Article Highlights:

• The Integra we wanted won’t ever exist
• Why Acura can’t make a 2-door Integra
• Acura actually wanted to make a coupe ‘Teggy

It’s funny how our collective memory is distilled down to very specific things. Iron Man is now inextricably linked to one specific generation of Audi R8, despite the rest being just as good, if not better. Mclaren is known for making insanely fast road cars despite decades of Formula 1 history. And the Acura Integra? It’s remembered for one single model. Unfortunately, we didn’t get it, and we never will.

The Acura Integra is back with more doors

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That model is, of course, the 2-door Acura Integra Type R. We got precious few of them here in the States, and the car is very much JDM royalty in the mind of many an enthusiast. Then the new car rolled around. When it debuted, the internet went up in arms, all due to that collective distillation of history. This isn’t the Integra we remembered, dammit. Then, Acura told us we’d never have one.

Recently, Acura brand officer Jon Ikeda told Road and Track why we’d never get the rose-tinted car we all wanted. In short: people just won’t buy it. The market is ruled by crossovers, and that’s just a fact. Ikeda told R&T that “the numbers just don’t play out.” Put another way, it’s either a 5-door Civic Si-based Acura or nothing.

We can’t have the Integra of yesteryear

However, the worst part is just how close we came to getting it. Remember the Civic Si coupe? Honda axed the model back in 2019 due to poor sales. Care to guess why? The coupe body of course. The sales numbers, like the projections for the new Acura, “just don’t play out.” Obviously, as we all know by now, the Integra is based on the Civic Si. Which, thanks to poor sales, now only comes in a 5-door liftback configuration. See where this is going?

Consumers have almost entirely abandoned coupes, especially at this price point. Those looking to buy a new Acura model like this, as Ikeda points out, want their car to do everything. That’s because it’s largely young buyers looking to get into a new Integra. Those buyers likely don’t have the income to drop on a less practical coupe model when they need something more usable. And without that existing Civic coupe platform to lay the Acura body over, the 2-door would be more pricey than the 5-door, largely eliminating the point of the Acura Integra.

How much will the new Integra cost?

And the point of the new model is largely similar to that of the Honda Civic Si. The 2023 ‘Teggy is supposed to be an affordable, quick, stick-shift liftback to do it all for around $30,000. Adding that expensive coupe body makes that a tougher sell to the accountants. Sure, Acura could have just gone and done it, but that could make the new model a sales flop. Let’s just hope the new model more than makes up for the controversy that has surrounded it thus far.