Why The New Acura NSX Is Too Damn Sensible For Its Own Good
Motor Trend's Jason Cammisa took the new NSX to Sonoma Raceway, and found it to be an impressively fast car that's hampered by a logical design ethos
Click here to read more about the Acura/Honda NSX, and head over here for our verdict on the original version.
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
The only way it could be made better is if it had a fully manual gearbox. Sorry, but I like it.
I think that “super”cars have moved away from manual gearboxes as we as humans make more mistakes than an automated system . Just like the GTR, requires fast gear changes to achieve great feats.
Sure if you are a great driver you can too achieve great goals with a manual (like true racing drivers do) but not everyone is a racing driver, most people who can afford or even want these cars arent racing drivers and are just going to put this car in a garage as a show pony.
People are giving Honda too much crap for making the NSX too much as a daily. The NSX is supposed to be a daily supercar. This new one might not be as good as the old one, but it is good in terms of today’s standards. The old NSX showed people that a supercar can be a daily and used technology (1985 standards) to produce that. This is following the same footprint. It is using technology (2015 standards) to produce a brilliant car. This car is meant to send daily supercars into the future. Sure, it may not be the successor that most people wanted, but don’t forget that this is a brilliant car. Good job Honda/Acura for producing a great car.
i’m really tired of all these purists only wanting “pure” “fun” “simple” bla bla bla cars. that’s all gone, this is a supercar, no one cares that you would like a cheap, simple car. that’s not what supercars are. If companies want to compete in supercar markets, they have to make their cars more insane than the last car. if Honda made this stick shift and simple, it would cost 40k and be slow as hell, and no one except 100 purists would buy it. there’s just no market for that and companies will never make something that won’t sell.
Oh no, 20 years passed and this new car doesnt have somewhat hard edges, what a surprise!
I like the car design and I would drive it if I got the chance. I understand they had to 1 up the technology out there but it’s over the top when you fake the brake feedback on my foot, eliminate the good steering wheel fight my hands at corners and feed fake exhaust noise through the speakers that’s just pure and simple experience theft.
I respectfully disagree with this video’s premise. The new NSX may be different from the old in design, but things always change. Every car guy loves to have the involvement of driving, and yet that will change eventually as well. While the concept and inspiration behind the cars design has changed and is undoubtedly incomplete, it is important to remember that change is a gradual process. Things like the dead steering wheel will be a thing of the past in the next couple of years because the technology is incomplete. Whenever a car comes back after a number of years, it has a good many flaws that get worked out over a model year or two (like the Chevy Camaro or the Mini brand) and yet it is almost more important that the gigantic corporations actually listened to their fan bases and brought back these memorable cars in the first place.
DAT SOUND DOEE…..REALLY ORGASMIC
What a great feature. This guy is on top of his game. Really like his work.
why does it sound like it has bubbles in the exhaust when he revs it?
To all the fanboys saying that Honda couldn’t have done this new car without “pushing the envelope of cutting edge technology”, lest being criticized for underdevelopment, look up the new Mazda MX-5’s reviews and get back to me. Yes, I know they’re completely different segments of sports car, but if you’re old enough to actually have known the ethos of the original NSX, you’d know full well that people wouldn’t mind an “underdeveloped” car that offers a purer driving experience. That’s as true for what Mazda did for the new MX-5 as what Honda should’ve done with a new NSX.
This is a sorry excuse for an NSX. In the name of eliminating turbo lag and implementing torque vectoring, it ends up giving us dead steering, simulated digital braking, and even speaker exhausts? How can anyone in a car enthusiast community like this justify any of that? We all knew its commitment to overcomplications would sap away every bit of driver involvement and hence driving pleasure from it. MotorTrend’s review did an awesome job to see that and not get swept along by the hype and marketing. In the end, this approach pleases no one but the eco-fanboys who jiz all over spec-sheets, talk about being “objective”, and spew the fallacy that just because NSX stands of New Sportscar eXperimental, that it has to therefore be overcomplicated BS; missing the point entirely.
If Honda truly wanted to be “experimental”, it would buck the trend of techno-overloading and hybridizing everything and show the world that the way to make an everyday supercar is to simplify with a proper naturally aspirated six cylinder, manual transmission, and fine-tuned well-sorted mechanicals; to emphasize the actual experience of driving, not just try to meet some spec-sheet target requirements on a friggin piece of paper.