CarBrandLogos archive · Honda · 1990

HondaNSX

Everyday manners in a mid-engined supercar, and Ferrari was never allowed to ignore it.

Photo: Travis Rigel Lukas Hornung · CC BY 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Honda history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Honda NSX, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The premise was that a mid-engined car did not have to be difficult. Supercars of the 1980s were hot, heavy-clutched, poorly ventilated and awkward to see out of, and Honda's engineers treated all of that as solvable rather than inherent. The result, launched in 1990 and sold as an Acura in North America, was the first mass-produced car with an all-aluminium monocoque body, a construction Honda had to develop the welding and forming processes for itself.

Honda NSX 1993 Castle Hedingham 2008 · Charles01 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Design and engineering

The 3.0-litre V6 used VTEC variable valve timing and titanium connecting rods, so it idled politely and still revved hard, and the cabin was designed around visibility borrowed from fighter-canopy proportions rather than the usual letterbox glass. Ayrton Senna, then driving for McLaren-Honda, tested prototypes at Suzuka and told the engineers the chassis was not stiff enough; the structure was revised in response, and his involvement became part of how the car was understood.

Fo S20162016 0625 151036AA · Matthew Lamb · CC BY-SA 2.0

In production

What followed mattered beyond Honda. The NSX was reliable, could be serviced at normal cost, and was fast enough that its comfort could not be dismissed as compensation. Ferrari's response over the following decade, building cars that were usable as well as quick, is widely credited to the pressure it applied, and Gordon Murray has said it was the dynamic benchmark for the McLaren F1.

1995 Honda NSX Type R Rear · MrWalkr · CC BY-SA 4.0

Legacy

The original ran to 2005 with modest changes, a fixed-roof and Targa body, and a rare lightweight Type R for Japan. A second generation appeared in 2016, built in Ohio around a twin-turbo V6 and three electric motors, technically ambitious but arriving into a crowded field. It ended in 2022, leaving the first car as the one that made the point.

At a glance