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As Gary Robinson, manager of
Acura Product Planning, puts
it, "We are Honda's performance
brand. That is something we take
very seriously." Yes, even when
developing a hybrid.
By GARY S. VASILASH, Editor-In-Chief
Jon Ikeda, a graduate of Art Center, has been with Honda since 1989. He
recalls that back then, the freshly minted graduate who was likely to take
up a design position with one of the Detroit-based car companies, took a
trip to Japan, which he thought would be a short visit. It wasn't. He ended
up working in Japan, at what was then a fairly new advanced design studio
that Honda had established in Tokyo, for six years.
One of the factors that led him to visit was a curiosity to discover who
it was that was producing vehicles like the early Acuras: the Legend, the
Integra. Another factor was an abiding interest in motor racing, and,
yes, his hosts took him to a circuit with
all-access capability.
That pretty much sealed the deal.
Of that period, Ikeda says, "The
passion, the energy and the vitality were
incredible."
There, he worked on concepts like
the Honda FSX show car and the 1996
production Acura RL.
He moved back to the U.S., taking a
position with Honda R&D; Americas in
Torrance, southwest of downtown L.A.
Ikeda worked there for 15 years, during
which time, among other things, he
was design project leader for the 2001
Civic Coupe and headed up the design
activities for the 2004 Acura TL.
While the 2017 Acura
MDX was due for a refresh,
they took the refresh
rather seriously and
made significant interior
and exterior changes
to the vehicle. And for
this particular version of
that 2017 model, they
made a major change,
as in installing a hybrid
performance powertrain,
thereby creating the MDX
Sport Hybrid.
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AD&P; ∕ JUNE 2017
ACURA