1989 Acura Integra LS

The U.S. auto market is peculiar in its rigidly-stratified brand price tiers. Non-car-nerd Americans are always surprised when they go overseas and encounter Mercedes-Benz taxicabs with low-rent upholstery and manual transmissions because Mercedes made the decision long ago to only export luxury-trimmed models to North America.

When Honda decided to broach the upper end of the U.S. car market in the mid Eighties, they therefore decided to create a separate brand identity for the bucks-up cars, sold elsewhere as Hondas, and thus was born Acura.

The flagship car for the marque was the Legend luxury sedan, freshly launched in Japan and Honda's first V-6 powered production car. But you can't have a dealership selling just one car, especially when that car is an expensive sedan, so Honda also decided to import the sporty Honda Quint Integra, an upscale Civic derivative, as the Acura Integra. This fleshed out the model lineup at Acura dealers with sporty 3- and 5-door hot hatches.

That first generation Integra was propelled by an undersquare 1.6L DOHC 16V D16A1, initially rated at 113 SAE net horsepower.  Along with a light mid-cycle nose job for the '88 model year, the D16A1 got a compression ratio bump, lighter con rods, an an electronic distributor advance, which combined to boost output to 118 horses. The front turn signals on this one tell us it's an '88 or '89, and the Laguna Gold paint narrows it to a 1989 model. 

Car and Driver tested a 1986 Integra LS model, which ran zero-to-sixty in 8.8 seconds and managed a 16.2 quarter mile at 82mph. It topped out at 117, circled the skidpad at 0.78g, and stopped from 70 in 194 feet. Price as tested was $12,334, which comes to $34,750 in today's coin. Curb weight was only 2,396 pounds and the car had a 96.5" wheelbase and 168.5" overall length, making it about the same size and weight as a 2016 Honda Fit.

The one in the picture was snapped with a Ricoh GR Digital II in February of 2017.