I trekked to my favorite O’Reilly Auto Parts store and told them what I needed. They produced a little box containing a complicated looking bulb that had a price tag of $89.99 (and that’s after I used my discount membership card). With tax, that total came to $96.54. For that much, the bulb ought to have a mirror ball effect that plays disco music on command, but whatever. I sucked it up and paid for the bulb. Then I got back to the car and set to work, thinking it would be a five minute job. ….Nope. Turns out, not only are these Xenon HID bulbs over five times as expensive as halogen bulbs, they’re also about five times as hard to get into place and get to stay into place than the normal halogen bulbs I’m used to dealing with. I ended up going at it with a two hand approach after opening the hood disassembling the cowls and covers over the headlight assembly. So, I had one arm twisted up into the wheel well reaching up through the opening there, and the other reaching down from the open hood while I stood there looking like I was humping the car’s fender. It was not a flattering position to be in.
There were a couple of times where I thought I broke the super expensive bulb I just bought because it’s such a tight and awkward working area, but after nearly an hour and a lot of foul language on my part, I got the bulb to stay in place and put everything back together.
The whole experience got me thinking about cars now and how headlight signature is becoming such a big deal. It always has been good to be able to recognize certain car’s light signatures. In fact, it used to be invaluable to be able to pick out a Ford Crown Victoria’s headlight signature at a distance before the cop inside the interceptor had a chance to tag you with their radar gun. More than that, these days, it’s beyond avoiding tickets. We’re now into functional but highly stylistic light array signatures. Audi made a pretty big splash with their LED “brows” outlining their headlamp enclosures a few years ago, and before them, there was BMW with its halo lights.
When I run my Mustang with its driving lights and regular headlights on, even in the dark of night where you can’t see the form of the car itself, the lights, their placement and spacing between them creates an unmistakable signature that it’s a Mustang GT coming your way. So, as we move from old stuff like enclosed headlights that you buy as a unit for around $12-20 like on my little old MG,
to Halogen, like my Mustang, to Xenon HID like the Lincoln MKZ in today’s tale of pocketbook woe, and on to LED lights enhanced with fancy lenses, where will it stop? There has to be a limit to what people are willing to dish out to replace a light bulb, right? I mean, it’s bad enough that the cars sporting these fancy light arrays tend to be expensive (though the tech does trickle down to entry level stuff in a matter of just a few years usually), now we’re talking a hundred dollars just for the bulb, not to mention having to put up with the frustration of digging around to access where to install it or worse yet, paying somebody else to deal with that frustration for you! It will probably stop once it hits a critically expensive dollar amount that even people with lots of disposable income gawk at as unreasonable.
This blog has clearly established that I’m a cheap skate. I like to do stuff myself because I don’t like to spend money I don’t have to, and plus I figure I get a bit of an education out of the fracas once it’s all said and done… win-win situation for all involved, sort of. Still, I think the auto industry is already creeping across the line of unreasonable cost for a simple but vital functional aspect of their products: lighting. To illustrate that point, we’re going to look at a car that has been touting its pretty new light array as a selling point and a feature of their marketing imagery.
This is the 2014 Acura RLX. It features “Jewel Eye” LED headlights. They’re supposed to be brighter than HID (High Intensity Discharge) or halogen lights and last longer, too. On low beam setting, there are 8 LEDs casting their light through 16 lenses that are each aimed to span a wide surface, creating a field of light in front of the car that won’t blind oncoming traffic.
Well, that sounds cool, right? They’re really pretty, aren’t they? And they’re supposed to last a long time, so that will save money too, right? Just pray you don’t ding one up those beautiful light arrays or have to replace an LED bulb in one of them because it will drain a significant amount of money from your bank account to fix it.
