Selling a dead or junk Acura

Below: how Honda built Acura, which Acuras owners have reported most often to federal safety regulators, and an index of all 17 models.

Honda's luxury brand, started in 1986

Acura was founded on March 27, 1986. Wikipedia names Soichiro Honda as its founder and American Honda Motor Company as its parent, with headquarters in Torrance, California. It sells in the United States and Canada.

Wikipedia calls it "the first Japanese luxury brand." Honda opened 60 new dealerships in North America by 1986 to support the new division, after what Wikipedia describes as a decade of research.

It started with two cars. In 1987, Acura's first full year of sales, it sold 109,000 cars: 55,000 were the Legend sedan and the rest were the smaller Integra. By 1990 it was selling 138,000 vehicles a year, 54,000 of them Legends. Wikipedia sets that against 78,000 cars for Mercedes-Benz and 64,000 each for BMW and Lexus.

Sales fell in the mid-to-late 1990s. Wikipedia credits a revival in the early 2000s to redesigned and new models, starting with the 1999 3.2 TL sedan. The MDX followed as a three-row crossover and replaced the slow-selling SLX.

Where Honda shows through

Some Acuras are close relatives of other vehicles, and Wikipedia names three:

• MDX: the first one, sold from 2001, was based on the Honda Odyssey minivan.
• SLX: Wikipedia calls it "little more than a rebadged Isuzu Trooper." It sold for only four model years in the EPA list, 1996 to 1999.
• 1.6 EL: a Canada-only car, a rebadged Honda Civic. It is not in the US EPA list.

The lineup also turned over through replacements. Wikipedia says a new sedan replaced the TSX and TL. In the EPA list both of those end in 2014, and the TLX starts in 2015.

Which Acuras draw the most NHTSA complaints

Across all 17 Acura models, owners had sent NHTSA 13,097 complaints by October 10, 2026, the day we pulled them. These five have the most:

The MDX, TL and RDX stand far ahead of the rest. All three had long runs in the EPA list: the MDX from 2001, the TL from 1995 to 2014. A model sold in larger numbers and for longer collects more reports, so this is a tally of owner reports, not a ranking of which car is worse. Age cuts the other way too: the ADX arrived for 2025 and has had barely a year on the road, so its 5 reports say little yet.

Click any model below for its year-by-year breakdown.

Selling an Acura that won't run

Nothing needs to come off the car first. The whole Acura goes onto the truck, whether it sits in a driveway, a parking lot or the shop where it quit.

To get an offer, have these ready:

1. The year, model and mileage. The index below lists each model's years.
2. Say how your Acura acts at the key turn, whether its wheels roll, and any dents or missing parts.
3. The title, or a note that it is missing. Our page on selling a junk car with no title covers a lost one.
4. The address where it sits.

If it simply will not start, our non-running car guide covers that case. Once it is gone, deal with the plates and the paperwork.

Would you rather talk? Call (877) 421-6008.

Every Acura model

All 17 Acura nameplates in the EPA's fuel economy list since 1986. Years are the first and last model years in that list, which still fills in for the newest years. The right column is the owner tally we pulled from NHTSA for each model.