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What is an Acura anyway?
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A marketing device, that's what.
Back in the early '80s, The four major Japanese manufacturers, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and (briefly) Mazda decided to enter the high-end market and compete with Mercedes and BMW.

They faced a unique problem in North America, where their marketing studies indicated that Japanese brands had very much an "economy car" image, unlike elsewhere in the world. They were worried that a high-end Japanese car with an "economy" nameplate would not be taken seriously by the American buyer.

The answer to their concerns was to create a separate brand for their new high-end vehicles, and to position those brands as upmarket right from the start. Honda created Acura, Toyota begat Lexus, and Nissan's entry was Infiniti.

The first Acuras appeared in North American dealer showrooms for the 1986 model year. More Honda information here, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda#Company_history

Acuras are simply Honda models with a different nameplate. They are based on the same Civic and Accord platforms that underpin all other Honda-made vehicles. Acura models are sold as Hondas everywhere but North America and Japan.

The name "Acura", by the way, is a Latin word that is the origin for the English word "accurate". The Acura logo is a Honda "H" squished together at the top to form an "A", while at the same time is intended to resemble a set of machinist's calipers, evoking images of precision.

Oh, and the pronunciation? It's AK-you-rah (emphasis on the first A). Too many people say: Uh-CURE-ah, which isn't correct.

A little bit of non-Honda trivia here: Mazda was the only major Japanese maker to eventually decide against starting a separate "luxury" nameplate (the name would have been Amati). They did go as far as to begin developing a strategy, and models that would be sold under such a brand, but ended up cancelling the whole thing before production started. The only model that survived from that doomed project became the Mazda Millenia.