The Legend Continues? Mysterious Acura Sedan Boasts Large Schnoz
What is this large-looking Acura sedan revealed in patent images?
Patent drawings are among the least sexy ways to convey a new car's design. The images are flat, drawn exactingly to scale, and even when 3D they're rendered in cold, axonometric relief—meaning there's no perspective to help car's curves and shapes pop, and none to hide the design's proportional flaws. The mysterious Acura depicted in a recently published Honda patent from Japan may ultimately turn out to be a looker when (or if) it's produced in the metal, but consider that a big "if," if for no other reason than its apparently big snoot.
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Modern Honda cars—including those made by Acura, its luxury brand—all suffer from copious front overhang, an excess of bodywork ahead of their front wheels. It's partially a byproduct of their front-wheel-drive-based architecture. Study the side views of a modern Civic , or Accord , or Integra , or TLX , and they all wear pronounced proboscises. Viewed from other angles, their overhangs appear less egregious, thanks mostly to tried-and-true design tricks like clever angling of the headlights, wrapping the lights around onto the fenders, and the like.
This Acura, which the company reached out to insist is merely a design study of a show car that never saw the light of day, has plenty of those visual tricks going on (the top-down plan view suggests the nose is quite pointed). That's good, because in the dead-side view presented in this patent imagery, the sedan's Pinocchio-length nose is hugely exaggerated. The rest of the profile is quite nice, actually—and highly similar to today's Honda Accord sedan. Check out that windshield angle, the roof pillars, and the alignment of the doors, all of which line up with the Accord.
Between the Accord associations and the apparent scale of this Acura—the wheels seem smaller relative to the overall car than those on, say, the midsize Acura TLX on sale now, and so do the exhaust outlets poking from the rear bumper—this design seems to us like it's for a separate, larger car. Acura used to sell such a vehicle, the RLX , in America, and still offers that sedan elsewhere in the world under the "Legend" name. Could this have been a would-be new-generation RLX/Legend? Perhaps, but Acura's not saying much beyond that it's a few years old and aimed for a concept car that won't go into production.
Still, the styling is appropriately dramatic for a range-topping sedan, what with those full-width lighting signatures front and rear, the new-age Acura grille that's more like a perforated bumper surface (evocative of the pattern on the all-electric Precision concept from 2022), and that epic hood length. It also clearly features some form of internal combustion, given the quartet of exhaust pipes peeking out from the rear bumper.
Intriguingly, the patent filing for this design (which only recently was published after being filed back in 2017) lists the patent for Acura's large Precision sedan concept from way back in 2016 among its references, reinforcing the idea that this was intended as an RLX/Legend successor. (Other references listed on the patent include Mazda's Vision Coupe concept from 2017 , and, strangely, Toyota's current Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle—which came out well after this patent's filing in 2017) This material, too, hints not at a would-be TLX replacement, as some outlets have reported, but something bigger.
Is the RLX even worth resurrecting? The old RLX packed every Acura technology and luxury available at the time , including Super Handling All-Wheel Drive, as well as an adaptation of the NSX supercar's hybrid powertrain on Sport Hybrid iterations (pictured above, in red). It's possible that Acura entertained the notion of bringing the RLX back—after all, if it wanted to replace the same car wearing the Legend badge overseas, it'd have a ready-made large Acura to sell here. The company could even nix the RLX badging and just go with the Legend name it called the RLX overseas, given its recent resurrection of the Integra nameplate here—utilizing the Sport Hybrid's zesty motor layout and combining it with the spicier twin-turbo V-6 engine from the MDX Type S. We're speculating wildly here, of course, and Acura says it's moot, but who knows? It seems like this design study sure was far along...
A lifelong car enthusiast, I stumbled into this line of work essentially by accident after discovering a job posting for an intern position at Car and Driver while at college. My start may have been a compelling alternative to working in a University of Michigan dining hall, but a decade and a half later, here I am reviewing cars; judging our Car, Truck, and Performance Vehicle of the Year contests; and shaping MotorTrend’s daily coverage of the automotive industry.
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