When you want your product to give off a sense of “old-worldness” and “craftsmanship,” you tell everyone that it is “handmade” or “handbuilt.” This marketing scheme has worked on me multiple times, just check my shoe rack. There’s no doubt that Acura hopes buyers will feel similarly about the 2020 PMC Edition, which the automaker says is also handbuilt.
The TLX PMC Edition is made at the loftily named Performance Manufacturing Center, according to a company , by the same people who build the NSX. The special TLX has unique Valencia Red Pearl paint, black wheels, a black roof, black door handles and a body-colored grille surround. It still offers the 3.5-liter V6 and all-wheel drive, combining the options that come with the Advance Package with the sportiness of the TLX A-Spec.
Acura will only build 360 PMC Edition TLXs, and each one has a serial plaque inside that tells you the car’s designation. It’s not clear what is exactly meant by “hand-assembly process,” as it could mean a lot of things, but after that’s all done, Acura says that each PMC TLX gets the same quality control process as the NSX, which includes a dyno check, paint inspection, rough-road simulations and a water leak test. Then they are shipped off to the dealers via an enclosed, single-car carrier.
Each one will cost $50,945, which is about $5,000 more than the highest-spec TLX you can currently buy. And I’m not going to lie, I’m real skeptical that people will take to these things. Are there such great TLX enthusiasts out there that they’d jump at a more expensive TLX that is built by the people who build the NSX? Like, does anyone care? That much?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this one’s a collector car for the ages. You should buy one and prove me wrong. That’ll show me.