Alright, real quick: this is a post where I geek out about cars. It probably will bore any sane person to death, and has absolutely nothing to do with my prevailing mental health struggles if that's what you're here for.
Also, I'm extremely biased, my opinions and experiences all come from a video game, and the only cars I've driven in real life are a Nissan Sunny, a Mazda Demio, and a Nissan Teana. So, hey, I didn't title this ramble a "review" for a reason.
Still here? You're something else, you know that?
As anyone who knows me for any length of time should know, the NA1 and NA2 Honda NSX was among my three childhood heroes, alongside the FD RX-7 and the Viper. And whilst I've always been a little skeptical and a little afraid of Vipers, even the modern, tamer ones, as a grown adult that has some knowledge of car mechanics and driving physics, the NSX has always retained it's charm to me. More than that, actually; the more I learned about it, the more I found to love about it. If the FD RX-7 were to be my wife, figuratively speaking, then the NSX would be my guilty pleasure mistress; one I can't pry my dick away fro-
wooooah that got weird quick. No, I'm not like that! No, really! Please, stop filling out that police report form!
But can you blame me, though? The original NSXes, the NA1 and NA2, are, in my opinion, a holy trinity of cars nobody can utter a bad word against, alongside the McLaren F1 and stable mate the S2000. As subjective as experiences and preferences are in general, especially to a group as finicky, divided and critical as car enthusiasts, the NSX is just one of those miracles of engineering that seemed to please everybody. It had seductive, timeless styling. It handled like a dream, especially the Type R versions. It proved to the world that reliability, comfort, and performance can all come together in a relatively cheap package, showing up exotics that cost several times more. It was the first production car ever to come with VTEC, and variable valve timing technology would find its way into every modern engine, essentially serving as a divide in this history books between the "then" and the "now". It was also the first production car to feature all aluminum chassis. It was developed with input from a man of equal legendary status: F1 star Aryron Senna, who praised the car for its composure at high speeds, so much so that you wouldn't even realise how fast you were going unless you looked at the speedometer. This was a car that is heralded as the car that single handedly changed how exotic giants like Ferrari made cars - no longer can Ferrari just make fast, good looking cars that broke down all the time and broke your back on a street littered with dried branches "just because" it's a Ferrari. It had to be more. It had to be reliable. It had to have creature comforts. It had to be faster. The NSX was also cited to be the inspiration for Gordon Murray to design the aforementioned McLaren F1, another car of mythical legend status that we as an industry may never see again.
But of course, you already knew all that, didn't you? If you were a car person, it's impossible to not have heard the name, "NSX". Such was the impact it had on the industry, and the hearts it was seemingly custom made to fill. Understandably then, that Acura would want to reuse the name, "NSX" in attempt to ballyhoo and hype up their new supercar in 2016. In the words of Jeremy Clarkson, "that'd be like naming your son 'Jesus' and hoping he doesn't grow up to rob a bank".
Of course the NC1 NSX was never going to fill the shoes or match the hype of the NA1 and NA2 NSX; from an engineering standpoint it is a wholly different beast born in another world, in another time, meant for different people, and from a logical, sane person standpoint, the achievements and legendary status of the original NSX is no small miracle, one that'd be quite asinine to try and match, especially in today's insane super and hypercar scene. I've personally tried to be as rational and understanding as I could towards the NC1 NSX, but at the same time it's kinda like a bratty young girl of the same name as the wife you lost to cancer years ago coming up to you and claiming that she's your wife but better, and just by the virtue of sharing names alone, she expects special treatment and to be unconditionally loved. And it pisses me off.
Should a car be judged by politics, marketing, and names? To be honest if it were called anything other than the "NSX", I'd probably be fine with it. Hell, you could've even called it the "NSX2" or something, but noooo it just had to be called the NSX, didn't it? Not only does it make writing critique and Google searches unduly difficult, but as I've mentioned earlier, the NC1 is a wholly different beast from the original after which it is named. Being named the same on some level forces me to expect more of the same, more of that unfettered pure driving experience, that same "make the world stand up and take notice" kind of impact, the same timeless styling, the same world challenging attitude... it makes me yearn again for something I know will never come back to us. No longer will 276HP ever be sufficient to make waves. No longer will we ever have cars that low, that angular, that light, that pure, with today's laws.
