After a decade of absence, the NSX has finally made its return to the open road. Because it’s on its North American tour, it’s flying the Acura rather than Honda flag, but it is still the same car though.
Many remember the original NSX for the many things it did better than other sports cars in the pricing and performance departments. But the real factor that made it a legend was its looks. It was sleek and clean, with not a single unnecessary line. So how does this busy looking NSX earn its name?
Well, one way of looking at it is to understand that the NSX was one of the earliest great looking Japanese designed cars from the 90s (ignoring the fact that Pininfarina did some of the work). No excess, just elegance. Not because the NS-X was a car centred on elegance and a lack of excess, but because of what its name meant. “New-Sportscar-Experimental”, and the experimental design was also a success, it helped to set the tone for great looking cars throughout the decade. You could argue that it was already headed in that direction, but even up to 1989 a lot of designs still retained boxy angles.
The new NS-X is also, in a way, an experimental vehicle. Americans designed this, and you have to admit, even though it looks nothing like the original NS-X, this car is cool. This is what concept cars look like, because they’re designed to look like they’d only make sense in the future, and I’m sure when the first NS-X came out, that’s just the sort of thing people had on the back of their minds.
But before we get too excited, let’s remember that it’s still a car that has competition. So even with its 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6, electric motor, 9-speed dual-clutch gearbox and futuristic looks, it still needs to be better than the rest on the track. And for that we can only wait and see. There is some footage of it as a pace car at Pikes Peak that you can watch in the meantime though.
