Liking the new
Acura TSX interior is easy. It's comfortable without being plush, sporty without being sparse. Communication between driver and car is, for the most part, open and easy and unabridged.
The front seats are supportive, with enough side bolstering for reasonably rambunctious motoring on twisty roads. The bottom cushion could be deeper, but this is a common shortcoming in today's cars, save for a few, like the BMW 3 Series and new 1 Series with their extendable thigh supports. The front seat passenger still gets shortchanged with no height adjustment, which leaves even taller people feeling as if they're sitting in a hole. The three inches tacked onto the TSX's width went mostly to more padding for side impact protection, but front-seat hip room is up by a solid inch.
The rear seat is more like a bench than twin buckets, and space for the lower extremities is snug, measuring by the tape a mere one-tenth of an inch roomier than the '08. This despite the addition of more than two inches to the '09's overall length and almost an inch and a half to its wheelbase. Rear head restraints adjust for height, which is a plus for its occupants, although that even when at their lowest position they obstruct the visibility out the back window from the inside rear view mirror is a minus. All four doors have dual inside pulls, one horizontal and one angled up, for easy closing by passengers of any stature.
Gauges tell their tales with easy-to-scan graphics and floating needles. The steering wheel sports push buttons and toggles controlling more than a dozen functions, not counting the horn, making it look like it would be just as comfortable in a jet fighter cockpit as in a car. This may be just fine for fighter pilot Walter Mittys who fantasize about mixing it up with the other side's Top Guns, but for the rest of us, who just want to drive the car, it's a bit much. The center stack, however, with either the base sound and navigation system or the optional Technology Package, is one of the more intuitively arranged that we've seen, with large, finger-friendly buttons and a reasonably easy-to-learn multi-function joystick-like knob for the multi-layered information center-cum-map screen. The high-end audio setup does force the relocation of the CD changer down into the bowels of the center stack, where it's not as easily accessed as with the base system, which parks it at the top of the stack, but that's a minor complaint, and one that won't even show up on the technophiles' radar.
Storage is more than adequate. Every door has a molded-in space for a water bottle, the front doors room for the proverbial map, although given a navigation system is standard, think guidebook or CDs. The glove box has a partitioned nook for the owner's manual and associated booklets, leaving the rest for smallish flat items. The front center console hosts a bi-level storage bin and two cup holders. The fold-down center armrest has two more. There's a bin in the front footwells on each side of what once was called the transmission hump.
Trunk space is down from the '08, by between more than one-half a square foot to a couple tenths of a square foot, primarily because the navigation system becomes standard for '09 and the trunk houses some of its hardware. The usable space, however, is awkwardly shaped by the need to accommodate the rear suspension components, which is just as well, as the opening itself isn't particularly commodious. next page