But of course, as opinionated as I am, even I recognise that those are all just my very personal biases and expectations for a car, for a name. Maybe it's amazing. Maybe it is good enough to challenge the world. Maybe Honda will make amazing drivers' cars again. Maybe, like the RX-8 I love so much, this isn't a numbers car. Maybe it wouldn't be fair to compare it to something of the past, but rather should be appreciated for what it is.
And so I hopped behind the wheel of one in GT Sport.
The first things that quickly jump out to me on the specs sheet before the run are the mass of the thing, and how many freaking gears it has. At 1725kg it is by no means featherweight, but considering how it has two electric motors, a mid mounted V6, and THEN another electric motor behind that for good measure, and still be comparable in mass to, say an R35 or an Aventador, with their *pshh* ONE engine, and the engineering feat that is the NC1 NSX starts to come into focus a little. Also, I'm sorry, but NINE forward gears? You can't even use fuel economy as an excuse for having a million gears now, since this thing is a hybrid car that's capable of going full electric to save fuel. The hell do you need NINE forward gears for?
As a result, driving the NC1 on a circuit can quickly become cumbersome. It'd be, kinda like, if you're so, used to read,ing sentenc,es in one mental br,eath, but suddenl,y you need to. pause and !punctuate- sentences? so freaking much. Having so many gears to work with means you have to segment your thoughts and action plans more than usual, and it can quickly become annoying when you're focusing on a corner, or on passing an opponent, judging how much space you need and have, reading an opponent to see if they're skilled or rude enough to pass on that corner at that speed, and then suddenly your dash is flashing at you urging to shift. I mean, sure, it's an automated manual, so in theory you could drive it in auto. Not to mention, with nine gears, each gear is so short, and the powerband thanks to the electric motors are so ample that oftentimes you can be in the "wrong" gear and by the time you realise you're in the wrong gear it has already become the right gear. But I'm the sort of person that falls asleep behind the wheel if I don't shift myself, and engine braking is still a huge component of a fast track time, and I'm still not willing to hand that task over to a computer just yet.
The nine speeds, along with the admittedly brisk shifting speed of the automated manual does highlight another flaw of the NC1 that was immediately apparent after the mass and number of gears: it's mass (again) and rather soft ride. To reiterate: 1.7 tons is far from what anyone would consider light for a sports car, but I have to commend how little of that 1.7 tons you feel when hammering through the forward gears in rapid succession. It's... only when you have to slow down for a corner does the full 1.7 tons smack you right in the face. Let's just say that braking isn't this car's strong suit. The suspension setup stock is rather soft for my liking, and as such, when you slam the brakes (especially if you left foot brake) there's a very palpable delay between your brakes coming on, and the weight fully shifting over the front tyres. And in that split second delay where you're asking so much of the brakes but no grip to work with, the ABS sort of freaks out and doesn't know what to do, almost. The tyres will more than squeal, and your car will dive and squirm about as you try to hold it in a straight line, and the ABS doesn't seem to account again for the increased grip you have when the weight of the car is firmly on the front tyres, so I find that I almost have to pump the brakes even with ABS on to stop properly, in a 2017MY car! Or, you know, I could just not left foot brake, or be more gentle with the brake pedal but pshh if I don't have to deal with a clutch pedal, there's literally zero reason to not left foot brake HARD on a track. I mean, it IS a sports car, right? It's meant to go fast, right?
The news only gets worse from here. Technically this thing is an AWD car, right? Quick, open your racing textbooks 101, tell me what are AWD cars good for: corner exit traction. Translated into my boorish driving habits, that means mashing the throttle wide open once you're past the apex of a corner. And in the NSX... you can't do that.
See, real quick: the 3.5L V6 mid mounted, electric motor complemented gasoline engine drives the rear wheels of the car, with the two motors in the front of the car driving one front wheel each. This creates a rather perplexing situation, as oftentimes I mash the throttle expecting the grip of an AWD, only to find that the puny front motors, there primarily for fuel efficiency in city driving simply cannot keep up with the engines at the back. And so what happens is this car lulls you into a false sense of security in the phases where you're getting to know the car, with promising AWD acceleration out of a corner, but when push comes to shove and you really need the car to perform at ten tenths, such as in a hairpin or in wet conditions, the car cannot deliver on the "promises" and trust that it has instilled into you as a driver. And while the rear end of the still technically AWD NSX is by no means difficult to catch once it does break out, especially in the hands of someone with more experience with mid engined cars than I, it's still frustrating, especially in conjunction with how a slight spin will probably necessitate a gear drop due to the ultra close gearing afforded by a nine speed gearbox.
