To their credit, Honda and its luxury brand Acura have been pretty good so far in their treatment of legacy, enthusiast nameplates. The modern Civic Type R is about as good as a hot hatch gets, the second-gen NSX was definitely a mid-engined supercar and definitely eXperimental, and the new Integra, despite some initial backlash, is indeed pretty darn close in formula to what the Integra originally was.
This winning streak has seemingly come to a screeching halt, however, with Acura’s announcement today that it’s going to bring the RSX back as—yup, you guessed it—an electric compact crossover.
For those unfamiliar, the O.G. Acura RSX was a two-door sport compact sold in the early 2000s and essentially a rebadged DC5 Integra. It came with a K20, a manual, and a dope Type S version. It was a proper, red-blooded, front-engine, front-drive spocom in an era when spocoms were all the rage—I distinctly remember racing one I had fitted a ridiculous body kit on in Need for Speed: Underground 2.
You know what car is very unlikely to find itself featured in a Need for Speed game anytime soon? The new Acura RSX.
Sitting on Honda’s in-house 0 Series EV platform and using Asimo OS, the new RSX electric SUV (a painful string of words to see typed out, by the way) will be built in Ohio starting later this year. In a press release, Acura assistant VP of sales Mike Langel says “The nameplate pays homage to the Acura RSX with its coupe-like silhouette,” but let’s be real, this thing has less in common with the old RSX than the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross does with that one green car you see in the opening minutes of The Fast and the Furious.
What pains me most about this latest bastardization of a beloved sports car nameplate is that the new Honda Prelude was, like, right there. Believe it or not, Honda is preparing to revive a sport compact icon of its own in late 2025 and it’s doing so with the new Prelude: a low-slung, two-door coupe likely powered by the Civic Hybrid powertrain, with a new S+ Shift mode. A simply rebadged, rebodied Acura version of that would’ve been a much more appropriate car to bring the RSX name back with. Yeah, it would’ve been a hybrid with a CVT, but those are actually pretty good when Honda makes ’em, and at least it would’ve been a sport compact.
It was right there, you guys. We could’ve had a real, revived RSX. But no, Acura, you chose to do the Eclipse Cross thing. You chose to do an Acura Mach-E. An Acura Capri. After everything we’ve been through, apparently we’re still doing this in 2025.
All that being said, I’m aware that it’s highly unlikely Acura would have opted to build a proper two-door gas RSX in lieu of this car. I’m also aware of where the industry’s bread is buttered these days—Ford sold more Mustang Mach-Es than “real” Mustangs in 2024. The thought sequence behind this new Acura was very likely “We’re doing an electric crossover, let’s call it an RSX” rather than the other way around: “We’re bringing back the RSX, let’s make it an electric crossover.” In fact, Acura confirmed in a statement to The Drive that was indeed how it happened.
“In the case of Integra and Prelude, those models were developed from day one as ‘revivals’ of historic models,” an Acura spokesperson told The Drive. “While not retro, both aim to continue the core values previously offered by those models in today’s lineup.
“For the all-electric RSX, we developed an entirely new model—the first original BEV on Honda’s new global platform—with a focus on meeting a market opportunity and delivering on Acura’s Precision Crafted Performance brand promise. The RSX name was selected as one that both compliments the similarly sized (ICE) RDX, while delivering emotional styling, performance and a coupe-like silhouette.”
But in that scenario, Acura: call it something else. RDX Coupe, EDX, anything else.
Slapping the RSX name on an electric crossover, though? Who is this serving? The folks nerdy and car-y enough to remember and appreciate the RSX won’t be fooled. And people looking for a cool, aspirational EV with An Name attached to it won’t find that much additional intrigue in “RSX.” The original RSX was cool, sure, but in the context of the mainstream lexicon, it ain’t no Mustang.
Compared with other slopey electric crossovers, the new Acura RSX doesn’t look bad. It’s nicely proportioned, the taillight bar makes it look like a Porsche, and judging from my own brief seat time in Honda’s 0 Series SUV prototype, it’ll probably be quite nice to drive.
But it isn’t an RSX.
Got a tip or question for the author about the new RSX? You can reach him here: chris.tsui@thedrive.com