My last car was an 07 tC. It was a great car except for getting around poorly in the snow, which may have just been because of my tires. Ford Focus is one ugly car, seriously. I mean first class ugly and every domestic vehicle I've sat in feels cheap. The buttons, the finishing, etc. CHeap.
ILX I think is a great car if you do not want a large luxury car. I wanted a small car. I wanted a luxury car. I knew of few other options for this price range. I looked at MC C-Class and Lexus IS and the ILX was significantly less in price but still had everything I wanted.
See that's just a red flag to me. Yes, there are cheap vehicles, vehicles that feel cheap, vehicles with poor, mediocre, good, or excellent reliability, etc. It just so happens that they come from every region. When people say things like 'everything from Japan', 'all domestic vehicles', 'all german cars', etc, it's a giveaway that someone is giving in to confirmation bias.
I have a '12 TC 6MT. Overall it is an okay vehicle, but it's certainly nothing to go crazy about. It gets horrendous fuel economy for an i4, the motor is aggravating with a 6250 redline that makes it feel like a small truck, the 18" rims are utterly unnecessary, the seats don't have much in the way of adjustment, there is some extremely rough/hard plastic all over : the armrest in particular is made of stone, lol. As for 'quality', it's certainly not quite up to par with the current-gen Focus. It's not all bad. The washer fluid container easily takes in an entire gallon, the hatch opens very wide and moves smoothly, it handles decently, the shift action is smooth if not very sporty, the stock Pioneer stereo is pretty good really. But the major problems : severe rattles from the plastic covers inside the hatch (that cover the pistons for the lifts), and horrible visibility when backing up, they're definitely more than a minor annoyance.
The TC to begin with was a re-work of the Toyota Avensis, and was never intended to be a coupe, which resulted in kind of a hodgepodge design that isn't even as sporty as it pretends to be. Say what you will about the Civic, but the Si is a bit more of a legit performance vehicle, even if it's gone soft over the years.
Anyway, there is no logic to someone blanket condemning or praising entire regions of vehicle origin as a catch-all. Things are fluid, some models are great, some brands have more good models than others, some models get outclassed over time, some motor/tranny configurations are poor/bad even in good models, it's just way too granular, and when I hear something like 'all domestic vehicles feel cheap', it's a giveaway that that person doesn't know what they're talking about. Either they all feel cheap because you have it in your brain and you're subconsciously altering your reality to fit your preconceptions, or you're lying. I say the exact same thing to people who condemn all Korean cars as bad, or all German vehicles as unreliable. It's just ignorant to make such blanket statements.
In particular :
http://www.caranddriver.com/compari...-ex-comparison-test-2012-ford-focus-se-page-3
"And were crazy about the Focuss interior. Its soft-touch plastics are grained to look as if a cow leaned on them. The finish is far superior to the Civics hard, rice-paperfinish dashboard."
As for your personal choice of the little Acura, I'm sure it will do well for you a long time. I don't think compact 'lux' cars make a ton of sense when they're reskins of economy cars, but it's probably still reliable and efficient, so there's that.