Very fun daily driver (Type-S)

POWER (Type-S)
Compared to the average 4-banger, the engine rocks. Power delivery is very smooth and linear. Passing at any speed is predictable and confidence inspiring. If you are used to a six or eight cylinder engine, it will take some getting used to. If you’re willing to wind it out, it will put a grin on your face. Its hard to argue with the fuel economy and power available. This car gives you the best of both worlds, great mileage, and plenty of power.

HANDLING (Type-S)
Very firm ride, takes corners like it’s on rails, but rail-road tracks will rattle your fillings loose. Tracks ruts in the road pretty bad, but that is probably due to the 55-series high-performance tires that I purchased the car used with. All season 55-series tires may track the a little less…but then you sacrifice performance. You’re choice.

ROAD NOISE / STEREO(Type-S)
The car is very noisy at highway speeds. Definitely need to crank the volume on the Bose stereo to hear it well when you are cruising. Again this may be due to the high-performance tires that are on it. I’m sure you can buy quieter tires.

The Bose stereo has pretty good sound, but if you like to listen to music with any real base (not just rap) you will need a sub. The Bose sub sounds like it only goes down to about 60Hz.

COMFORT (Type-S)
The seats are quite firm but comfortable. When you get in the car, it is more like you are wrapping the car around you. Skinny folk may slide around a bit on the leather seats during spirited driving, but the side bolstering is quite functional. I’m about 6’ 170lbs, and fit quite nicely, but someone with just a little more width would fit more snugly in the deep bucket seats.

It would be nice to have a pitch control on the driver seat, rather than a height adjuster that also varies the pitch slightly. At 6’ tall, I sit with the seat at the lowest height, and the pitch is just about perfect. Shorter drivers might not like the pitch of the seat if they have to crank it up very much. Lumbar support is fully adjustable and very comfortable, as well as the standard seat-back tilt.

The climate control in this car works GREAT. On cold mornings you may need to adjust the controls until the interior temperature stabilizes where you want it, but once the interior gets where you want it, the automatic settings maintain the cabin temperature very well without blowing air where you don’t want it.

RELIABILITY (Type-S)
Some people have had problems with the synchros in second and/or third gear grinding or being “notchy.” I just bought the car with about 67k miles on it, and don’t have any problems that I can’t blame on my own driving. First gear is very short, and if you wind it out and try to slam it in second, it will feel a little notchy, but why wind out first gear anyway?

Drag racing may cause you grief, but in normal spirited driving, I usually only use second through fourth gears anyway. I’ve had third gear grind on me a couple times, but both times were due to me not solidly pushing the shifter into gear, which would happen in ANY manual tranny.

Overall, I haven’t had the car long enough to comment on long term reliability, but as I said, it already has about 67k miles on it, and is still running very strong.
As far as I know, the previous owner changed the oil regularly at Acura’s recommended 10k mile schedule, but hasn’t done any other maintenance to it. I plan on doing a post 60k mile maintenance on it at 70k, and shouldn’t need to do much else besides oil changes until 90k. Like most modern cars, a full tune-up and maintenance session will be due around 110k or so.

CONCLUSION
This car is a blast to drive. It gets great fuel economy, plenty of power for spirited driving, great handling, and reasonably comfortable. I bought this car for a daily commuter that I could look forward to driving every day, and I think it fits that bill perfectly.