2010 Acura RDX Tech

The RDX is aging only okay, I'd say. As David Zenlea points out, the interior is not exactly plush, and the navigation system interface is not great. I'm especially put off by our particular test vehicle because it's front-wheel drive, not all-wheel drive. When you're selling a premium crossover, to my mind all-wheel drive should be standard. Hit the accelerator when you're at an intersection in a $36,000 crossover, and you really don't want torque steer. The lack of all-wheel drive was exacerbated during the time we had the RDX because we had a lot of fresh snow in Ann Arbor. On the plus side, I was struck this morning, when I opened the center console that's between the front seats, to see how absolutely huge it is. It's easily big enough for a laptop, and there are two flip-down trays mounted about two-thirds of the way down into the console cavity that allow you to, effectively, raise the floor of the bin. So you can store some stuff at the bottom, flip down the little trays, and then pile in even more stuff into your double-layer bin. Clever storage solutions like this make a vehicle easier to live with on a daily basis. We've got the typical Acura cockpit here, with the alien-head steering wheel, the somewhat inscrutable array of buttons for climate and sound, and attractive blue-trimmed gauges. As for the turbocharged four-cylinder engine, it's not impressing me as much as it did when it debuted: it sounds okay but it lacks linear response. Joe DeMatio, Deputy Editor