSX felt like a one-class-larger sedan trending more toward highway cruising than back-hills sport. That perception was principally imparted by the heavy, electric power steering. Well, the steering’s weight wasn’t the issue. It just felt heavy because it proved fairly lifeless and uncommunicative. Add to that the TSX’s doom-and-gloom cockpit—its only garnish is an all-too-fake strip of apparently sun-weathered aluminum—and you find yourself piloting a car that “doesn’t have much ‘wow’ to it,” as Austin put it.
On the other hand, the Acura earned praise for its firm, easy-to-modulate brake pedal; for its transmission’s surprisingly aggressive sport mode; for its intuitive paddle shifters; and for the torque it so generously doles out as it exits corners. Notice that the TSX racked up our fastest lane-change speed, topping the VW by 3.8 mph.
On our handling loop, though, the Acura, like the Buick, held its own but never felt especially enthused about it. The V-6 TSX is 249 pounds heavier than the four-cylinder manual-transmission TSX, and its nose is now carrying a scary 61.7 percent of overall bulk, up 3.2 percent. Upon brisk turn-in, our test car’s nose performed a kind of left-right/up-down rumba, like a bloodhound trying to regain the scent. “A runny nose,” wrote one tester. In short, the driving precision we’ve come to expect from Acura’s offerings was, well, not so much missing as dulled and dumbed down. Some of us are now saying the same about its blocky exterior styling, too.
Although the TSX V-6 carries the highest base and as-tested prices in this group, it offers a list of features and amenities as long as your leg. What’s more, remember that it’s a European Honda Accord, so resale value will remain strong and nothing should break.
The TSX V-6 is a smart cookie that just needs to lighten up a little. Which is code for, “Stick with the manual-transmission, four-cylinder TSX.”
Volkswagen expects to become the world’s biggest automaker. How? An aggressive new model in almost every niche, including the almost nonexistent, newly found “four-door coupe” niche that Mercedes-Benz has so earnestly plumbed with its CLS. Think of the VW CC—a reskinned Passat—as the workingman’s CLS. It sure looks the part.
Alas, this is another comparo in which the car producing the least power and torque emerges victorious. C/D readers are inveterate rock throwers, and we can already hear them sprinting toward quarries nationwide. So, please examine the numbers. To 30 mph, the CC lagged merely 0.1 second behind the 80-horse-stronger Acura and was only 0.4 second behind it to 60 mph. Just as impressive, the CC absolutely annihilated the competition in the telling 30-to-50-mph top-gear test. That it was by far the lightest of our participants helped. That it achieved the best fuel economy is simply a tribute to conscientious engineering. If Buick is looking to perfect its four-cylinder turbo, it should look no further than VW’s version: quiet, smooth, responsive, and emanating subtle whirrings that will have you confusing it for a small V-6. Or a turbine. No matter what, it never sounds like a cheap four-banger.
The CC’s “bests” clogged the floodgates: best skidpad grip, best ergonomics, best fit and finish, best exterior styling, best interior styling, best handling, best transmission, best steering, best as-tested price, and best driver comfort. So enticing was the front-passenger seat that photographer Marc Urbano selected it for nearly every minute of our 900-mile Granot Loma odyssey.
“This is the only car that invited me to have fun,” wrote one driver. “Just a lovely, smooth, fleet-footed cruiser,” offered another. “The light steering is more precise and tracks better than the Buick’s. A light touch to all the primary controls. Perfectly bolstered seats. A suspension that seems to hunker down as speed mounts. And a dual-clutch transmission that shifts three ways to Sunday but always with West Point precision.”
By no means is the CC perfect. Those who require a five-passenger sedan will have to forgo the four-only CC. The alluring roofline and high beltline squash the window apertures and do damage to front interior volume. Encountering large pavement whoop-de-doos, the platform sometimes shivers. And the silver-toned accent that sweeps the length of the dashboard looks, well, pretty low-rent.
Otherwise, the VW emerges a 14-point victor. “I called our long-term Audi A4 a ‘VW GTI for grown-ups,’ ” said Gluckman. “Maybe I should have applied that description to the CC.”
Granot Loma, all 26,000 square feet of it, required 22 architects and 400 workers to erect. The estate is considered “Michigan’s Biltmore,” and President Gerald Ford, had he held power longer and injured fewer golf spectators, intended it to become his western White House. Among its 13 outbuildings are a pheasant house, a batting cage, a dairy barn, a pool house, a slaughterhouse, an icehouse, a boathouse, a 12-stall garage, a piggery, an archery range, and a 70,000-gallon water tank for the estate’s marble steam rooms and 15 bathrooms. (Contact Huey Real Estate, huey@upwaterfront.com, if you’re ready to buy.)
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