you've made some good points earlier mate, but just for fun i'll ask you a question or two. as you said above, if Honda has some of the finest engineers in the world working on this car and it was so easy to take that 573 number and turn it into 650, don't you think they'd have done it already?
what have they needed to do with it since then? they were the first, knocked it well out of the park, and got all the recognition and good press for doing so. not that any of those brands needed it. the Italians, Germans, and Brits used the futuristic tech in ways that were revolutionary. the NSX came to the party late (not the Hypercar soiree of course), and tried to emulate and build on that bandwagon, then got it's butt kicked in performance by those very brand's models which weren't using any of that fancy tech. which for obvious reasons made a lot of people ask, "what was the point then?" all in all, that has to be embarrassing for Honda.
the NSX is a very nice car. but it seems Honda missed the mark in a lot of ways. market, performance, price, etc.
exactly. if anyone really thought this car was a bargain Porsche 918, or a revolutionary Supercar, Acura would have sold heaps more than 5 last month... :redface:
The Germans, Brits, and Italians made great cars to showcase what they can do. But where is the trickle down? The entire point of making these expensive cars that very few can afford is to trickle that technology down to the masses as they continue to develop and refine it. When will the 488, 570, or Huracan have a hybrid variant that sells for under $300k? Yes that is not cheap and affordable by any means but it is exponentially more affordable than the million dollar plus cars that technology debuted on. The hyper 3 was incredible, but we have yet to see the development that came from those projects. I believe Acura has placed themselves in an excellent market position for the future of hybrid supercars. They got their platform out early and can build it from here to be the best.
I just had a discussion with a local client who bought 2 NSX's from me, he was considering selling his personal car for a Mclaren 650s because of the fond memories he had in that car. I asked him how much he has been driving the NSX since he bought it. He had driven the car less than 200 miles. Spoke to him a week later and he was preaching an entirely different tune. He got out and drove it and pushed it and fell in love with it all over again. With the internet now so often people get stuck into analysis paralysis when comparing cars whether it is a supercar, or a small family car. Get out and drive and enjoy the NSX for what it is. I never get out of the drivers seat after a drive and think to myself "I wish this car had more". Maybe you do. For those folks I am simply saying stay tuned. I have faith in the engineers and executives and everyone behind the scenes. Again maybe I am the only one who does..
I think everyone seems to forget that there is only one car that I can think of that has a lower MSRP that does the same things and that is the GTR. Base GTR starts at $100k and head to head is dead even with the NSX in nearly every competition. To be faster and have better numbers you need to spend more money and get the Nismo. Same goes for the R8 and the plus variant. The NSX base varient at $156,000 is as much new supercar as you can buy right now. Yes you can get the other cars faster but you need to spend more $$$. We still don't know what the performance variant NSX will be or cost. We get stuck comparing the NSX to other models fastest, most expensive models and forget this is just the base car.
The car launched at 573, it is only on its second model year, I think everyone learned from Mclaren that new updates and car's every year is the quickest way to shoot yourself in the foot and kill values. Not that Acura didn't find another way to do that...anyways the car as it sits has 500hp out of the gasoline engine which I think could go untouched, that's a pretty good number there and seems to be their balance between reliability and performance. The best thing they could do and have said they will do is use more powerful electric motors.
Motors up front are 36hp each for 72 on the front axle and the rear motor is 47hp. With where electric cars/hybrids and the technology is at in 2018 I don't think it is unreasonable to have 75 to 100hp per motor up front. The direct drive motor is the one that is the hardest to bump up the power since it is sandwiched between the engine and transmission and would be fine left as is. The motors up front shouldn't be to large of a task for them at all.
The benefit here is then drastically increasing your 0-60 times, as it has been well discussed here electric motors are brutally fast, much easier and cheaper to make a car faster there than in the combustion engine. The other improvement that does not get talked about as much is how the handling would be even better than it already is. The car is great in slower and more technical corners as those motors can us their torque vectoring effectively there. But there is such a difference between the power over the rear axle and the front. In a high speed sweeper the front motors simply can't keep up and at a certain point become useless. Giving them more power and torque allows them to have more powerful torque vectoring at all speeds.
At this point it is all speculation. Just have to wait and see what 2019 will hold.
Also, our dealership charges $400 for the oil change. I'm guessing the differences across the country are due to labor rates as everyone else mentioned.