- Joined
- 19 February 2016
- Messages
- 6
Picked up my Valencia Red / Saddle Brown NSX a few days ago.
These are my initial observations after driving it in the city, suburbia, and some of my favorite country/fun roads.
The car looks fabulous. Parked next to my 458 and AMG GTS, it looks every bit as exotic and stylish.
The quality of the paint is far better than any of the European cars.
The suspension and chassis are excellent. Very solid. Very fluid. Easy to drive briskly. Even with the Continental tires, it handles beautifully in brisk street driving. Very predictable. Quite comfortable.
Engine sound is quite good, but it has to be revving above 5000 rpm to sound tingling.
Engine response is very linear, with a crescendo also starting at around 5000 rpm.
Perhaps because I am accustomed to driving high torque, high horsepower cars, my initial reaction was that this car did not “feel” all that fast (subjectively/seat-of-the-pants). So I attached my accelerometer and did a few rolling “pulls”. (I check and record G-force in each gear for all my cars as a reference. I find that rolling G-force is an excellent objective measurement of how much acceleration a car actually generates).
The results were interesting. The NSX has exactly the same level of G-force in each of the first 4 gears as my AMG GTS, and my original GT-R. (Not surprising I suppose, as all 3 cars have approximately similar horsepower and torque, and all weigh 3800-3900 lbs.).
Specifically, G-force was approx. .75 in 2nd, .60 in 3rd, .50 in 4th and .40 in 5th. Gear ratios (therefore torque multiplication) are also in the same ballpark.
The difference in seat-of-the-pants “feeling” comes from the sound and the feel of each car. The AMG sounds and feels like a big block muscle car, with lots of (good) noise and vibration; the GT-R was tuned to feel and sound very raw (ie. never smooth); but the NSX is tuned to sound and feel quieter and smoother, so it “feels” less quick.
Magazine tests seem to back that up. All 3 cars seem to do the ¼ mile in about 11 seconds with a terminal velocity in the 125 mph range – so pretty good correlation.
The other thing that I found surprising was that the “torque-fill” from the electric motors is fairly modest, and that the V-6 has quite a bit of turbo lag, so it takes a while for the combination to come fully on boil. By comparison, the AMG (surprisingly) has far less lag, and comes on stronger and quicker. The GT-R on the other hand, had lots of turbo lag, but when it came on at about 4000 rpm, all hell broke loose. So interesting differences in tuning philosophies.
I recall that Acura had benchmarked the Ferrari 458 and Porsche GT-3 among other cars. It seems that in the end they chose to more closely mimic the feel and behaviour of the Audi R8, in terms of focusing on “goodness” and “competent” rather than excitement and twitchiness (the 458 and GT3 are very twitchy, but also very exciting).
There are a few areas for improvement:
As this is a $200K vehicle positioned as an “everyday supercar”, and it’s a Honda, it seems to me that the items listed below need to be better addressed:
The optional power seats have no up/down adjustment and no seat-bottom angle adjustments. Need to offer that at this price point, like every $35K Honda has.
The car is very wide, needing the mirrors to be folded to safely get into tight spots, yet the mirrors do not have a power folding function. (I don’t want to have to get out of my everyday supercar on a rainy day after I pull out of the garage, to unfold the mirrors).
The doors on the car are a foot thick, yet they did not use that opportunity to provide what could have been very large and useful (and much needed) storage space in the doors. (Some Porsches have flip-up arm rest doors that result in significant storage space under the armrest – an area that is otherwise wasted).
The 24 hour news and traffic radio channel in my area is on AM radio – yet Acura decided to not have AM available (What were they thinking?? I can’t imagine how that even saves any money).
Navigating the touchscreen would have been much easier if they provided a rotary wheel, or mouse function, so that one is less distracted looking at and clicking on the touchscreen, and not always getting dirty fingerprints all over the screen.
The pre-set dynamic settings are decently judged, but I have a strong preference to be able to customize my own settings. For example, I always drive this car in Track mode because I want the maximum engine and transmission responsiveness, but I find that on that setting, the suspension can be quite stiff over rough roads, and the engine sound tends to drone quite a lot when just cruising along at a constant speed. I would like to see customizable options, and/or ability to override the pre-sets to suit individual tastes. (Mercedes and BMW do quite a good job of this).
Overall, a very commendable effort by Acura, on their fist attempt in 20 years, at a high end sports car. Hopefully they will make some tweaks quite quickly (as McLaren did when they came out with their road cars a few years ago), to rectify some of these initial shortcomings and to further improve the car.
