The Legend put the company on the map in the high-end luxury car world, with the 2-door Legend coupe, which Acura unveiled in 1987, even earning Car of the Year honors from MotorTrend. Accolades aside, when Acura rolled out the 2nd Gen Legend in 1991, the design team leaned further into luxury, going bigger and sleeker with the vehicle’s interiors and exteriors, while also beefing things up under the hood.
By the early ’90s, however, the Legend faced more competition, as Nissan and Toyota each made a splash in the luxury market with vehicles from their high-end subsidiaries Infinity and Lexus, respectively. Though the 2nd Gen Legends arrived with some upgrades, they still lagged behind those competitors in power and sheer opulence.
While Acura tried to keep pace with regular upgrades to the 2nd Gen Legend, Lexus and Infiniti continued to lap the vehicle in style, power, and luxury. By 1995, the writing was on the wall for the Legend and Acura ultimately decided to pull the plug on the model altogether. The Legend was replaced in 1996 with the Acura RL, which the company continued making until 2020, along with some significantly speedier models. Though the Legend has now been gone longer than it ever was in production, it remains a standout among Acura’s, ahem, legendary lineup of luxury automobiles.
[Featured image by Thomas Bettinger via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 3.0]
