Our Yearlong Review 2025 Acura Integra Type S Has Been Mostly Bulletproof, With Two Small Exceptions
If you have an Integra Type S and encounter an emissions system and rev-match fault, you aren’t alone.
You must go decades and decades back to some of car magazines’ earliest days to reach the origin point of long-term tests like those MotorTrend has long featured as a staple of its evaluation portfolio. The gist of the concept is elementary yet important: Owning a car for a year, driving it in the real world, and performing any scheduled and other needed maintenance just like any owner would, is inherently a far more thorough and informative method of telling readers—particularly people who are interested in purchasing their own example of the vehicle in question—whether a car is any “good.”
That’s especially so in comparison to the first drive media launch events virtually every carmaker on the planet has organized basically forever. At these events, automakers do their utmost to control the quality of the cars on hand to be driven by journalists, with their event planners carefully plotting drive routes and experiences aimed at highlighting their products’ strengths and, at times, blatantly hiding their weaknesses. For example, if a car’s suspension rides like dog crap over small heaves and bumps, you can be sure the company won’t put journalists behind its wheel on anything but the smoothest roads it can find. This is one reason first drive reports might only tell the beginning of a new model’s story.
What’s the Point?
Everyone who’s performed these year-long tests has encountered some trouble and disappointment along the way; however, automobiles in general have improved so much in the past decade or so that we no longer typically run across many utter disasters, at least not in terms of mechanical reliability and overall user experience. Our yearlong review 2022 Lucid Grand Touring Performance might qualify as an exception, and it was certainly the most troublesome long termer we’ve tested in the past few years, presenting us with several physical and software-related letdowns (our Fisker Ocean probably would’ve given it a run for its money, if it didn’t vanish during the company’s collapse). Then there’s the case of our 2023 Tesla Model Y Long Range that several MT staffers despised, but the reasons behind that were things like design choices, driving dynamics, and build quality rather than mechanical gremlins.
In any case, the good news about our much-liked 2025 Acura Integra Type S long-term test car is that not only has it been a blast to drive for the better part of the past year, it’s also been rock-solid reliable—with only a couple small and quickly rectified problems.
What Were They?
As dedicated MT readers might recall from a previous update, we encountered two strange fault messages on the instrument cluster around the 2,000-mile mark; they informed us of an emissions system problem and said the automatic rev-match function was disabled. A visit to our nearest Acura dealer yielded no real answers; the service advisors told us they hadn’t seen these issues before. “The fuel-level sensor might get confused when fuel sloshes around during aggressive driving, so it may trigger the fault as a precaution,” was all they could offer in addition to clearing the codes under warranty.
However, it turns out we’re not the only ones who’ve encountered these problems. After publication of that earlier update, we received email messages from two MotorTrend readers/Integra Type S owners who said the same thing occurred with their cars. One reported, “I’m really interested to hear what you learn about the codes on the long-term Type S. I got that same thing a couple months ago after an autocross, but hours after the fact, and immediately following a fuel up. My car has more miles than yours did, but the dealer gave me the same story as you got, and similarly, the problem hasn’t popped up since.”
The other chipped in, “I came across your article searching for information about the two fault issues you mentioned, the rev-match and emissions system. I am experiencing the same issues with only 92 miles on the car. It is currently at the dealer getting a new fuel pump/sending unit, tank, filler tube, and other items associated with the fuel line. Service told me that according to the fault code, this is what needs to be done. I was wondering if you had any follow up info from Acura regarding these faults, as I am curious to know if it had any answers.”
