In 1996, the replacement for the Acura Legend was introduced as the Acura 3.5RL. Known internally as "KA9", officially, RL originally stood for "Road Luxury."[4] Acura dropped the Legend moniker because market research showed that consumers knew Acura products by their model names, "Legend" and "Integra", and did not necessarily associate the names with the manufacturer, Acura.[5][6] In an effort to associate the model with the manufacturer, Acura changed the model names of its offerings to alpha-numeric designators used by many manufacturers at the time. 3.5RL thus indicated the displacement of the engine and the model designator. Acura also named the rest of its line with such alpha numerics as the 2.5TL and 3.2TL or the 3.2CL. Acura believed that no one would know what a "3.5RL" was, and people would naturally identify their cars as an "Acura 3.5RL", a strategy that seemed to be working so well with archrival Lexus, which was marketing not an "LS 400" but the "Lexus LS 400". Parenthetically, by the time the Acura 3.5RL was introduced, the top of the Japanese car luxury heap was no longer the Acura line-up but those cars sold by Lexus, and to a lesser extent, Infiniti.[7]