I say it's mid engined, but I honestly have no idea how you'd want to classify the layout of the NC1. It is at the same time, a front engined car, a mid engined car, and a rear engined car. And bafflingly it somehow seems to distill the worst traits of each layout and package them into a car, with the strengths of each yes, to be fair, but I find that the cons of each layout to be far more pronounced than the pros. Again, for an AWD car you expect effortless and savage corner exits, which the NSX won't do because it behaves more and more like an RWD car the lower the speed. It doesn't have that featherlight front end and effortless front end turn in you'd expect from a mid engined sports car with hardly anything up front, because again it has two electric motors up front. And while the pros of having a mid mounted engine is the most pronounced pro in the whole car, providing genuine weight and traction over the rear, it of course comes with that sick, sick feeling of having the entire Leaning Tower of Pisa bolted onto your engine head when the rear end starts to break loose in a midship car with a large engine. What you end up with is a car that I find has a horrendous center of gyration, with engines placed end to end along the entire length of the car. That's not to say it can't corner, mind you; it can absolutely hang with industry established behemoths like the R35 in the corners, but the way it does it, and the complaints it gives you as the driver when doing it, is what breaks the entire experience for me. I never felt like I was dancing in unison with the car, but rather having to accommodate its increasing list of demands time after time. There's a certain way, a certain method it wants to be driven in to be made the most of, and, I don't know about you, but that just isn't exactly fun to me.
If I had to sum up the NC1 NSX in a phrase, it'd be "Identity Crisis". It wants to be loved like the classic NSX, it wants to be as economical as a family sedan, it wants to be as fast as Godzilla, and it wants to be as ergonomical as a 911. Yet tragically every element within it seems to clash when driven at the limits. The soft suspension, the ridiculous center of gyration, the ABS, the gears, the motors, the engine... they all work well on their own but together it's just a cacophony of a waiting disaster. An especially deadly combination that I found out the very hard way was the soft suspension, the engine and motors clashing. I don't know what it is about this car. It might be the tyres, it might be the mass, it might be the computers, but this car lets go of its grip in the blink of an eye with absolutely zero warning. It's not like your traditional, lightweight Japanese sports car with slimmer tyres that will give you ample feedback via tyre squeals, steering wheel lightening mid corner, and gradual loss of traction from grip to slide, like the original NSX. You would not know where the limits of the car lie until you've exceeded them, which is dangerous enough on its own, but coupled with how it earns your trust at seven, eight tenths, is absolutely deadly. Where this car is the scariest isn't the tight hairpins where trying to accelerate out would break the rear out, but rather in a high speed sweeper, where the gasoline engine can easily overwhelm the front motors because of its own torque curve, and that would break the rear tyres loose, which would be unrecoverable because of the stupid centre of gravity and gyration of this car.
You'll have to excuse me if I really can't find anything nice to say about the NC1 NSX. The styling itself doesn't win me over, nor should it be the selling point of a car. The handling is a fucking mess to say the least, and given how forced down our throats it is by sullying the "NSX" name, I really don't know who the heck this car is supposed to be for. You want civility? 911. You want track performance? R35. Or the 911. Or the Ferrari 488. Or literally anything else. You want economy? Prius. It's mind boggling to me that the original NSX unified every contrasting element and made them work, but the NC1 is perhaps the embodiment of the most convincing argument that such unison is impossible.
Is there any saving grace? Well, the elephant in the room is adorned with a red Honda badge on its face. I realise that this is "just" a base NSX, and I'm comparing it to the Spec Vs, the GT3RSes, and admittedly even the Type Rs of old. With a lightened body and stiffed suspension, along with more calibrations to the engine and motor settings, I can definitely see this thing winning me over. It's just... you have AWD, nine gears, 573BHP, and no excuses for getting punked in the 0-60 department by a RR 911, or around the track by an R35 on a ten year old chassis. Hell, the GT3 spec of this car, you know, the one that's actually made to go fast? That ditches all the motors and becomes RWD, and I'm willing to bet it's everything I wanted out of my NSX, but doesn't that go to prove how asinine a concept the NC1 was if you have to strip away everything about it to make it go fast well?
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