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Honda celebrates 30th anniversary of the NSX with a look back at how it began

In 1989, the baseball-loving Japanese dipped their bats in pine tar and came to the U.S. to take gigundous swings. That single year launched five legends: Lexus LS400, Infiniti Q45, Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo, Mazda MX-5 Miata, and Acura NS-X concept. The Chicago Auto Show (!) hosted the global debuts of the Mazda and the Acura. While Mazda celebrates the bygones with the 30th Anniversary Miata, Acura's reminiscing with a look at how the NSX — a car Motor Trend described in 1990 as, "[The] best sports car the world has ever produced. Any time. Any place. Any price ..." — came to be. The development yearbook opened in 1984, a year after Honda returned to Formula One as an engine supplier for the Spirit team, and for the second Williams chassis in the last race of the season. For the first time in the automaker's history, Honda wanted to build a production car with the engine behind the cabin, one that would demonstrate Honda's engineering prowess and "deeply rooted racing spirit." The sports car would also serve as a halo for the not-yet-launched Acura brand. The engineering team built the first test vehicle in February 1984 on the bones of a first-generation Honda Jazz. After four years of formal development, Honda parked the NS-X Concept in a conference room at Chicago's Drake Hotel in February 1989. This is where the media would meet the red wonder before the public show-stand debut. The F-16 Fighting Falcon-inspired coupe was built on the world's first all-aluminum monocoque, and its SOHC V6 ran with titanium connecting rods. Before the press conference, then-Honda president Tadashi Kume got in the NS-X, started the engine, and revved to the 8,000-rpm redline — a noise felt by everyone in the adjacent conference room attending a Ford press conference. Honda's PR man at the time yelled, "Mr. Kume, stop it! They're gonna hear this!" When Kume got out, he asked Honda engineers present why they didn't put their new VTEC technology in the NS-X. (What's Japanese for, "Why didn't the VTEC kick in, yo?!") They told him VTEC had been created for four-cylinder engines. Kume told them to work on a V6 application. More suggestions came from journos who drove the early prototypes at Honda's Tochigi R&D Center, who said the NS-X "could use more power." The development team had grabbed the SOHC V6 from the Acura Legend for the NS-X concept, and it put out 160 horsepower in the luxury sedan.

Acura releases yet another NSX track teaser vid

On Sunday, August 4th (yep, that's tomorrow), a prototype version of the all-new Acura NSX will make its public track debut ahead of the Honda 200 IndyCar race. Acura has already given us a short video snippet to enjoy, but now it's added one more to get our hearts racing just a little more.
Before you watch it, make sure your speakers or headphones are turned up, because what the low-resolution video lacks in visual quality, it more than makes up for with its audio of the NSX's exhaust screaming as the car tackles Mid-Ohio. And at the end of the video, the caption reads "watch the NSX racing prototype take a lap."
Acura isn't joking either. From what we hear, the car is expected to take one lap before the race and then disappear for the weekend. Scroll down to see and hear the NSX in action.

Inside Honda's ghost town for testing autonomous cars

On the edge of the San Francisco suburb of Concord, California sits a ghost town. Dilapidated buildings and cracked roads are framed by overgrowth and slightly askew street signs. The decommissioned five acre portion of the Concord Naval Weapons Station that once housed military personnel and their families is now home to squirrels, jack rabbits, wild turkeys and Honda's mysterious testing lab for autonomous vehicles. This former town within a Naval base – now dubbed "GoMentum Station" – is the perfect testing ground for Honda's self-driving cars. An almost turn-key solution to the problem of finding somewhere to experiment with autonomous vehicle inside an urban area. Thanks to the GoMentum Station, the automaker has access to 20 miles of various road types, intersections and infrastructure exactly like those found in the real world. Just, you know, without all the people getting in the way. While the faded lane markers and cracked asphalt might initially make it difficult for the car to figure out what's going on around it, that's exactly what you want when training a self-driving system. Many roads in the real world are also in dire need of upkeep. Just because autonomous vehicles are hitting the streets doesn't mean the funding needed to fix all the potholes and faded lane markers will magically appear. The real world doesn't work that way and the robot cars that will eventually make our commutes less of a headache will need to be aware of that. Plus, it's tougher to train a car to drive downtown than to barrel down the highway at 80 miles per hour. A company is going to want to get as much practice as possible. While semi-autonomous driving on the everyone-going-the-same-way-at-a-constant-speed freeway is already a reality, navigating in an urban environment is far more complex. If you've driven on the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago or Seattle you know that driving downtown takes far more concentration than cruising down the interstate. With all that in mind, Honda's tricked out Acura RLX did a good job during an (admittedly very controlled) hands-free demo. It didn't hit either of the pedestrians walking across its path. It stopped at stop signs and even maneuvered around a mannequin situated in the middle of the road. The reality is, watching a car drive around the block and safely avoid stuff is boring. Not to metion, Google has been doing this for a while in the real world.