Was driving in cruise control 75 mph on the highway, and slowed down to avoid debris on the road. Upon trying to accelerate I felt no power and the car felt like it was in neutral. Thinking I put the car in neutral by mistake I looked at the gearshift and sure enough I was still in D5.......I then looked at the dashboard to see the D5 light blinking, then the engine light came on along with tcs light. I pulled into the breakdown lane turned off the car and smelled an awful smell and the car began smoking heavily.

When I turned on the car again to try to drive no gear would work couldn't go forward or back. I bought the car with 90,000 miles and it was already on it's 2nd transmission so I thought this one would've lasted but lo and behold it didn't. I was quoted over $4,000 to replace and the car at the time was worth less than that, so I had to part with it. Great car if not for the transmission issue.

Had the first transmission failure at 65,000 miles which was covered under Acura's warranty extension. Failed again after 57,000 additional miles and Acura refused to cover or assist with the cost. Why would a manufacturer replace a faulty product with a product that was of even less quality? Makes me question whether I want another Honda product after having them for 30 yrs. The range in costs to rebuild or replace with a rebuilt transmission ranged from &3000 to $6000 and that wasn't even looking at a dealer service. I can only imagine the cost of the dealer to replace the transmission.

I bought the car as pre-owned from dealer in 2004 with about 21,000 miles, and was not aware of the historical issue about the transmission. About a couple of years later, I did a search on Wikipedia (see below) and Google to find out that was a design flaw and a recall to do inspection for excessive heat from 3rd gear. They found no problems with my transmission at the time (~60K), but they installed a jet-pack kit (under the recall) to prevent overheating of the transmission. I thought that was OK, but now that my warranty has expired, my transmission broke at 89K. I was SO UPSET because Acura did not want to do any "goodwill" repair on it. Some blogs states that some people had this transmission fixed for 3 times within 100K miles.

"The automatic transmission in many of these cars were also defective. In response to the recurring problem, the manufacturer extended the warranty covering the transmission to 109,000 miles (175,400 km) or 7.75 years for all 99 to 02 and 03 partial per VIN. Acura dealers replace the transmissions under warranty. Transmissions replaced prior to March 2005 usually fail again. Transmissions replaced on 3/2005 and later include a redesigned 3rd gear clutch pack reported to fix the problem.

Several models in the 2001–2003 years were the subject of a safety recall in July 2009 for injuries reported by faulty driver's side airbag inflators. In February 2010, another recall was issued for the same problem."