I called over to O’Reilly to ask about replacement bulbs. They were surprised that a car that new might need them so soon until I explained I was trying to do a cost calculation for upkeep. They didn’t even have the part in their system but the guy I talked to has aftermarket LED lights on his own vehicle and estimated that each bulb costs about $100 to replace. So, eight low beam bulbs times $100 = $800 to replace all of them at once. We won’t even talk about the additional high beam bulbs, nor will we factor in the two LED fog light bulbs. Now, I’m not an Acura owner, but I can’t imagine anybody happily shoveling over $800 just for the parts to replace a burned out headlight… Actually nobody can, because that’s not even what they actually cost. That $800 figure lets Acura RLX owners off too easy, it would seem. Here’s why.
Because O’Reilly didn’t have an exact part number or price to quote me, I called over to a local Acura dealership and asked to talk to somebody in their parts department. The guy I spoke to said you can’t just replace an individual bulb. If one of the LEDs burns out, you have to replace the entire headlight enclosure. That doesn’t bode well for the checkbook, does it?
Let’s face this head on, shall we? How much is it for the headlight enclosure? I asked. Brace yourselves for his answer:
“$2,100”
“For each enclosure?” I gaped.
“Apiece.” he replied.
So, if you had to replace both headlight enclosures on a 2014 Acura RLX, it would cost you $4,200 (plus tax, and more for installation if you’re not doing it yourself). You could buy a drivable used car with working headlights for that much money!
I anticipate that in the coming years, we’re going to see a lot of RLXs driving the streets with one or more LEDs burned out in that gorgeous Jewel Eye headlight display, owing to car owners unwillingness to splash out that kind of money for a headlight. The Jewel Eye feature will eventually turn into more of a wink, I bet, before anybody spends that kind of money on a factory light show mounted to the front end of their car.
But.. If you buy a brand new Acura RLX, you should have a few years before you need to worry about burning out headlights, and in that time, you’ll have a car that’s pretty high tech. You’ll pay dearly for it, of course, but still, you’ll have the latest in high tech motoring.
The base RLX comes with a starting price of $48,450 and comes with 310 HP courtesy of a 3.5L V6. It has a tunes suspension and, something pretty neat; All Wheel Steering, along with those fancy Jewel Eye headlights (a $4200 value!) and a 6 speed sport shift transmission. It also comes with “AcuraLink” which is Acura’s version of mobile connectivity for their vehicles. Of the versions of the RLX one can build and price at present time on Acura’s web site, the highest appointed model one can make right now is the RLX with the Advance package, which carries a steep starting price of $60,450.
The car we've been looking at today is not one you can build and price on Acura’s site, though. It’s the yet-to-come RLX Sport Hybrid AWD that I saw at the auto show this past winter. The RLX SH-AWD (quite the collection of letters, eh? Yet another reason why I dislike when cars are given initials rather than actual names). You can count on it to feature a higher starting price than that $60,450 model, though, and not just because of those fancy headlights, either. I’d guess the RLX SH-AWD will carry a starting MSRP of between $65,000-$75,000. For that amount, you’ll get that same 3.5L V6, only this one has a trio of little friends to help out. There are three electric motors assisting that 3.5L V6. One in the front and a pair of them in the rear of the car. That grouping of power plants bumps this RLX up to 377 total HP. To turn all that power into propulsion, this RLX has a 7 speed dual clutch transmission with an electronic gear selector. On top of that, it has All Wheel Drive and All Wheel Steering. All this while achieving 30MPG.
Here’s my take on the Acural RLX. I like the idea of the RLX SH-AWD. I like the idea of being the first owner of one and I bet that for the first two or three years, it will be awesome. After that, this car becomes a hot potato that you want to trade in, sell, or somehow get off your hands before something major (or in this case, minor, like headlights burning out) goes wrong. All that neat stuff: the All Wheel Steering, the three electric motors, the dual clutch 7 speed tranny… after some wear and tear, they’re no longer great attributes -they’re liabilities… financial calamity just waiting to happen. The RLX is great for people who can afford to buy a brand new one and trade it on another brand new one in a couple years. Until we can determine what the shelf life of these fancy components is, I would not recommend buying a used one without an extended bumper to bumper warranty.
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