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I was recently lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you see it) to test a 2026 Acura Integra Type S on Bridgestone Blizzak winter tires for a week. “Gee, I sure hope we get some weather to test this setup properly,” I told myself when I got the car. Welp, Kuraokami must have heard me, because my little corner of the country got absolutely slammed with snow over the next few days.

After hours of shoveling, I dug this blazing blue ITS out of Frosty’s death grip and went for a rip to see how it held up against the elements.

I enjoyed the last-gen FK8 Honda Civic Type R immensely on backroads—more than at the track, while the 2024 Acura Integra Type S gave me one of my all-time favorite driving experiences. Whipping it around the Möbius-strip roads in the highlands outside Santa Barbara when that car came out, man, it was an absolute blast. The car felt perfect.

The current DE5 Integra Type S hasn’t really changed since that drive a few years ago; it’s still the same great front-drive platform, hosting a venerable K20C8 2.0-liter DOHC VTEC turbo engine that claims 320 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque, paired to a close-ratio six-speed manual transmission.

Revisiting the ITS a few years later has led me to refine my opinions of the vehicle. It’s still, essentially, an extremely well-executed sport compact car with an exceptional manual transmission and great handling. But looking around the cockpit this time, the ambiance felt a lot more “compact” than “sport.” And “luxury” barely even registers. It’s not that the car feels cheap, but it’s almost aggressively unfancy.

As far as cold-weather creature comforts inside, you can get a heated steering wheel ($485 option) if you skip the Alcantara steering wheel, and an OEM engine block heater ($92) if you live somewhere particularly frigid. You might also want to skip the very cool $209 titanium shift knob—even the top of the aluminum one on this test car felt intensely cold in the morning! The cabin heater itself is adequate, and the heated seats work nicely with three warmth settings. Sadly, the seats are really not all that comfortable. I find this surprising, because Acura’s people made a big deal of how they toiled over seat design, and the seats in the last-gen Civic Type R were genuinely great.

Having a basic cockpit is not inherently a problem for the ITS. In some ways, a Spartan interior makes sense for the performance variant of a normie car like this. But at the prices Acura wants for these—list is about $55,000—you should understand that there are many more luxe alternatives.

As for the drive itself, on snow-drenched roads with winter tires, the results were kind of a mixed bag. And yes, we were out in much fouler weather than you see in these photos; I was not about to leave the protection of the heated seat in the worst of the storm to snap more photos.

Initially, the car felt good. At what I considered a reasonable speed for the conditions (occasionally below the limit), I felt excellent traction, turning, gentle acceleration, and polite braking. The ITS has a good balance of responsiveness and comfort for what it is, but it certainly rides a little stiffer than your average Acura. That hurt a little more on the potholed wintry roads of New York than it did on the smooth, sweeping drives of California.

At a more spirited pace, I still felt fairly confident that I wouldn’t be swallowed into the outside of a corner by understeer. Following the most basic rules of winter driving, the car was willing to press on through powder. Handling still felt good when braking and steering were considered with appropriate care.

Hard-charging into boost and VTEC territory, things fell apart a little bit. The Blizzak tires, as much as I love them, spun into oblivion in first gear in a launch. I’d get to about 3,000 rpm, and then the tach would just surge as the front tires lost traction. And that was on dry road patches—I wasn’t willing to exhibit such behavior in the worst of the weather. If I were really going for it, which I tried a few times, I could get wheelspin in second, too.

That made me a little gun-shy about pushing the limits of cornering cohesion, but in a big, empty parking lot, I prodded the car a bit and felt mostly good. For a 320-hp front-drive car, it felt pretty composed as I flung it around. But if you go searching for understeer, you’ll find it.

While acceleration traction was probably the most disappointing, winter braking on Blizzaks was solid. The ITS has some mean-business Brembo four-piston monobloc aluminum calipers clamping 13.8-inch rotors on the front axle, and even in low traction, the Bridgestone tires helped the car reel itself in quickly and consistently in a straight line, which I appreciated immensely.

There’s a lot to like about the Integra Type S. Exterior styling’s still great, and it drives delightfully well, especially if you appreciate shifting your own gears. Its snow performance was OK. Fine enough for daily driving—you can confidently own one of these in a climate that gets snow, but it’s far from the snow-beast status of something like an all-wheel drive Audi RS3 or Subaru WRX. And a longer, more mature look at the car has tempered my initial gaga reaction. The ITS is a great sport compact car, it’s just kind of annoyingly expensive for how it feels.

The Double Apex Blue Pearl paint job did look sweet in the snow, though. Swipe through here to see the rest of my pics of the car in cold conditions:

Acura provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

As the editor of InsideEVs, I don’t follow the gas-car market as closely as I once did. My colleagues at Motor1 will tell me all the time about new internal-combustion vehicles they’re testing, and my reaction is often: “That’s great! What is that?” But even I was surprised to learn that Acura would be temporarily discontinuing its top-selling RDX crossover. 

Now, dealers are mad that they’re losing such an important car at a time when demand for its upcoming RSX electric model may not be as strong as it would’ve been with $7,500 tax credits in place. And they may have a point this time. 

The must-read morning roundup of EV and tech news.

That kicks off this edition of Critical Materials, our morning roundup of industry and technology news. Also on deck today: Porsche’s China woes continue, and this whole “America needs to own Greenland” thing is bad for auto stocks. Let’s dig in. 