These are my initial observations after driving it in the city, suburbia, and some of my favorite country/fun roads.
The car looks fabulous. Parked next to my 458 and AMG GTS, it looks every bit as exotic and stylish.
The quality of the paint is far better than any of the European cars.
The suspension and chassis are excellent. Very solid. Very fluid. Easy to drive briskly. Even with the Continental tires, it handles beautifully in brisk street driving. Very predictable. Quite comfortable.
Engine sound is quite good, but it has to be revving above 5000 rpm to sound tingling.
Engine response is very linear, with a crescendo also starting at around 5000 rpm.
Perhaps because I am accustomed to driving high torque, high horsepower cars, my initial reaction was that this car did not “feel” all that fast (subjectively/seat-of-the-pants). So I attached my accelerometer and did a few rolling “pulls”. (I check and record G-force in each gear for all my cars as a reference. I find that rolling G-force is an excellent objective measurement of how much acceleration a car actually generates).
The results were interesting. The NSX has exactly the same level of G-force in each of the first 4 gears as my AMG GTS, and my original GT-R. (Not surprising I suppose, as all 3 cars have approximately similar horsepower and torque, and all weigh 3800-3900 lbs.).
Specifically, G-force was approx. .75 in 2nd, .60 in 3rd, .50 in 4th and .40 in 5th. Gear ratios (therefore torque multiplication) are also in the same ballpark.
The difference in seat-of-the-pants “feeling” comes from the sound and the feel of each car. The AMG sounds and feels like a big block muscle car, with lots of (good) noise and vibration; the GT-R was tuned to feel and sound very raw (ie. never smooth); but the NSX is tuned to sound and feel quieter and smoother, so it “feels” less quick.
Magazine tests seem to back that up. All 3 cars seem to do the ¼ mile in about 11 seconds with a terminal velocity in the 125 mph range – so pretty good correlation.
The other thing that I found surprising was that the “torque-fill” from the electric motors is fairly modest, and that the V-6 has quite a bit of turbo lag, so it takes a while for the combination to come fully on boil. By comparison, the AMG (surprisingly) has far less lag, and comes on stronger and quicker. The GT-R on the other hand, had lots of turbo lag, but when it came on at about 4000 rpm, all hell broke loose. So interesting differences in tuning philosophies.
I recall that Acura had benchmarked the Ferrari 458 and Porsche GT-3 among other cars. It seems that in the end they chose to more closely mimic the feel and behaviour of the Audi R8, in terms of focusing on “goodness” and “competent” rather than excitement and twitchiness (the 458 and GT3 are very twitchy, but also very exciting).
There are a few areas for improvement:
As this is a $200K vehicle positioned as an “everyday supercar”, and it’s a Honda, it seems to me that the items listed below need to be better addressed:
The optional power seats have no up/down adjustment and no seat-bottom angle adjustments. Need to offer that at this price point, like every $35K Honda has.
The car is very wide, needing the mirrors to be folded to safely get into tight spots, yet the mirrors do not have a power folding function. (I don’t want to have to get out of my everyday supercar on a rainy day after I pull out of the garage, to unfold the mirrors).
The doors on the car are a foot thick, yet they did not use that opportunity to provide what could have been very large and useful (and much needed) storage space in the doors. (Some Porsches have flip-up arm rest doors that result in significant storage space under the armrest – an area that is otherwise wasted).
The 24 hour news and traffic radio channel in my area is on AM radio – yet Acura decided to not have AM available (What were they thinking?? I can’t imagine how that even saves any money).
Navigating the touchscreen would have been much easier if they provided a rotary wheel, or mouse function, so that one is less distracted looking at and clicking on the touchscreen, and not always getting dirty fingerprints all over the screen.
The pre-set dynamic settings are decently judged, but I have a strong preference to be able to customize my own settings. For example, I always drive this car in Track mode because I want the maximum engine and transmission responsiveness, but I find that on that setting, the suspension can be quite stiff over rough roads, and the engine sound tends to drone quite a lot when just cruising along at a constant speed. I would like to see customizable options, and/or ability to override the pre-sets to suit individual tastes. (Mercedes and BMW do quite a good job of this).
Overall, a very commendable effort by Acura, on their fist attempt in 20 years, at a high end sports car. Hopefully they will make some tweaks quite quickly (as McLaren did when they came out with their road cars a few years ago), to rectify some of these initial shortcomings and to further improve the car.
