Acura went "a little overboard" with its beak-like grille, admits the brand's new design chief.
It may be the single most consistently derided design feature for any brand on the market in recent years, but while the new head of Acura design admits the maker went “overboard,” the Japanese luxury brand won’t entirely abandon “the beak.”
That’s the derisive term that critics routinely used to describe the chrome, V-shaped shield that dominates the face of most recent Acura models, such as the TL sedan and MDX crossover. The distinctive feature has been toned down slightly on the maker’s latest additions, including the all-new ILX, however.
“We concede that we went a little overboard at some points,” conceded Toshinobu Minami, the new design director for Honda’s luxury brand, in an interview with Automotive News. He blamed this styling mis-cue on some “pretty bad feedback” the maker got after introducing what Acura then described as its “keen edge” styling theme in 2008.
The Acura NSX supercar concept maintains a toned-down version of the distinctive chrome grille..
“But we are not going to buckle,” Minami stressed, insisting that the much toned-down version of the chrome grille detail will remain in use. It remains, in downsized form, on both the ILX and Acura’s new flagship RLX model.
“There hasn’t been that great of a change, but maybe people have gotten used to it,” Minami insisted. “There may be small evolutions here or there in details.”
The 44-year-old Minami was chosen to head Acura design last September and given a mandate by Honda President Takanobu Ito to inject more excitement and energy into the brand. The designer was already well into the development of the new NSX supercar project, which he led.
The new NSX prototype, which debuted at the Detroit Auto Show last January, has received plenty of press and mostly raves. But critics lament that the production model won’t hit the road until 2014 and, in the meantime, Acura still is erring on the conservative side, overall. While the new ILX has gotten generally favorable reviews its design was generally not what won it praise.
Officials are clearly trying to weed out that “bad feedback” to better understand what potential buyers want from Acura. But it’s pretty clear that even if it remains one of the brand’s cues, the “beak” will be a less prominent than it has been in recent years.