I am immensely taken by the 2023 Acura Integra, in particular the $45,050 Elite A-Spec version with its slick six-speed manual gearbox. Here’s the problem: I am not the kind of buyer Acura needs to grow the brand. I am a baby boomer who grew up embracing street rods the way today’s pudgy millennials love their smart phones.

Racy cabin, but mediocre seats.

I don’t understand this strategy because it caters to the past at time when the world’s biggest car markets are turning to EVs (electric vehicles). Bear with me as I explain.

You see, Acura, Honda’s premium brand, continues to engage with the shrinking performance and the tuner community. The young tuner community, dotted with the likes of Daijiro “Dai” Yoshihara, Sara Choi and Coco Zurita.

Acura has gone so far as to champion this trio’s efforts at creating “personal interpretations” of the Integra. They’ve done some wonderful work, the kind of stuff my generation has been known to drool over.

A quick overview:

Acura Integra Project – Dai Yoshihara

Integra Project Sara Choi.

Yoshihara, who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, delivered a “Built by Evasive Motorsports” Integra with a Spoon Sports exhaust, BBS REV7 forged wheels, Yokohama racing slicks, a Stoptech ST-40 Big Brake Kit, Sparco Kevlar racing seats and six-point harness and more. If you understand and appreciate what I just wrote, your heart is racing

Then there’s Sara Choi, a Hawaiian tuner who began playing around in a Honolulu shop at just 15. Choi sees herself as an artist and a drifter. Her project Integra turned out to be a wide-body with a GReddy Performance intercooler, Sports Touring Cat-Back Exhaust, and a wide-body kit design designed by herself and Walter Kim. An eye-grabber.

BMXer and X-Games veteran Coco Zarita, meantime, has his Built by Autotuned Integra. It boasts a coilover suspension, carbon bodywork and a custom wrap designed by artist Andreas Wennevold.

Acura Integra Project – Coco Zarita

Even if you hate cars, you surely can appreciate the novel beauty in all three. Yet, let’s be honest: the tuner world is tiny and shrinking. It’s a niche within a niche. You don’t see Tesla playing there, and while Tesla is turning into a struggling EV maker being slowly sold out by its biggest shareholder, Elon Musk, electric vehicles are absolutely the future.

Which brings me to a recent Bloomberg headline: The World’s Love Affair with Japanese Cars is Souring. The article points to a November Nascar Cup race where front-row spectators watched a plane sponsored by Public Citizen fly past, pulling a banner that read: “Want exciting? Drive Electric. Want boring? Drive Toyota.”

The article went on to argue that Japanese automakers as a group are missing the shift to EVs. Toyota, Honda, Nissan and others are falling behind as “the auto industry undergoes its biggest transformation in a generation,” notes the Bloomberg piece. There is truth in that.

I thought about all this as a climbed down into my A-Spec tester. This is a terrific five-door liftback — by, let’s say, 2010 standards. I love it, absolutely love it: tasty design with a useful hatchback configuration and its highly entertaining from behind the wheel — responsive  and quick, yet also comfortable and refined. There lots and lots of fancy features, too.

A gem for baby boomer drivers who grew up loving street rods and such.

But it’s not an EV, or even a plug-in hybrid. This car feels wonderfully retro in an industry that’s being transformed by batteries and plugs. Conceptually, it’s a mistake. But as a baby boomer, I’d say it’s a gem.

Start with the mill under the aluminum hood. It’s a smallish (1.5-litre), factory-turbocharged four-banger that spins up 200 horsepower. The top-line Elite A-Spec MT is the only car in its class available with a manual gearbox. It’s a delight, delivering quick, sharp shifts, and there is even software that does the throttle blip; no heel-toeing required. No wonder it’s been named one of WardsAuto’s “10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems.”

It’s torquey, too, hitting full stride at 1,800 rpm and delivering punch all the way through to peak power at 6,000 rpm. There is a growling coiled exhaust system that delivers an audible lift to your behind-the-wheel experience.

Sure, the Integra is a front-driver with MacPherson struts up front, but the rubber is low-profile (P235/40R18) and the tuning is thoughtfully robust, despite the limitations of a strut layout. The “sport-tuned suspension” comes with a standard Adaptive Damper System to give the driver precise control of damper settings.

The cabin design focuses on the driver, with a 10.2-inch digital instrument cluster, head-up display and a nine-inch touchscreen. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are wirelessly integrated; there is a wireless charging platform at the base of the centre console; and, the 16-speaker ELS STUDIO 3D audio delivers an above average aural experience.

Now, the sorta-sporty buckets up front are a slight disappointment — not very well padded. But the touchscreen is high up, in the driver’s eyeline, and the software responds quickly and reliably, which alone is triumph for Honda/Acura. There is room up front for six-footers, but there is almost no legroom in the rear if those sixers are sitting comfortably.

Here’s what baffles me. The automotive world is racing to put plug-in cars into the hands of a growing number of enthusiastic buyers. Bloomberg data reports that 15% of new cars sold in Germany in the UK and more than 20% in China were electric through three quarters of 2022. The trend in North America is similar, though the actual share is not so gaudy.

Meanwhile, U.S. market share of the six top Japanese automakers fell 6-8 per cent in 2022, from 2021. Analysts suggest that’s because the Japanese lag the industry in electrified and electrifying technologies.

“Consumers moving to electric vehicles in 2022 are largely doing so from Toyota and Honda—brands which have been unable to keep their internal combustion owners loyal until their own brands begin to participate more significantly in the EV transition,” S&P Global Mobility said in recent report, quoted by Bloomberg.

And yet…

And yet, Acura plans to push an even sexier Integra into showrooms this summer: the 2024 Integra Type S with a 300-hp, 2.0-litre turbocharged four, six-speed gearbox and limited slip. Acura is clearly committed spending scarce resources on engaging a small fan base. This might make sense for image purposes, but certainly not for growth and profits.

This feels like a flawed strategy here in 2023, even as I praise the excellence of the gas-powered Integra with a stick. Hmm.

The world is moving to cars with plugs; it’s time the big Japanese automakers got the message. Sadly, for boomers like me.