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The Acura NSX is nothing short of a revelation to drive, now nearly thirty years after its debut. This will come as no surprise to its legion of longstanding fans but for those like me who are just waking up to the car, and I’m not alone as witnessed by its rapidly appreciating value, driving the NSX caused me to re-evaluate some preconceived notions and challenge a certain degree of undue automotive elitism.
This is not a Ferrari, and my perception that it lacked an exotic pedigree made me overlook the car. But the NSX has a legend of its own. So the story goes, the NSX was such a brilliant sports car, so much better in every way than the Ferrari 348, that Ferrari’s newly-arrived CEO Luca Di Montezemolo directed his engineers to quickly develop the quicker, prettier 355 as a response. The NSX is also tangentially, perhaps even truthfully (!) linked to Gordon Murray, who owned an NSX and asked Honda whether it would create a more powerful version for his use: Honda declined, so Murray developed the McLaren F1 instead. So the story goes….
We know for a fact that Honda called upon the resources of its championship-winning Formula 1 team including its driver, the great Aryton Senna, to develop the NSX. The aim was to produce a world-class super-sports car that met the rigors of both the track and daily life, with the dependability of a Honda. It was priced much higher than your typical Honda, about 4x the price of an Integra, but still 1/2 the price of a Ferrari 348, and 2/3 of a 911 Turbo. It was introduced in 1990, and continued with various updates and changes until 2005.
Thanks again to Jamie Moore for handing us the keys to his Formula Red NSX, what a brilliant, joyful thing to drive. Link to the video above!
