I think your point on origins has some validity but it seems that a majority of the original "meat" for the car (motor, shape, engineering, suspension, etc.) came from Japan...it's just now being all "processed" in American from here forward. Overall opinions on all you brought up will vary based upon frame of reference I think. There are at least 3 ways I can think of this question being processed and an opinion garnered: marketing principle, concept principle and design principle.
Marketing
From a marketing standpoint, as pointed out Acura owns the term "NSX" and are free to use it, brand it, kill it, milk it etc. however they want. It makes perfect sense for them to leverage the brand equity built into the original showstopper and use this 3 letter platform as a foundation...the mere mention of a new NSX sent excitement ripples throughout the auto landscape for over the last decade. It got milked a bit much when they canned names like the Legend, the Integra, the Verno (81-95...Vigor in US towards the end) and followed suit with a literal A thru Z exploitation of ARX (Le Mans), CSX (Civic in Japan), ILX, MDX, RDX, RLX, RSX, TLX, TSX, XXX, ZDX. As far as marketing is concerned they need to make their product known (and using 'NSX' greatly helps them obvioulsy), take competition seriously, be ardent about relating to their customers, and progress at the speed of the market. There is no doubt in my mind that their recent era of design-by-committee hampered the company's ability to do these things like they had in the past or why else did they just pull a corporate about face. From this standpoint it is an uber mess that will require years of cleanup.
Concept
From a conceptual standpoint, I think it is commonly agreed both here and publicly warranting very little comment that this version not only conceptually but in real-time has brought new tech to the table, a new lower price point for hang-with-ferrari performance (still needing to be proven tho), and pioneered some revolutionary platforms for years to come. From this outlook, it looks like it is going to have great reliability and perform quite well against much higher priced options. From this standpoint it is a complete win.
Design
And finally from a design standpoint (not the engr aspect just the bare essential of recognition/appearance), it is arguably a miss and here lies the giant disconnect with a significant market audience with it's very hatchback-like rear, sedan-like hung headlights, and embossed mesh faux-grill, none of which can be used in the same sentence to describe the 1.0. It's understood that the economy and other uncontrollable variables (Tsunami '11) only added to preventing a timely successor from having become incarnate. But from strictly a design perspective, whoever thought they could circumvent needed and gradual design iterations as proven necessary in the industry and forcefully skip a couple decades and label it as such took an enormous risk on behalf of the brand. The value of something as simple as the element of its appearance should not be underestimated. And with big risks we all know you'll either get big rewards or big losses (also, still needing to be proven w/time).
Personally I have a hunch from what I've read that the decision to
skip goes back to somewhere between '06-'09 w/the original concept drawings paired with a staunch commitment to "the beak" and in desperation unintentionally losing their ability to relate to their (at-the-time) loyal audience. Even just a few years before this the HSC ('03) was vying to be a very visible successor but this changed obviously. I don't think the 'skip-iterations' decision rests on Torrance HQ but rather Honda Japan, and Acura USA had to deal with whatever they'd been given practically in every aspect. When the powers that be realized more power was needed, that obviously sent this thing back to the drawing board but now they were in a massive time crunch and had to focus on just fitting it in there! Btw I said desperation because if you look at their numbers back then times were tough and making a big move seemed quite necessary.
Thank you for this graphic that helps make this point with oh let's see...30 examples to demonstrate this phenomena. The bottom of the poster spells it out nicely. You cannot and should not go directly from version 1.0 to version 30.0 and call it a 'Corvette'. You cannot and should not go directly from version 1.0 to version 30.0 if you want to establish 'heritage'. And you cannot and should not go directly from version 1.0 to version 30.0 and not expect to disenfranchise some customers, tv car critics, automotive magazine journalists, and the like. You are most certainly right that you cannot please everyone.
I respectfully disagree that this would have happened with regard to the outward design (they already were going to incorporate state of the art technology no matter what). I am hard pressed to even think of an example of when has a sequel car ever been accused in a negative light of "riding the coattails of its predecessor" if the predecessor was that good
? It's the other way around and riding it is to be expected if it's
that good so you can build upon it and lay down your heritage.
I think this NSX hit 1.5 out of my 3 variables above. I think performance-wise and reliability-wise it's going to knock it out of the park. Being stronger in some variables has more clout than others. You could have the most AMAZING technology under the hood (one category) but if it is genuinely displeasing to the eye (another category) you will be hard pressed to sell the product and this doesn't just apply to cars. Make no mistake, the new NSX is not an ugly car by any stretch of the word...it truly is beautiful in its own right. Looking at Prime posts on facebook and around here it becomes quite clear that it boils down to how one interprets all these variables (the tech, the price, the name, the appearance, the performance, the brand, etc.) which forms their personal expectations and how they are met. I am genuinely happy to see that there are folks on here whose expectations have been entirely met so far. To be honest I am quite jealous of you because I had hoped that would be me, and that the expectations I had dreamed up over the yrs for the design would be met. But hey, that's my problem and nobody elses :smile: