Japan’s Forgotten Supercar

The Acura/Honda NSX was first introduced in 1991. The press has called it "a triumph of a dedicated pursuit of excellence, and the standard by which all sports cars must be judged." Such is but one example of the lavish acclaim for the Acura NSX, a groundbreaking exotic sports machine designed to combine the electrifying performance of a thoroughbred racecar with unprecedented levels of sophistication and user-friendliness.

Mr. Honda told his design team to create "a limited production, hand-built, exotic, mid-engine sports car that set new standards for performance, refinement, reliability and drivability." The engineers at Honda were determined to design and build this "New Sports car eXperiment." They decided that the car would embody everything they had learned at the racing circuits of Formula 1 and would be styled after the F-16 jet fighter. The result was the NSX.

In order to meet these goals, Acura built an all-new assembly plant at the site of the Honda proving grounds in Toguchi, Japan. This plant would be different from most other assembly plants. The unfinished bodies would be moved from station to station on dollies instead of the usual assembly line. This would allow each craftsman to use as much time as necessary to insure the car would be perfect and consistent.

Each NSX is hand sanded to insure a perfect fit	Skilled craftsmen finish the alignment of the aluminum body panels	The finished chassis, only 462 lbs!

Each NSX is a product of meticulous design and all the components that go into this remarkable car are carefully crafted to meet the highest standards. Chassis, Engine and Ergonomics all excel. The NSX is a no-compromises car, designed from a clean sheet of paper to stretch beyond conventional exotic automobiles. For example, Acura engineers decided to craft the entire NSX body from aluminum, making it the first all-aluminum production sports car ever built. This lightweight, corrosion-resistant metal, commonly used in military jet-fighter aircraft, yields a monocoupe structure with incredible strength and rigidity, as well as a 40 percent weight savings over an equivalent steel unit-body structure. Aluminum is also used liberally in the many race-proven components of the NSX- including the advanced, 4-wheel independent double-wishbone suspension and the VTEC- equipped 270-hoursepower DOHC V-6 engine. The result is a purebred sports car of fantastic agility and responsiveness, a dazzling sensory feast for the most discriminating of drivers. Indeed, the NSX caters to the driver as few sporting machines ever have.

The NSX continues to be one of the great cars on the road, but it unfortunately continues to be a secret. A total of 17,441 cars have been built since 1990, some 7460 of which have been sold in the U.S. But after a burst of 8403 cars from Honda's low-volume Takanazawa plant near Tochigi, Japan, in 1991, production has slowed considerably.

Year	Red	Black	White	Silver	Green	Blue	Silver	Purple	Yellow
1991	1,540	1,304	.	319	.	.	.	.	.	3,163
1992	526	390	238	117	.	.	.	.	.	1,271
1993	274	215	88	31	.	.	.	.	.	608
1994	183	147	32	.	150	.	.	.	.	512
1995	424	223	.	.	79	.	.	54	.	780
1996	239	145	57	.	31	.	.	33	.	505
1997	92	70	15	.	.	31	38	.	92	338
	3,278	2,494	430	467	260	31	38	87	92

Today the NSX is a considerably rarer sight than a Ferrari. Honda failed to provide the marketing push to match its superstar's abilities, and innate snobbery about the badge on the front did the rest; never mind the fact that Honda has won more world championship grands prix than Porsche and that its Formula One engines were the most successful ever built by anyone. It's time someone stood up and reminded those who plump for the more obvious choices exactly what they are missing. The NSX has evolved slowly over the years, but it's fair to say the best are the earliest which sported more aggressive suspension tuning, and lack power steering.

The NSX is one of those rare cars you wear. The seating position is so low that the next time you climb aboard a more conventional car you feel perched upon it. It wraps itself around you until you are cocooned within its midst. Point it at a corner and the car turns with a precision that suggests your wrists are laser-guided, while providing you with the kind of feedback to make the helm of a Jaguar XKR, an undoubtedly fine car, seem entirely lifeless by comparison.

Best of all, it's a real driver's car. It's not a machine that provides a veneer of excitement on top of layers of self-preserving stodge. Drive an NSX well and it will reward like few others; drive one badly and the time will come when it will repay your lack of respect.

Rivals are thin on the ground and it can no longer be compared to Ferraris, the cheapest of which is now 50 per cent more expensive. A Dodge Viper GTS is similarly expensive, but I can imagine nobody deciding between the two: if you need a scalpel, you don't ask for a sledgehammer.

This, then, is its real talent. There's no supercar for the money I'd rather drive and few in which I'd rather idle away a few motorway hours or sit in heavy traffic. For all its dynamic ability, it is also a car that knows there is a time when a decent stereo and air-conditioning is massively more important than neck-snapping performance and telepathic handling. The NSX delivers something otherwise unknown in the world of exotic cars: performance without penalty.