At the 2016 Detroit auto show, Acura rolled out its fantastical Precision concept car, previewing its future exterior design themes in an extreme form. The concept had an interior, but it was just as crazy as the exterior. At the 2016 Los Angeles auto show, Acura is showing something more production-ready (and, frankly, more relevant): the Acura Precision Concept, a vastly toned-down version of the concept car?s design with Acura?s new touchpad-based interface.
The seat buck includes some hardware lifted from the NSX sports car, including the steering wheel, the drive-mode selector knob, and the same insanely comfortable seats. The dual-layer dashboard design was previewed by the concept car but is rendered this time in more producible proportions and covered in black stitched leather. In front of the driver is a 12.3-inch screen that contains primary gauges and other driver-oriented content; on top of the dashboard is another 12.3-inch dual-zone wide infotainment screen. The big news here is Acura?s new interface for the latter display, which is controlled by a slightly concave tray of switchgear  nestled into a soft open-pore wood tray with a padded leather wrist rest beneath the center stack. The largest portion of the tray, measuring about three inches by two inches, is a slightly sunken touchpad that uses ?absolute positioning? to align actions on the touchpad with those in the larger (left side) section of the screen. Touching it lightly with one finger navigates th...