Acura NSX - Everything You Need To Know | Up to Speed

- You guys have been begging for this one, so a billion of you better see it. (engine revving) It was Japan's first supercar. It challenged the reign of the Europeans and set a new standard for exotic automobilia. I just made it up, trademark. (engines revving and tires spinning) Hard driving, lack of visibility, no thanks, expensive maintenance, GTFO. I'm not going to put up with that shit just because I want to drive something wedge-shaped with an engine behind my head. Oh, and did I mention Senna helped make it great? This is

everything

you

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to get up to

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on the Acura NSX.

What, you didn't

know

? (thunder clapping) You better (bleep) call someone! (laughs) (eight-bit music) In the '80s, a lot of sports cars weren't that sporty. I mean, Ferrari was making some pretty cool V8 engines, but they were expensive. The founder and supreme advisor of Honda Motor Company, Soichiro Honda, a great guy, knew that his company had the skills to build something better than a Ferrari and for less money. So Honda called the Italian design house, Pininfarina, and said, "Hey, yeah, so we were thinking, 'You know what we usually do.'" "Yeah, front-engine, front-wheel drive, yeah, yeah," well, we want to do exactly the opposite. “Yeah, huh, mid-engine, rear-wheel drive. "I know, dude, sick, wait, hello? "I'm actually on the phone with Pininfarina," can I call you back in like two seconds? "You're still there, oh no, wait, wait. "Pininfarina, hello?" What they ended up with was perhaps the most '80s car to come out of the '80s.

A strange white doorstop called HP-X which stood for Honda Pininfarina Experimental. It was aerodynamic and minimalist AF to the max, to the point that it didn't even have doors. You climbed the plexiglass ceiling like Maverick and Goose ("Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins). It wasn't just another boring show car by any means, because it had an engine, a great one, a two-litre V6 from the Honda Formula Two team. While all this HP-X stuff was going on, Honda started competing. F1 again and its engineers were increasingly interested in going fast, so they started playing around with mid-engine, rear-wheel drive test mules made from a first-generation Honda City and a CRX.

They were also about to launch the Acura luxury brand in. USA and decided that giving the badge a car halo would give it an advantage. The company was excited about the idea of ​​building a sports car that bridged the gap between the F1 and the Civic, but also had to be comfortable to drive every day. . I mean, what good is an awesome car if you don't even drive it every day? With the Ferrari 328 as a reference point and using the HP-X as inspiration, Honda set to work on a new project, codenamed NSX, which stood for new sports car, unknown world.

Some people say X means experimental, but Honda says it's an unknown world where X is the mathematical symbol for an unknown variable, and dad knows a thing or two about being an unknown variable. Hello! (Chinese kung fu music) Anyway, this is not an algebra class, put away your books. The driver experience was a primary focus of development. Honda wanted the NSX to have great 360° visibility. They kept the cockpit-forward design of the HP-X and took additional inspiration for the greenhouse from F16 fighter jets, F1 cars and racing hydroplanes, the coolest type of boat there is. (water jets) The new Japanese sports car also

need

ed a bigger engine to compete with the Europeans because that two-liter V6 just wasn't going to cut it.

The Acura Legend's V6 wasn't there either, so Honda took the VTEC from the JDM Integra and combined it with its Formula One racing technology to create (bang roars) an all-aluminum three-liter V6 with a glorious sound that generates 270 horsepower. . (engine revving) The pistons were forged in the fires of Mount Doom and, for the first time in a production car, the connecting rods were made of titanium. (laughs) Honda wanted the NSX to have incredible, F1-like handling. (click) Oh (beep). And modern conveniences like air conditioning, power windows, traction control and ABS, but having all that in a steel body would make for a pretty portly car and they didn't want that.

Don't judge yourself, if you like fat cars do your own thing, Honda just didn't like it. Somehow they were going to have to remove weight from the chassis. After experimenting with high-strength steels and carbon fiber, they decided to do it using aluminum, a lot of aluminum. So Honda called its metal suppliers and said, "We want aluminum we can build a car out of." "Honda, there is no aluminum you can build a complete car out of." "Huh, that's weird, what are we going to do about that?" "Oh, I have an idea, how about you make me some?" "What, uh--" "If you don't make me enough strong aluminum" to build a car that beats Ferrari, I will kill them." "Guys, we have to make aluminum that can build a car" or Honda will kill.

To me, it sounded serious. "That's really what happened. That's why five specific aluminum alloys were carefully chosen, special processing techniques were developed and built a completely new plant to produce the new lightweight unibody chassis In February 1989, Honda had a few cars almost ready for production and the Acura NSX prototype debuted at the Chicago International Auto Show when Honda was preparing for the big reveal. the company president, Tadish, Tadashi, Tadashi Kume said, “I need to inspect this car,” then he got in and started it and his team said, “Stop, “There's a Ford press conference next door.” and he was all, “What?” And they said, "There's a Ford press conference next door!" "I'm revving the engine, I can't hear you, it's too loud," and his team said, "Stop!" Meanwhile, at Ford's press conference, Ford said, "And I present to you..." "Stop!" "The world premiere of the new..." "I can't hear a single word you're saying 'because this engine is too loud.'" Word quickly spread that something special was going to be at the press conference for Acura and by When the car officially debuted, excitement was through the roof ("Careless Whisper" by George Michael).

