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I still have a 2005 Acura TL, which was the first car that had Bluetooth, built-in satellite navigation, voice commands, DVD-Audio, solar-sensing climate control, etc., etc., etc. some cars at that time had one or two of these features, but the TL had everything in one package. It felt like a spaceship at the time.

The funny thing is, even though that was 20 years ago some of those functions worked better than anything similar does today. Especially the navigation system and the voice commands. That system was built by Alpine, and I still haven’t seen a built-in system (not counting things like CarPlay) that comes close today. I also have a 2021 Honda CR-V, and I never use voice commands on it, because it forces you to memorize exact syntax, and you have to work your way through menus, verbally, in stages. The 2005 TL, by comparison, lets you use variations on the expected commands, and speak relatively naturally. You don’t have to memorize every word to get it to work. It was way ahead of its time.

And that old TL also had a physical button for every function. So anything you wanted to do had more than one way to do it (touchscreen, voice commands, physical controls), letting you choose what worked best for you. The voice commands were fun at first, but aside from a couple that were better because they let you keep your eyes on the road, most were quickly ignored in favor of physical controls because the real buttons and knobs were just way faster. That car got some criticism in the press for its complex dash, filled with physical controls, but you didn’t need to use them if you didn’t want to. Everything had redundant options for controlling it.

The other thing that I love about that car is that after driving the 4-cylinder CR-V around (and it’s a great car for what it is), I get back in the old TL and am always surprised by how much more power it has. I really miss that VTEC V-6. About 220,000 miles and it still runs like new.