It’s exactly as I remember. And that’s the key thing: Nothing to do with my memory, but how memorable the Honda NSX was to drive. Because it drove like nothing else. So, to unpack the obvious here, this is a hero I’ve met before.
The NSX was on sale for 15 years from 1990, and in that time, I went from keen teen with nose permanently in a car magazine, to grizzled, picky (and frequently jaded) reviewer. Now that I think about it, the NSX probably spanned my transition from reader to writer better than any other car.
When it was first revealed, I remember scoffing slightly—as did the more opinionated news writers—at the temerity of a Japanese firm building a sports car to challenge the best Europe had to offer. Think of the way we greeted the news that Hyundai was going to build a hot hatch. And then picture the result. Because when the NSX landed, it set about the opposition in new and interesting ways.
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There’s an argument that says the NSX is the most influential sports car ever made. Let’s pick at that for a minute. It did this not by being more exciting to drive than its rivals, but by showing them a different way. Up until then, sports cars had frequently been challenging to drive. The NSX showed that a sports car could still be fabulously engaging while having excellent ergonomics, brilliant reliability, great packaging, and so on. Okay, the Porsche 911 was already a long way down that track, but sometimes you need a complete newcomer to cause a revolution.
It certainly set the cat among the pigeons at Ferrari, whose lazy and complacent 348 the NSX ran rings around. At 1,370kg, the first version wasn’t that light, but it was revolutionary, featuring a cutting-edge extruded aluminum frame and all-aluminum body—a first for a production car.
The fact that’s usually bandied about is that Senna had a hand in its development. He did, but of far more significance to me is that Gordon Murray owned one for seven years and used it as a dynamic template for the McLaren F1. Because it wasn’t just reliability and ease of driving that the NSX offered.
But first, we need to get on board. The little latch on the pillar clicks the door open lightly, and you drop down into a super-low cabin that still somehow manages to sit you high within it because all the cabin furniture is so low around you. It’s heavy on the shiny plastic in here, but it’s also so interestingly designed, the view out so good that you barely notice. And yeah, even in 2005, as the NSX was about to go off sale, it was still fitted with a cassette player.
By then, 290hp was barely enough, and the NSX had never followed the trend for rowdiness, volume, and extravagance. It whirs into life, not particularly tunefully, but from that point onwards, there’s magic in its movements. The stubby six-speed gear lever slots and slices its way around, the throw short, light, and undemanding, but so filled with mechanical texture.
Driven a Lotus or an Alpine? You’ll recognize the handling traits, the fluent ride, the supple movements, the ease with which it scoots through corners, the sensational balance. It’s not a car you chuck around, but one you flow with. And the VTEC V6 engine is fabulous high up. It growls and barks and is hard-edged in a way the chassis isn’t.
Over the course of its life, it was tweaked and tuned, lost its pop-up headlights, gained more power and engine capacity (from 3.0 to 3.2 liters), but when it died, it would take over a decade for Honda to summon up the courage to do it again. And the results weren’t entirely happy. The 2017 version failed to recapture the magic, will never be viewed in the same light as the original. Which goes down as an all-time great.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
