2010 Acura Rl Technology Package & Awd on 2040-cars

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Acura dealer association nabs retiring pitcher Mariano Rivera for New York spot

Mariano Rivera, considered one of Major League Baseball's best relief and closing pitchers, bought an Acura when he debuted in the major leagues in 1995, and has owned nothing but Acuras since. So it was only natural for the New York Acura Dealers group to strike up a partnership. The fruits of the deal can be seen in the latest New York Acura commercial, called "Legends," which stars Rivera and Acuras new and old. It's narrated by actor Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri in HBO's The Sopranos.
"The spots are a nod to Acura's history and the years it overlapped with Mariano's career," says Scott Rodgers, chief creative officer at Tier10, the ad agency that developed the campaign's concept. With the "Legends" campaign, Rivera and the New York Acura Dealers continue a partnership that has provided $800,000 to the pitcher's charity, the Mariano Rivera Foundation.
The hardest part of the commercial was was finding the cars to star in it, according to Douglas Sonders, co-founder of 8112 Studios, the production company that shot the commercial. "Social media saved the day for us," he says. "After days of cold calls and e-mails to all of our contacts, we ended up sourcing everything we needed in 24 hours after asking our online contacts for assistance."

Acura puts on display of mechanical horsepower in new ad

Originally forged with a brand identity based on luxury, sportiness and practicality, Acura has spent the last decade or so struggling with its image. The sporting credibility suffered a mighty blow with the loss of cars like the Integra, RSX and NSX, and recent years have seen the Japanese company attempting to recast itself as a technology leader.
All of that makes this latest Acura commercial, Let The Race Begin, even more difficult to understand, metaphorically speaking. The horsepower-horse race 'theme' certainly isn't difficult to fathom, with mecca-equine versions of popular luxury brands filling the screen. But the choice to make Acura's filly a flesh-and-blood creation seems odd, for the high-tech theme. Acura as "thoroughbred apart from the rest of the field" seems to be the rough message here, though we're not sure we're buying it. We're also not sure we're comfortable with how much these ponies reminded us of a certain off-putting robotic dog...
Looks expensive, at any rate. Watch the robot ponies run for yourself, below.

2013 Acura ZDX

What Is, What Could Have Been, And What May Yet Be
History is largely unkind to losers. That's true in the world of politics and sports, and it follows on with a few caveats in the realm of automobiles.
In terms of cars, historic losers tend to be remembered in one of two broad ways. Every once in a while, unsuccessful or oddball models actually make reputational gains after some time away from the new-car marketplace. I consider the Saab 9-2X one of the recent poster children for this group; a car that moved like molasses on dealer lots in the mid-2000s but has morphed into a sort of hard-to-find, used gem in recent years. More often, though, that which was unloved when new remains unloved with tens or hundreds of thousands of miles on the odometer. Pontiac's seriously misunderstood Aztek has king status here (despite the wailings of oddball fan clubs across the nation), so much so that invoking "Aztek" as a pejorative stopped being pithy about a dozen years ago.