This Acura Legend Coupe Restoration Has Been Over Two Decades in the Making

This car started as a desert-bleached eyesore in someone’s driveway, now it’s on display at an Acura dealer.Photo: Tyson Hugie

For many car enthusiasts, we tend to gravitate towards one brand in particular, often eschewing all others. Sometimes it’s just because those cars are cool, or maybe it’s because we formed an important emotional connection to them at some point, but few of us ever go as far off the deep end for a car brand as Tyson Hugie has for Acura.

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Hugie is a soft-spoken dude who quietly has one of the best collections of factory-fresh ‘90s Acuras (when the brand was arguably at the height of its power) ever. He’s got Integras and even an NSX, but what seems to really spark his passion is the Acura Legend, and it was seemingly one Legend in particular – a 1995 Sherwood Green LS coupe with a manual transmission –that kicked things off for him.

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This specific specimen of Legend is one that he’s been creeping on (in a nice way) for more than two decades now, and a couple of years ago, the car’s owner decided to give Tyson the car for free; only it wasn’t exactly the pristine near-luxury coupe he remembered. Instead, it had been sitting in the Arizona sun for years, slowly dying, with leather and plastic all crumbling to dust and a bunch of mechanical issues, some of which were quite serious, keeping it off the road for years.

Tyson made it his mission to restore this car to the best of his ability, and now, over a year later, he’s done with it. The results are pretty stunning, and while this isn’t a low-mile museum example, the way it presents itself isn’t far off from that, and we get to watch how he got from sun-bleached desert junk to this jewel-tone gem because he documented the process on YouTube.

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Check it out and make sure you watch ‘til the end when he presents the car in its finished state to its long-time original owner. It’s pretty damned heartwarming.