Acura’s CA Design Studio Officially Opens

Acura’s new $15 million Design Studio in Torrance, California is now officially open for business, signaling a new determination by Honda to differentiate and promote its luxury brand. Acura often gets lost in the swirl these days, even though it was the first Japanese luxury brand to set up in U.S., launching in 1986 and thus predating Lexus and Infiniti by a good three years.

Acuras have been designed at Honda’s Design Studio in Los Angeles as well as back in Japan until now, but many feel the brand has never fully lived up to its potential, with cool, sporting Japanese DNA as its theme. Maybe now that will start to change. The state-of-the-art Acura Design Studio brings new independence and a goal “to create emotional designs that create a strong and distinctive image for Acura products.”

The studio’s most celebrated mission right now is to craft the V-10 powered Acura Advanced Sports Car Concept—better known as the next NSX—the next development of which will appear at October’s Tokyo Motor Show looking very different.