At the same time, in Japan, a certain F1 driver you may have heard of named Senna was testing another prototype. at Suzuka. After stating that he did not feel qualified to give advice on tuning a mass-production car, he told engineers that it felt fragile, so Honda worked for eight months to stiffen the chassis. aluminum and configure it for the first time. During the process, tests were carried out at the Nürburgring facilities abroad and the end result was a chassis that was 50% stiffer than the prototype and 40% lighter than an equivalent chassis made of steel. . Additional testing with Senna, F1 driver Satoru Nakajima and the independent team.

Champion car driver Bobby Rahal turned the NSX into one of the best handling cars ever created! (thunder clapping) Lightning, lightning, lightning, lightning. The suspension was a complex work of art in forged aluminum. Both the front and rear featured an intricate network of beautiful double wishbones. Mmm, I'm hungry. At the front, Honda designed a unique compliance pivot that maintained the same toe setting as the suspension moved to reduce rough steering. Wow. Even the tires received ridiculous attention. Yokohama tested 10 molds, 100 different tire specifications, and 6,000 different tires before they thought they got it right. Honda was so exacting in its set-up that the front and rear compounds ended up being slightly different. (engine revving and tires spinning) The new Acura NSX was appropriately introduced to the automotive media with laps around Laguna Seca and the Nürburgring.

The press praised its civilized demeanor and impressive performance in a reliable Honda package. Quotes, it's the best sports car ever made. Quote, all our current cars are now completely irrelevant. This is really impressive for a manufacturer known for making motorcycles and Civics. Hello! (Chinese kung fu music) In the late 1990s, the NSX finally went on sale to high demand. American dealers kept the cars instead of selling them, and in Japan, people were on a three-year waiting list to buy one. Just one year into production, Honda invited owners to a day at the track to give them driving lessons and reflect on how to further improve their innovative sports car.

The feedback they received was used to create the JDM-only, track-oriented 1992 NSX Type-R. (engine revving) They removed the soundproofing, the radio, the spare tire, the air conditioning, the traction control. It has Enkei wheels and the padded leather seats were replaced with Carbon Kevlar Recaros or as I like to call them, carbon fiber. The NSX-R lost 265 pounds to become a lightweight track day machine gun. After the first two years of production, sales in the United States began to fall quite rapidly. In 1995, Honda replaced our NSX Coupe with the NSX-T, where the T stood for top-end, not turbo. (engine revving) Removing the roof reduced the chassis rigidity that the NSX was known for, so they added a few more braces to stiffen things up, which added more weight.

She was fat and also had braces. (laughs) Sales rose briefly but fell again the following year. In 1997, engineers added a larger 3.2-liter V6 that produced 290 horsepower. U.S. sales inched forward on cruise control, selling only about 200 cars per year. For 1999, Acura brought back the Coupe with the Alex Zanardi super limited edition NSX. 50 red cars based on the Japanese-market Type-S were built to commemorate Zanardi's back-to-back Champ Car championship victories. (engine revving) In 2002, Honda committed one of the biggest atrocities in history: they removed the headlights emerging from the NSX. (It's so hard to say goodbye to Boyz II Men's yesterday) ♪ And I'll take the memories with me ♪ ♪ To be my sunshine after the rain ♪ At this point, even though people said they loved the NSX, not many actually , people were buying the NSX.

It remained virtually the same car for 15 years and only about 18,000 units were sold worldwide. 2005 was the last year of production for the original Japanese supercar. You know the old saying, you don't know what you've got until it's gone, well as soon as the NSX was gone, people wanted another one. God, make up your mind! You love me, you don't love me, you love me, you don't love me, you love me, you don't love me, dad. Just two years later, Honda announced that a future V10 supercar was in the works. V10, friend. But in 2008, the economic crisis made car manufacturers shrink into their khaki pants and the new supercar was no longer really on the agenda.

Luckily, the car apocalypse was brief and in 2010 there were already rumors that another successor to the NSX was coming. The V10 idea was dead just like my father and now it would be a greener hybrid, what do you say? Hybrids weren't cool cars in 2010. But after years and years and years of being mocked in Marvel movies and Superbowl ads with my best friend, Jay Leno, (Jay laughs), a stunning new second-generation NSX It rolled out of an Ohio factory in 2016. The new NSX is all-wheel drive with a mid-mounted 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 and three electric motors producing a supercar-worthy 573 horsepower. (engine revving) Lead designer Michelle Christensen calls it "an American muscle car with the body of an Italian exotic car" and it bears absolutely no resemblance to the original NSX.

As before, it offers Ferrari-level performance at a lower price and won Road & Track's 2017 Performance Car of the Year award, but it's eh. Hello! (Chinese kung fu music) Friends, we make a new video every day. To make sure you don't miss anything, click on Subby He's My Best Friend is a subscribe button. If you like Hondas, check out this episode of Up To Speed. If you like other American designed Japanese cars, check out this other episode of Up To Speed. Do you like this shirt? Go to shop.donut.media and get one. Follow me on Instagram @jamespumphrey.

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