I've had at least one Acura in my driveway for 28 years. Most of my cars have had Michelin tires. In about a million miles of driving, I've never had a sidewall blowout until I bought this Acura RLX. It is easily the worst riding, most poorly designed Acura I have ever owned, not to mention the most expensive. One night, I hit a pothole on an entrance ramp at 30mph, cutting the sidewall on the OEM Michelin Primacy on the front drivers side. Michelin punted saying it was a road hazard and I should try to avoid potholes. Neither Acura or the selling dealership would help, with both pointing the finger of blame at Michelin. $375 and a lot of anger and anxiety later, I was on the road again.

Fast forward four months, coasting into a traffic light at about 20mph, I hit what looked like a modest pothole and I heard metal hit macadam. Sure enough, at 15,000 miles I had another sidewall blowout on the passenger rear tire. I scrambled to get a new tire before a planned roadtrip. Michelin shared about 1/2 the cost, but I was still out use of the car for three days, plus another $175.

Two days later, turning a corner onto an entrance ramp to the highway four hours from home, another pothole, another clang of metal on the road and another blowout. This time Michelin only charged me $80 to replace the front passenger tire.

What are the odds of driving more than 35 years without ever having a tire issue and then having three on the same car within a few thousand miles. Even on a smooth road (few and far between), I'm forever dodging manholes, expansion joints, anything that looks like it might be a pothole. I read in the last few days that Acura moved the suspension on this car to soften the ride. They failed. It rides like a school bus and the dispersion of weight on a moderately low profile tire with an oversized 19 in rim is an engineering failure that makes the car completely unreliable.

This week I planned to trade it at a huge loss for a new 2017 MDX and learned that Acura bumped the wheel size on that vehicle up to 20 inches and gave it low profile tires also. Check that one off my list of options.