Acura Of Memphis
2611 Ridgeway RdMemphis,TN38119Sales: 800-230-1385
- Service: 877-552-8050
- Parts: 800-365-3696
Vehicle Reviews
2007 Acura MDX
All-new, more powerful, more fuel-efficient, more luxurious. edited by Jim McCraw
Walk Around
The 2007 Acura MDX exterior and interior were designed entirely in America, at Honda's facilities in Los Angeles and Ohio, with input from design centers in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Milan, Italy. It's supposed to look like a Wally 118 motor yacht, but it still looks like an SUV to us.
The formerly tasty grille has been turned into a metal-filled hole that looks like a battering ram, and the entire side has been rearranged with a new side window arrangement that suggests more sportiness than the original, with converging sheetmetal lines built into the design. Both headlamps and taillamps are heavily sculpted, and there is not one ounce of plastic cladding or side trim, in the same design vein as the original. Very clean, but susceptible to parking lot slams and door dings. The wheel openings, especially the fronts, are very pronounced, for a more sporty stance. Overall, we'd give it an 8.7 for exterior design, remembering that it's essentially a big cargo box on wheels.
This second-generation MDX is more than two inches longer in length and wheelbase than the previous model, with a wider track and a lower stance. The MDX is now larger than its competitors.
Acura's first power tailgate system is available on the MDX with the entertainment package. It can be operated either from the remote key fob, from a button on the driver's door panel, or from a button located inside the tailgate. The location of the tailgate's motor is the D pillar, not the roof, which yields more headroom for the third-row occupants. The tailgate can also be operated manually.
Interior
2007 Acura MDX
The Acura MDX has a completely new interior decor for 2007. It's designed with driver-centric instrumentation and displays. Acura calls this area "mission headquarters." The beautiful new three-spoke brushed-aluminum steering wheel alone has nine control systems mounted on it for cruise control, telephone, entertainment systems, and information displays.
The new dashboard has a high-mounted large navigation screen in the heavily sculpted panel, with all other switches subservient to the big nav center, and carefully orchestrated into about one square foot of dashboard real estate. The two-line readout display for the climate control and entertainment systems uses large segmented figures and is very easy to read and interpret. The compact main instrument pod is housed in one deeply tunneled nacelle, with four even deeper nacelles for the main instruments. If you look at them long enough, they appear to be staring back at you, with bright white-on-black markings and red needles tracking your progress.
The seating is arranged as two front, two center, and two rear, with a third seat available in the second row. There is scant rear legroom in the third row for adults; the third row is strictly for kids. In spatial terms, the interior has 142.2 cubic feet of passenger space. There's 15 cubic feet of cargo behind the third seat, 43 cubic feet with the third row seats folded into the floor, and 83.5 cubic feet with all seats down. Translation: The MDX is competitive in the class.
