Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Acura CL has a six-speed manual which is good. It also has almost 300K on the clock, which is not so good. Let’s see if its price tag balances out those two extremes.
If you’re an Angeleno, then you’re most likely familiar with Angelyne, the pink Corvette-driving self-proclaimed and self promoting sex-kitten singer who prowls the town. You’d also know that these days Angelyne is well past her prime for the kitschy persona she puts forth.
That seeming was also the case for yesterday’s 1980 Volkswagen Scirocco which was oh so nice but perhaps caught in that limbo land between classic and just plain out of tune with the times owing to its lack of modern safety and performance. It’s price didn’t do it any favors either, and in the end the combination dropped the elderly VW in a 62% Crack Pipe loss. Too bad, so sad.
Here we have another coupe, albeit one that’s far more modern—actually hailing from this century—and featuring such modernities as in-dash navigation and a six-speed stick. Those features must have made the car a real joy to drive because someone has put a healthy 278,000 miles worth of use on this 2003 Acura CL to enjoy them.
The CL was introduced in 1997 and is notable for being the first Acura-branded model to be built in Honda’s Marysville Ohio plant. A mid-sized coupé, the CL is based on the Honda Accord platform and initially offered both four and six cylinder motivation.
This one is a second generation car which only came with one engine option in the U.S.—that being Honda’s 3.2-litre V6. In standard dress that engine pumped out 225-bhp. This being the performance edged Type S, it called to arms a total of 260 ponies. Further, this being an ’03 it also comes with the somewhat rare but more desirable (the CL automatics have a rep for failures) six-speed manual.
The car looks to be in pretty nice shape for its monumental mileage, and as you might expect, not all of the components on the car have been along for the entire ride. The ad notes that the current owner has added the last 100K to the count, and over the course of his ownership the car has seen a new timing belt at 192K, a clutch and flywheel at that same time, struts and control arms at 222K, and plugs just 4K ago. Maintenance is said to have been well-documented, and the car is claimed to “run great.”
Is it all happiness in whoville however? Well no, as you might expect, there are some flies in the ointment monkeying up a few of the wrenches. The ad notes that the clearcoat is giving up the ghost in places, and there are two (at least) spots of rust on the body. Both of those however, are said to be minimal.
Perhaps more problematic is the driver’s seat, the electric motor for which is also on strike. Better hope you’re the same pant size as the seller until you could get that one fixed. The CD player (what’s that?) is also no longer working.
Other than that this CL has seemed to survived its miles with aplomb. The leather and plastic inside seems to have held up admirably, and despite the paint problems, the exterior presents pretty well too, at least in the pics. The 17-inch Type S looks to have very minimal curb rash and the headlights are still relatively cloud-free. By the way, props to the seller for his most excellent car ad description-fu
Ah, but that mileage. Car makers these days seem to build in obsolescence making their cars impractical to maintain at high mileage or age. This Acura evidences some of that—the navigation has only 2013 data as apparently that’s the latest made for the model—but the question remains, how much longer does this car have to give?
More importantly, could that remaining life—be it 2 or 10 years—be worth $3,000? Before you consider that, consider this turbo’d car for almost three-times as much. Yikes, right?
What do you think, is this miles-accumulating Acura worth $3,000 as presented in its ad? Or, is this a CL that has you saying see ya’ later?
You decide!
Kalamazoo MI Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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