25%: Acura’s Dealers Are Mad About An EV Shift. They May Have A Point

Photo by: Acura

I certainly don’t have strong feelings for the RDX. I can’t even recall the last time I drove one. But it is (or was) the kind of competitive, mass-market crossover that pays the bills for other things, as every automaker needs amid this expensive, rocky shift to electrification, advanced software and autonomy.

But the RDX is going on a two-year hiatus before becoming a hybrid model. In the meantime, Acura is launching a smaller gas crossover, the ADX, and the electric RSX—one of the first cars on Honda’s new in-house EV platform, replacing the General Motors-made ZDX that was discontinued last year.

(A lot of three-letter names, I know. I don’t come up with this stuff.)

The point is, the RSX’s tech makes it a very big deal, especially for Honda and Acura, which are late to the game on electrification. Yet as Automotive News reports, dealers are unhappy because they’re without a mass-appealing crossover at a very uncertain time for EVs without the $7,500 tax credit:

“To cancel [RDX] production on such short notice just leaves us hanging,” said Brian Benstock, vice president at Paragon Acura in New York City.

Benstock attributed the predicament to Acura’s “stubborn” pursuit of EVs until recently. Dealers repeatedly had urged a hybrid focus and a diversified powertrain approach, he said.

Benstock estimates the MDX and ADX will recapture just 20 percent of RDX volume, given the distinct segments. “There’s a certain demand for the RDX, and when you take it away,” those customers are going to look at alternatives in that segment, he said.

“Acura chose a different strategy—one that was politically correct but wrong for the market,” Benstock said. “Now dealers are paying the price.”

Now, we know that very few traditional car dealers are excited about EVs. They were among the loudest voices pushing back against what they called an “EV mandate” in the Biden years. But they have kind of a point here: at a time of regulatory whiplash and changing consumer demand, how does a car company get the timing “right”?

In the future, most automakers in the U.S. will likely have a mix of gas, hybrid and electric options; with the Trump administration rolling back strict fuel economy rules, car companies aren’t under the gun to deliver an all-electric future anymore. But that hardly means EV demand is going away. It is expected to pick up as battery costs fall in the latter part of this decade, and besides, a post-Trump White House or Congress could put an EV push back in play.

Still, the car companies don’t have infinite capital to play with. It’s not ideal for them to invest in so many powertrains at once, and to always be “right” about what consumers are going to want.

They may have more EV or hybrid options in the pipeline, but “coming soon” doesn’t help your business right now: “You can’t sell customers on ‘two years from now.’ Nobody’s going to wait for that truck,” dealer Benstock told AN. And he’s not wrong.

The next few years will be a wild time as all of these companies figure out what the future looks like—or don’t.

50%: Porsche’s China Headaches Got Worse In 2025

Photo by: Porsche

I still think that after all these years, the Porsche Taycan is one of the best EVs you can buy. But buyers in China aren’t going for it like they used to, because in their market, they can probably do better—and for cheaper, too.

Porsche has been struggling mightily in what used to be its largest market for years now, amid a wider shift toward homegrown brands over the “foreign” competitors. While Porsche had a record year in the U.S. in 2025 (albeit narrowly), the China downturn stung hard. Here’s the Wall Street Journal with more:

Automakers have faced intense competition in China, sparking a prolonged price war as rivals cut prices to win customers, while a lengthy property market slump and economic-growth concerns in the country has also led to buyers pulling back on luxury spending.

“Key reasons for the decline remain the challenging market conditions, particularly in the luxury segment, and the very intense competition in the Chinese market, especially for all-electric models,” the company said.

Other German brands, including Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, have all recently reported that the challenging Chinese market hit demand last year.

In the meantime, and like other automakers, Porsche is betting big on North America to offset China’s losses. But as that Acura example shows, it’s hard to get things right here, too.

75%: Autos Stocks Fall Amid This Whole ‘Greenland’ Thing

Photo by: Toyota Norway

As Americans utter a collective “Uhhhh…” and Europeans flex militarily as President Donald Trump commits to taking control of the self-governing territory of Greenland, the economic fallout is already starting to spread.

That included automotive stocks on Monday, particularly as Trump threatens stiff new tariffs on European nations. Here’s CNBC with more:

Germany’s Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz Group stood between 2.5% to 3% lower, while Milan-listed shares of Ferrari dipped around 2.2%, notching a 52-week low. Germany’s Porsche fell 3.2% on the news.

Milan-listed shares of Stellanti, which owns household names including Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, Chrysler, and Peugeot, were last seen 1.8% lower.

The moves come shortly after Trump on Saturday pledged to impose 10% tariffs on the U.K., Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland by Feb. 1, ramping up his push to make Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory, part of the United States.

Analysts believe the auto industry—already rocked by Trump’s tariffs and regulatory changes in the U.S.—is uniquely vulnerable to these new levies due to its heavily interconnected supply chains. If any car company thought 2026 would be easier than 2025, they’re in for a rude awakening.

100%: How Do Automakers Get Powertrains Right In 2026?

Photo by: Acura

What is the “right” mix of powertrains for any automaker? Hybrid, gas, electric, EREV—there’s a lot going on right now. Or should they waste zero time in going electric, treating this current moment as a kind of speed bump? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com

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