2002 Acura RSX Type S

Do you suffer from commuteritis? Are you a sporting person trapped in a sensible car: Honda Civic, Mitsubishi Mirage, or Toyota Corolla? Do you wish you could afford a second car: a sports car you could take out on the weekends and really fly?

You need coupe therapy.

There are a few good cars that can do it all: deliver 25 or 30 mpg getting you to and from work and offer plenty of cargo space, but also provide a decidedly sporty driving experience. Economical sport coupes are now better than ever, packing powerful yet frugal and clean-burning engines, sport-tuned chassis, and contemporary and aggressive sheetmetal that says "I like cars and I like driving." Enter the brand-new '02 Acura RSX Type-S and current Mitsubishi Eclipse GT and Toyota Celica GT-S.

When we last compared the sportiest coupes from Acura and Toyota (May 2000), the 195-hp Integra Type-R beat the 180-hp Celica GT-S by the narrowest of margins. We'd said, "The Celica's chassis was remarkably well balanced, and the brakes were extremely capable," but "it lacked the race-bred cornering poise so obvious in the Acura." Of the Integra Type-R, we'd praised "how accurate the steering was, how flat and controlled it was through corners, and how strongly it accelerated over a relatively broad rpm range." With the recent release of the Integra's replacement, the '02 Acura RSX (packing 200 hp in Type-S form), the stage was set for a rematch. Because Western culture prefers groups of three, we invited another Japanese coupe, the Mitsubishi Eclipse GT, as it's easily the best seller of the three and has never gone head to head with either the Celica or RSX (or Integra) in an MT comparo. Besides, by contrast, the Eclipse makes a Celica-beating, RSX-equaling 200 hp, with a SOHC V-6 rather than the high-winding DOHC I-4s of the other two. Also, though our test car was a coupe, only the Eclipse is available as a convertible.

All three coupes are available in standard and high-performance models: The 2.0L/160-hp I-4 RSX and 200-hp Type-S, the 2.4L/147-hp I-4 Eclipse RS/GS and 3.0L/200-hp V-6 GT, and the 1.8L/140-hp I-4 Celica GT and 180-hp GT-S. For this comparison test on racetrack and public road, we asked for the high-output best-handling version of each car: Type-S, GT, and GT-S.

Both the Celica and Eclipse were reintroduced as all-new models in 2000 and both experienced marked sales increases from the previous, last-generation year. Eclipse sales leapt 15 percent, while Celica sales skyrocketed by over 300 percent. Yet the Mitsubishi still outsold the trailing Toyota by almost 20,000 units in 2000, with a whopping 71,307 combined sales of coupes and convertibles.

Meanwhile, Integra sales had been declining steadily and amounted to just 25,975 units in year 2000. With the RSX, Acura hopes to increase its market share by at least 5000 cars, which would still rank it third behind the other two. For perspective, remember that Chevrolet put them all to shame with over 272,122 Cavalier sales in that same year.

Though the new car is marketed as the '02 "Honda Integra" everywhere but here, the RSX name sits better with the alphabet-soup nomenclature that's come to identify Acura in the U.S. This newest Acura also borrows and improves upon several corporate ideas and mechanical systems. First and foremost, the RSX's transversely mounted 2.0L inline-four is loosely based on the powerplant that mounts longitudinally in the Honda S2000. Yet the RSX engine is oriented differently from the previous Integra's; it's been spun around 180 to put the exhaust manifold at the rear of the engine compartment, closer to the exhaust catalyst. As a result, the new engine spins in the opposite direction, now clockwise. Tuners take note.