Guaranteed you don't like Acuras nearly as much as Tyson Hugie does

“I collect Acuras.”

More surprising quotes have been spoken (and published) in Hemmings’s world... but not many.

Arriving for the 1986 model year - some 35 years ago now, as the 2021 models roll out - Acura was Honda’s pioneering luxury brand. Pioneering? Certainly. A North America-only upscale nameplate for Hondas that were a little higher up the food chain than the boilerplate Civics and Accords that we were used to, arrived four years before Toyota presented us Lexus, Nissan threw Infiniti our way, and Mazda whispered softly in our ear with the never-to-appear Amati.

Phoenix resident Tyson Hugie doesn’t collect Acuras in the way some people collect old cars, as hulks to be gutted for parts to improve the remaining herd. Nor does he put them on a proverbial pedestal, afraid to touch or move them for fear that their resale value will drop. Instead, he buys 'em nice (high mileage or not), improves them as he drives the hell out of 'em, and will occasionally move them along. In the 20-odd years he’s been driving (Tyson is 38), he’s owned 30 cars, 28 of them Hondas and Acuras. (The other two included a hand-me-down family freebie, and a stick-shifted late-90s Infiniti that he just couldn’t help himself to and almost immediately flipped.) His fleet currently consists of nine Acura models, the majority of which were available in the mid-to-late 1990s.

This unyielding brand loyalty started in much the same way as any of our own brand loyalties began: with personal experience. “When I was 14 and becoming car obsessed, subscribing to magazines and drooling over anything in a showroom in the mid to late 1990s, mom picked up a used 1990 Integra GS 4-door, bright red. It was the first car I remember being present for when she bought it; I was part of the experience. Over time, I helped keep it clean, and I took a lot of pride in helping her maintain it. Maybe because I encouraged it, she owned a series of Acuras: a '93 Legend, a 97 TL, a 2000 RL, and so on. I figured out at an early age what I appreciated, and the brand became ingrained with a sense of nostalgia in my head. Today, buyers seem more concerned about a good warranty or the latest technology, instead of being brand loyal.”

In an era where brand loyalty is largely on its way to the crusher, it’s an intriguing mindset--an unwavering old-school regard for marque preference, but for a marque that barely registers as a blip on many collectors’ radar screens.

This will change in time. In 2018, an Acura Integra Type R sold for more than $63,000. A year later, another of the same model sold for $82,000. That’s not the double-throwdown NSX, the two-seat sports car that told the world that you didn’t need to compromise driveability or quality in a supercar; that’s an Integra, a 2+2 coupe that the company sold by the double-gross back in the late '90s.

But those low-mileage outliers are not the sort that Tyson goes for. The man likes to drive. He averages 45,000 miles a year in his convoy. “Some, I bought with higher miles to begin with; my green ’92 Integra GS-R had 234,000 miles on the odometer to start with, and I’ve only added 20,000 miles in the years I’ve owned it. My 5-speed ’94 Legend Coupe, I bought it used with 95,000 miles on it--and now the odometer reads 573,000 miles.” And that’s after he retired it from daily-driver status--in 2012.

This particular Legend, that rare car that would seem to live up to its name, has brought Tyson to some prominence in the Acura community; his relentless road-trip blogs caught the right eyes at Acura HQ in Torrance, California. In 2012, Tyson crossed his 500,000th mile in a celebratory fete at Acura HQ, became a recognized-yet-unofficial Acura brand ambassador, and was presented with a new (not yet on the market) Acura ILX five-speed for his efforts in presenting the Acura marque in a positive light. This has since become his daily driver. “It’s a 2013; I had it out of warranty by the time its model year was done. By January of 2014, I’d gone 50,000 miles in it.” The odometer currently reads 226,000 and change. Even his NSX shows a 1 as the first digit of its six-digit odometer. Within his fleet, he’s visited 37 of the 49 states he’s able to drive to (including Alaska-twice) and he’s been entertaining shipping quotes to take one of his cars to Hawaii and back to the mainland. (“Just to go around the big island a couple of times, and then home again--if I ever get an inheritance I want to burn,” he joked.)

Tyson’s collection continues to evolve. Not long ago you would have seen a five-cylinder Vigor (or two) in his collection, or perhaps an early Legend or pop-up-light Integra. You can’t say that the cars are getting newer, but his collection is remaining at about a quarter-century old. It was this way half a dozen years ago, when early to mid-1990s cars dominated the fleet, and it remains this way today, with mid-to-late 1990s Acuras in the majority. “I had an ‘aha’ moment a couple of years ago,” Tyson revealed. “The sweet spot for collectability is 25 years. My strategy is to buy these before they get that old, drive them and have fun with them, perform whatever work is required to get it to show level, and by the time I have my fill of it, it’s more than retained it’s value. I don’t know if it’s sheer luck that what I’ve chosen becomes collectible, but there’s a rhythm to it--a sweet spot.” The NSX is a perfect example. “I bought that car nine years ago with 80,000 miles on it for $24,000; I’ve added 30,000 miles since, and today I could sell it for $10,000 [or more] than I bought it for. That’s not why I bought it--I just wanted it, irrespective of future market trends.

“I love these cars, but ... it’s also a form of catch and release. I’ve been offered ten grand or more for each of my GS-Rs; that’s more than double what I paid for each of them. Why not sell? Well, I don’t need the money or space, for one. It’s easy to get caught up in the perpetual revolving door of buying and selling.”

But the regular but slow turnover--never more than one or two cars in a year--prevents Tyson’s collection from being an absolute time capsule, trapped in amber. Rather, he sees his collection as an evolution. “Whatever you collect--stamps, coins, baseball cards, whatever--part of the joy of collecting is that you naturally gravitate toward what you don’t have. Part of the thrill of being a collector is the thrill is in the chase. For example, in 1996, Garnet Red was a one-year-only color on the TL. I’ve been chasing one for a while now. I gotta have it.” He’s found one, and is in the process of replacing a aftermarket stereo head unit with a factory double-DIN head unit. Next on his list to collect: a late '90s 2.3 CL five-speed. “It’s an Accord coupe under the skin. What I’m finding is that the stickshift models have often been ‘fast’n’furioused’ out. They rarely last this long without a sound system, aftermarket intake, that sort of thing.”

And yet even this isn’t a dealbreaker--because despite the dearth of restoration parts available for '90s Acuras (and Hondas, for that matter), Tyson will do his best to return it to factory stock. “I take some weird satisfaction putting a copper Arizona historic license plate on, say, a '92 Integra sedan. You can hear people asking, ‘That’s historic?’ Boomer collectors have this dedicated mindset of, you can’t have a classic car made in the '90s--those plates are only for my ’55 Bel Air! I’m trying to break free from that--to show that historic or classic cars aren’t only pre-1970.”

He’s also finding that, in car shows full of wild paint jobs, foot-wide tires and blinding chrome, sometimes an older car that looks original and new will draw more attention and bigger crowds. “For years, car shows were all about, look at what I did to my car! Now, we can use car shows to show how these cars came from the factory--because it’s probably the only one left!”

Tyson Hugie collects Acuras, and upsets assumptions. Not necessarily in that order.