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Supercars
11 things you didn’t know about the new NSX
Honda’s 573bhp hybrid supercar has finally landed. Here’s your guide
After nearly ten years in the making, we’re finally here. The all-new, second-generation Honda NSX supercar has arrived, and it’s come with the weight of, well, nearly ten years worth of expectation on its shoulders.
Not only that, but it wades into territory now occupied by things like the Audi R8 V10, Lamborghini Huracán, Porsche 911 Turbo and BMW i8.
We’ve driven it – and can report back that the NSX is mighty quick, deploys effortless accelerative force and performs admirably on track. All in, very impressive.
You can read our first drive here. Before you do, here’s a quick digest of some very interesting things we found out...
Advertisement - Page continues below1. They’ll build them quite slowly...
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Well, relatively slowly. Once they’re up to full production, Honda will build eight NSX supercars every day. In the factory next door, they’ll knock out, um, 850 Honda Accords in the same amount of time.
2. ...in a factory that cost $70m
All NSXs will be built at Honda’s ‘Performance Manufacturing Centre’ in Marysville, Ohio. A centre that houses eight MIG welding robots.
Advertisement - Page continues below3. It features a lot of welding
Speaking of welding, between 850-900 welds go into the chassis of an NSX. That all adds up to 35 metres of welding material.
4. All prototypes will be mercilessly destroyed
During development of the new NSX, Honda built more than 250 prototypes. All of them will be crushed, the only exceptions being those saved for a static display.
Sad face.
5. It uses up a significant amount of paint
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Four gallons for each car, to be precise, applied in 11 layers over the NSX’s shape. Here’s a fun fact – the spray head rotates at 60,000rpm.
Oh, and apparently metallic red and metallic blue are the hardest colours to paint.
6. Honda employed all of its excellent geekiness in measuring the body
How excellently geeky? The chassis and body panels are measured to an accuracy of one-third of a human hair’s width. Wowsers.
Advertisement - Page continues below7. It’s had a proper shakedown
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And we mean that in the literal sense. At the end of assembly, the car is placed on a four-post shaker rig for 20 minutes in order to simulate road surfaces from around the world.
Then it gets driven into a ‘monsoon test’, where it’s exposed to a downpour equivalent to twice the highest recorded hurricane rainfall.
Now watch it go nuts on a dyno.
8. There’ll probably be a targa, and possibly an NSX ‘Type R’ in the pipeline
This year, Honda will deploy two NSX supercars at Pikes Peak. One is a standard car, but the second? A heavily modified version, minus all the hybrid gubbins. An NSX-R hiding in plain sight? We hope so.
Also, after a quick poke around the aforementioned $70m production factory, we discovered a lot of space. Bottom line is this: expect more derivatives of the NSX in the future.
Advertisement - Page continues below9. Rear-wheel steering was considered, but canned
The additional weight of a potential RWS system meant it never made it to final production. The car still clocks in at a hefty 1,725kg, mind.
10. The boot gets really, really hot
Perfect for slow-cooking your shopping if you take the long way home. Which you definitely will if you own an NSX.
11. You can make important Honda NSX engineers swear by unexpectedly braking
We tried out the launch control. It was swift, and good. Then we decided to see how quickly the NSX would stop. Without warning the engineer in the passenger seat.
Sorry.
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