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The original Acura NSX: Development history and driving the icon

The original NSX, introduced in production form in 1990 by Honda and to the United States market under the Acura brand in 1991, is now officially 25 plus years old. Generations of car enthusiasts grew to love the original NSX over the 15 years it was in production and beyond, but as an fan and owner, I think it's important to fully realize just how monumental a shift the introduction of the NSX was in the art of making cars. So, retold 25 years later, this is the abridged story of the NSX, Honda's supercar. The Idea The NSX was an extremely risky project for Honda, a company that in the late 1980's was nowhere near the corporate juggernaut that it is today. Honda's eponymous founder, Soichiro Honda, was still involved in decision-making at the company during this time under the role of "Supreme Advisor," and it is debatable whether the NSX project in its infancy would have gone forward at all had he not still been pushing the company towards the spirit of technical achievement it had been known for in the prior decades. Mr. Honda was still so involved during this period, in fact, that when the first batch of 300 production NSXs were made with a version of the Acura badge he didn't like, he ordered all of the cars stopped at port in the USA, the new badges applied, and the offending incorrect badges sent back to Japan to be systematically destroyed. This was clearly a man who paid attention to the details, but I digress. Honda as a company devoted $140 million dollars to the NSX project ($250 million in today's money), half of which would go to developing the car, and the remainder of which would go to building a new state-of-the-art factory to assemble it. Honda's own goals for the NSX were actually exactly as most media stories portray the car today: to build a bona-fide exotic supercar, but one without the ergonomic and reliability penalties associated with that type of car. They didn't want to sacrifice the needs of the driver to the supposed demands of performance, demands that they felt didn't have to be there in making a truly top-level performance machine. The R&D team wanted a car that could hang with heavyweight exotics in a straight line, play with smaller and more lightweight sports cars in the curves, and cruise in serenity on the freeway. Essentially, they wanted it all, and the brief was to have a car that could do everything without compromise.

Honda CEO says we shouldn't expect any new sports cars

It wasn't so long ago that Honda was known for its sporty two-door models, with models ranging from the Civic del Sol to the Prelude and from the Acura Integra and RSX to the Honda S2000. But look at its range today and all you'll see are the Civic and Accord coupes. Honda has essentially let competitors like the Scion FR-S/Subaru BRZ and Nissan 370Z take the place it once claimed as its own. But if you were hoping Honda would fight back with a new coupe or convertible of its own, we're afraid you're going to have to downgrade those hopes to pipe dreams.
While in Japan ahead of the Tokyo Motor Show, Autoblog had a chance to sit down with American Honda CEO Tetsuo Iwamura (pictured at right). When we asked about the potential for a new sports coupe or convertible in the Honda or Acura lineup, he pointed to the current Civic and Accord coupes - not to mention the upcoming new NSX - but said that Honda has no replacement for any of the aforementioned models (or a rival for the FR-S or 370Z) in the pipeline, saying only that the company is monitoring potential demand.
What Iwamura-san did note was that he's a personal fan of the new S660 roadster (pictured above) set to be unveiled tomorrow, and he is pushing (or at least hoping) that it will come to North America. Given that he's head of both Honda's American office and its global automobile operations, one might think that the only person he would have to persuade is himself (well... himself, and potential buyers), but the sporty droptop looks to be about kei-sized, which sadly suggests that it may be too small for American tastes and perhaps not designed with US crash-test standards in mind anyway.

Acura builds 345-horsepower RDX A-Spec for SEMA

The 2019 Acura RDX is great — a return to form for the sporty compact luxury crossover. So there's no real harm in giving one the SEMA treatment, especially since it entails a real motorsport tie-in and some legitimate performance parts. As for the giant graphics, well, it's SEMA after all. Graham Rahal races for Honda in the IndyCar series, and he also has his own performance parts company — named, sensibly enough, Graham Rahal Performance — which he started in 2017. They sell some private-label bits manufactured by other companies to their spec, some off-the-shelf parts, and they do tuning and installation work on customer cars. Acura gave the job of building the SEMA RDX to Rahal. There's a fair bit going on under the hood to get the RDX to 345 horsepower from the factory 272 ponies. The 2.0-liter turbo engine gets a bunch of enhancements. The turbo, intake, exhaust manifolds, downpipe, and cat-back (a GRP design) are all aftermarket. There's a customer intercooler, too. KTuning did the ECU with a custom map. On the handling front, the RDX wears Eibach springs, StopTech brakes, HRE wheels at 21 inches, and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires. The RDX started life as an A-Spec model in Apex Blue Pearl, and from there GRP applied carbon fiber garnish to the mirrors, grille accents, and lower fascia. Troy Lee Designs did the exterior graphics, and inside there's more carbon fiber and a custom steering wheel (courtesy of Max Papis's MPI Innovations shop). The RDX will be on the show floor if you'd like to check out the Rahal shop's handiwork. Related Video: