The Honda NSX or the passion for MotorSport.
Today is no day to talk about the latest news, in our goal to cover the japanese car market and its manufacturers we felt we had to take a look back and talk about one of the myth of the 90s in Japan and which production was just recently stopped, in 2005, this car...is the Honda NSX.
The supercar market has always been a european thing with a couple exceptions from the U.S.A, on that particular point and despite some very good results in Formula 1 or in world Rally races, our Japanese friends never came up with a car to challenge names such as Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche, Lamborghini and others.
Of course this situation was not the fruit of the lack of capacities or technological knowledge, more of a great pragmatism and the fact that building a supercar is very expensive and hazardous, especially when you start from the ground up and this even though Honda already benefited from a good experience and image in the MotorSport world...but they had never been through the whole process of building a true very high performance car for the road.
NSX, Hommage à une Diva
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NSX, Hommage à une Diva
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Still, after years of researches and tests, Honda's technological monster was ready and, in my humble opinion, this vehicle was the starting point of a new era in the world of supercars !
We can't really talk about the NSX without thinking about all the men and women who have been working on it, unfortunately we can't name them all...but...if there were only 2 people to mention when we hear the 3 magical letters that would be these :
Firstly, Mr Shigeru Uehara, Executive Chief Engineer, Honda R&D Co., Ltd. If you wanted to know who was the backbone of the project, well now you do.
Back in 1990, Honda gave the head of the NSX project to Uehara-san, a fantastic man that we had the chance to meet a few months ago at the Motegi circuit. Being the father of the NSX wasn't enough, Mister Uehara also gave birth to the S2000 !!! Imagine that !!! It's hard to describe and pay homage to someone in a few words but the 2 hours spent with this magician of the automotive world will, for sure, remain great memories, those of a simple man with immense love for cars.
During our photo shoots the "link" between the creator and his machine was clearly visible, the NSX was everything Uehara-san wanted; technologically on top, providing a very high level of performance in all circumstances and "linking" the driver to his car in a way that many other manufacturers sure wish they could achieve.
The second face behind the NSX would be Ayrton Senna, considered as one of the greatest Formula 1 drivers in history and by many, as the number one, period. Ayrton has been a key member in the elaboration of the Honda NSX. In the 90s he was driving for Honda in F1 and testing the NSX on roads and circuits, his critics and advices helped Uehara-san's team improving the car in many ways.
When you have a champion, in a winning team, working on a new supercar, the result can't be other than amazing!
In a market which is mostly based on higher horsepower, Honda came with a different and very interesting approach and this actually is where the name NSX came from: New Sportscar eXperimental.
The aim was to create "user-friendly" super car with excellent performances, especially on the race track, and this regardless of the configurations.
Back in the 90s, Ferrari had its F348 seen as the best Super Car available on the market and while everybody was starring at the Italian beauty, Honda came up with higher performances in a beautiful body as well!!
The NSX, was fitted with a 3 litres non turbo engine (3.2 litres in its last days of production) providing "only" 280HP so how could the japanese car outperform more powerful vehicles ? The answer lies in the chassis, one of the best of his time combined with state of the art aerodynamics.
To give an example, bieng behind the wheel of the F348 would make you feel like a D1 Grand Prix driver (Drift championship) sliding around corners in a way that is not the quickest around a racetrack...the NSX, on the contrary, is glued to the tarmac grabbing seconds after seconds on each lap.
And the enjoyment continues as you drive off the racetrack ! Cruising downtown with butter-smooth gearbox and absolutely no risk of stalling makes it a real everyday supercar!
Of course, just like any other creation, the NSX was always subject to improvements so Uehara-san and his team kept on working to give even more performance but with a main goal of "control" and "driving pleasure" over simple horsepower. The perfection was reached with the NSX-R which was released after Ayrton Senna's death. The car was lighter thanks to the use of carbon fiber and the aerodynamics were improved once again.
15 years after its launch the NSX has now stepped down in the Super Car world, some journalists even adviced Honda to move on and build something else...it is true that in comparison to nowadays supercars like the Ferrari Enzo or the Porsche Carrera GT, the NSX and even the NSX-R was not on the same page...still...the radically new approach of what a supercar can be in Honda's mind revolutionized the way this type of vehicle should be bult and how it should be driven.
So it is now time to say goodbye to the NSX and time to thank Uehara-san and his team for the wonderful work done to create an unforgettable car...time to move on as they say...time to wait for another Honda, another revolution, another NSX!
Posted on 28/11/06 By G-A.G
