Mountain Wheels: Acura’s ZDX Type S is a curious, powerful electric vehicle


Andy Stonehouse/Courtesy photo
The jump to vehicle electrification should not necessarily be an overnight proposition, given the 140-plus years of experiments in building electric cars. But, somewhere along the way, many companies simply did not allocate any resources into building electric vehicles, and have found themselves shut out of market where EVs are now commonplace.
That’s a preamble to help explain two sequential reviews of both the new 2024 Acura ZDX and its sister electric vehicle, the Honda Prologue, both of which I drove back-to-back in a week.
As previously mentioned at our summertime drive event, both the Acura and Honda were co-developed with General Motors and are based heavily on its new Chevrolet Blazer EV, to fast-track the Japanese companies actually having an EV for the 2024 marketplace.
I’ll leave the physical under-the-hood comparisons to the upcoming Prologue column, but mention that the Acura is perhaps a little better at concealing its GM underpinnings than the Honda, as the ZDX is one very unusual vehicle. Just as its predecessor namesake, a short-lived SUV, was as well, more than a decade ago.
When the global technology snafu last week left me stranded in Los Angeles, I was very happy to have the $74,500 Type S edition of the ZDX for an unplanned, no-format, three-day drive, though that included mostly parking lot-styled conditions on Southern California summer weekend freeways and beach community highways.
Like other performance-oriented editions of Acura’s other vehicles, including the MDX SUV, the Type S vastly reconfigures the shared Prologue platform and a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup to provide nearly 500 electric horsepower and 544 pound-feet of torque. The latter number is more than a 100 lb-ft improvement over the ZDX’s A-Spec model, or, vastly superior to the 358 HP/324 lb-ft single-motor base motor. A full charge will also get it about 278 miles of range.
Small the ZDX (and Prologue) are not, with this model weighing close to 6,000 pounds, so you need a special circumstance – besides Southern California’s plentiful freeway on-ramps – to see what that power means. I had literally one chance to do that, passing slower traffic during a transit of the twisty Orange County-to-Riverside County Ortega Highway. And yes, ZDX Type S will totally go like hell, but tends to feel alarmingly ungrounded at those triple-digit speeds.
Maybe that’s thanks to its ultra-gigantic 22-inch wheels and optional high-performance Continental summer tires. I’d say it was mostly due to ZDX’s sheer size and a perhaps Chevrolet-styled lack of 500-horsepower finesse when fully wrung out, even with the addition of six-piston Brembo brakes, higher-performance adaptive dampers and a very active air suspension system.
That combination does otherwise result in a universally smooth ride during slower drives, even over banged-up urban concrete, and contributed to mostly impressive handling on those mountain curves, though the heft is always felt.
At first glance, ZDX seems bigger than the MDX, probably because its 122-inch wheelbase is a full eight inches longer. However, it’s smaller on every other proportion, including its 198-inch overall length, a still very broad-feeling 77-inch width, and an almost two-and-a-half-inch shorter 64-inch roofline.
Oh yes, the roofline. Which, if you had not noticed or read about already, has been rendered for the ZDX in a squared-off, almost station-wagon styled gloss black, with a thick chrome detail line running through the middle of it.
Most American drivers will innately shiver and connect that look – riding on top of a two-tone body, mine in the outrageous gold/red metallic flake Tiger Eye Pearl color – with a Cadillac hearse. I feared something lost in translation from Japan, but Acura says the design was all done in Southern California. Whatever the reason, it’s a pretty major oversight that gives the car a very odd combination of styling, especially with its already imposing face and tail.
The longer roof and bigger rear glass did give it much better visibility than the Prologue, and it benefits from about 29 cubic feet of rear cargo room, or a full 62 cubic feet with rear seats dropped. Rear seating is also quite copious, with a flat floor and more than 39 inches of rear legroom.
As a premium model of the already premium Acura brand, the ZDX Type S is indeed loaded with upgrades. These include a more tasteful and leathery interior with suede inserts on the seats, a fantastic Bang and Olufsen stereo system, customizable ambient lighting, plus a slightly Acura-ized rendition of General Motors’ hands-free Super Cruise system. I tried that out on the actually moving homeward stretch on the 405 to LAX and, like on a GM vehicle, it’s a freaky but effective tool.
A lot of the vehicle, as I’ll mention in the next review, is quite perceptibly and unapologetically 100% GM parts and design, which Acura (and Honda) are hoping their potential drivers will have had no experience with whatsoever. Having driven an incredibly classy and absolutely Acura MDX just before the ZDX, the two vehicles are about as different as physically possible. But, as a legitimate EV with a flourish of Acura touches, it’s going to appeal to someone.
Andy Stonehouse’s column “Mountain Wheels” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Golden. Contact him at [email protected].
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