Is This the Nicest Acura Legend Left?

With under 40,000 miles, this one-owner Legend deserves a long look.

One of our favorite Hondas has always been the Legend, sold as an Acura here in the States. While the first generation Legend was never intended as a performance car, the second generation model served as a test bed for parts of the NSX program. The 3.2 liter V6 offered impressive performance for its day, while offering the refinement you’d expect from a luxury car, with traditional Honda reliability. Also, they longitudinally mounted the engine to improve handling dynamics, which is wild for a front-wheel drive car.

Unfortunately, as is the way of the world, most Legends were passed from owner to owner, used up and eventually thrown out. While finding a clean Legend isn’t impossible, it’s quite an undertaking in this day and age. What he have here, found on Craigslist in Cleveland, Ohio, is probably the nicest example we’ve seen in many years.

ALSO SEE: Is It a Bad Idea to Buy a Cheap NSX?

With just 38,503 miles on the odometer, this Legend is truly a time capsule back to Honda’s good old days. The maroon over tan color combo may not evoke a performance image, but it certainly suits the Legend’s luxurious image.

The tan carpets are remarkably stain-free, and the two-tone black and tan dash and door panels appear free of cracks. The two-tone appearance reminds us of those trailblazing early days of Japanese luxury, where wood veneer was as absent in most cockpits as a senior on skip day.

While we’d certainly prefer a coupe with a manual transmission, beggars can’t be choosers, especially in the salt-ridden Rust Belt. Its Midwestern provenance makes its condition even more shocking, and we’re thankful to its careful original owner for preserving this piece of Honda history.

While its $8,300 asking price will raise several eyebrows, we have to imagine that there’s at least one Honda enthusiast who has been looking for an opportunity just like this. We can only hope that they give this lovely Legend a home as good as its last one. Besides, if it’s good enough for Han Solo, how bad can it be?

Cameron Vanderhorst

Cam VanDerHorst has been a contributor to Internet Brands' Auto Group sites for over three years, with his byline appearing on Ford Truck Enthusiasts, Corvette Forum, JK Forum, and Harley-Davidson Forums, among others. In that time, he's also contributed to Autoweek, The Drive, and Scale Auto Magazine.
He bought his first car at age 14 -- a 1978 Ford Mustang II -- and since then he’s amassed an impressive and diverse collection of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, including a 1996 Ford Mustang SVT Mystic Cobra (#683) and a classic air-cooled Porsche 911.
In addition to writing about cars and wrenching on them in his spare time, he enjoys playing music (drums and ukulele), building model cars, and tending to his chickens.
You can follow Cam, his cars, his bikes, and his chickens at @camvanderhorst on Instagram.
When he's not busy working on his Harley-Davidson bike, the vastly experienced writer has covered an array of features, reviews, how-tos, op-eds and news stories for Internet Brands' Auto Group and is also a co-founder and co-host of the popular podcast Cammed & Tubbed.

Check him out on Instagram at: Camvanderhorst.

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