- Joined
- 22 March 2015
- Messages
- 91
VIN: JH4NA1156PT000403 - 1993 Formula Red Acura NSX #403
The excitement I had when I finally acquired my first NSX after a year of searching :biggrin: It's been a bucketlist/dream car I've always wanted to own. I've been a Honda guy since my teenage years. Started with a Honda Civic, went through 3 different S2000s and finally decided it was time to own my first NSX. Absolutely love them all. Mr. Shigeru Uehara-San did it right with both the S2000 and NSX.
Story: I was on my 3rd S2000 - jumping from an '01 AP1 to an '03 AP1 and then an 05' AP2. I was on NSXPrime's FB group and I decided to test the water and see if anyone would trade their NSX for a clean GPW S2000. I was easily shot down and flamed for even offering it. One person said my best bet was to just sell it and find the right one I really wanted. From the discouragement and from the advice that some gave, I took that one person's advice, sold the S2000 and my search-journey for the NSX was ON!
From the year of searching, I've learned a lot about these cars. I knew I wanted a 1993 at the very least because I was worried about the snap ring issue from the <1992s. Depending on price, it was either a 1993-1994 or 1995-1996 as that fit my budget of what I wanted to spend. I knew I absolutely had to have Red. I felt that Red was the signature color of the NA1 NSXs, though it did seem white was the most sought after color. Even though the 1995+ had the targa top, pre-1995 coupe models with the black top grew on me a lot.
I've searched far and wide. I was willing to travel far for them. I used craigslist initially but it was tiring clicking through each city. I've found a site called autotempest.com that helped search through craigslist, autotrader. cars.com and eBay much quicker. With that, I found NSX's much quicker. I found good deals that were out of my price range and/or not the right color I wanted but felt I wanted to support the community and posted some of the good deals up onto NSXPrime's FB group as my due diligence.
Finally in September/October, I found one more local in the Midwest to me. One I could actually drive out to. I'm in Chicago and I drove about an hour and a half to check this one out. It was listed at $35k but I figured it wouldn't hurt to take a look, since rarely do I see one pop up locally to me that isn't priced $50k+.
I'm a very detailed person. Paint was my biggest worry because it was a 22-23 year old car. I'm a stickler about paint and I have an eye for this stuff after owning 12 cars before this. At first look, the car was in great condition minus the swirls in the paint. I knew this was something that could be corrected. The paint shined very well for something that was 22-23 year despite the swirls, so I decided to check it more into details. To my disappointment, the car was repainted. Took some hard eyeing to figure this out, because the repaint was done very well. No orange peels and paint was very smooth.
Of course, with a repaint, that raised some red flags for me. I started looking everywhere. The way the panels lined up and any uneven surfaces. Knocking on the panels to make sure no bondos. It was solid and I couldnt find anything wrong with it. I had a friend with me at the same time and I had him search up the VIN on carfax and on google. Carfax was clean, but found a page on NSXPrime that pointed out that it was in a rear end accident. That discouraged me some more, but after taking a look under the car, checking the frames and removing the trunk carpets, the damage was either minor or the person who repaired it did a very good job. The one thing I noticed that caught my attention was when I looked underneath the car and there was a part of the sheet metal on the lower part of the panel that was wrinkled (To me, this was minor but definitely something I used later as a bargaining chip).
After doing a thorough inspection of the NSX for an hour or so and test driving it, I felt the car was solid, despite the flaws I found. Of course with the flaws, I wasn't going to pay the asking price. I went home, did my research some more on it. Found out it had around $10k of service maintenances that were done to it through Acura within the 10k mile range, including major parts like timing belt/water pump and clutch job. That boosted my confidence in this car and from there, I threw him an offer. I told him all the flaws I found in person and what I've found online. He turned down my offer and countered. He was pretty firm with what he wanted. After a little persistency, and a bit of back and forth, we finally agreed on a price that I was satisfied with. 5 days after checking out the car and the back and forth talking, I went to go do a final inspection with a couple of other car friends in case I missed anything and to make sure it was to my standards with the flaws. After another hour or so of it, the deal went down and I am now a proud owner of this 1993 NSX
Drove it home and went straight to getting it paint corrected. Took it to my buddy who owns his own detailing business and does a lot of high end cars. He was pretty impressed with the paint job himself and said it was definitely one of the nicest paint jobs he's seen. This definitely made me happier about my purchase :smile:
Thanks for reading! If you have Instagram and want to follow my photo blog of the NSX, follow me at [MENTION=9109]NA1[/MENTION]MEAN_NSX !
The excitement I had when I finally acquired my first NSX after a year of searching :biggrin: It's been a bucketlist/dream car I've always wanted to own. I've been a Honda guy since my teenage years. Started with a Honda Civic, went through 3 different S2000s and finally decided it was time to own my first NSX. Absolutely love them all. Mr. Shigeru Uehara-San did it right with both the S2000 and NSX.
Story: I was on my 3rd S2000 - jumping from an '01 AP1 to an '03 AP1 and then an 05' AP2. I was on NSXPrime's FB group and I decided to test the water and see if anyone would trade their NSX for a clean GPW S2000. I was easily shot down and flamed for even offering it. One person said my best bet was to just sell it and find the right one I really wanted. From the discouragement and from the advice that some gave, I took that one person's advice, sold the S2000 and my search-journey for the NSX was ON!
From the year of searching, I've learned a lot about these cars. I knew I wanted a 1993 at the very least because I was worried about the snap ring issue from the <1992s. Depending on price, it was either a 1993-1994 or 1995-1996 as that fit my budget of what I wanted to spend. I knew I absolutely had to have Red. I felt that Red was the signature color of the NA1 NSXs, though it did seem white was the most sought after color. Even though the 1995+ had the targa top, pre-1995 coupe models with the black top grew on me a lot.
I've searched far and wide. I was willing to travel far for them. I used craigslist initially but it was tiring clicking through each city. I've found a site called autotempest.com that helped search through craigslist, autotrader. cars.com and eBay much quicker. With that, I found NSX's much quicker. I found good deals that were out of my price range and/or not the right color I wanted but felt I wanted to support the community and posted some of the good deals up onto NSXPrime's FB group as my due diligence.
Finally in September/October, I found one more local in the Midwest to me. One I could actually drive out to. I'm in Chicago and I drove about an hour and a half to check this one out. It was listed at $35k but I figured it wouldn't hurt to take a look, since rarely do I see one pop up locally to me that isn't priced $50k+.
I'm a very detailed person. Paint was my biggest worry because it was a 22-23 year old car. I'm a stickler about paint and I have an eye for this stuff after owning 12 cars before this. At first look, the car was in great condition minus the swirls in the paint. I knew this was something that could be corrected. The paint shined very well for something that was 22-23 year despite the swirls, so I decided to check it more into details. To my disappointment, the car was repainted. Took some hard eyeing to figure this out, because the repaint was done very well. No orange peels and paint was very smooth.
Of course, with a repaint, that raised some red flags for me. I started looking everywhere. The way the panels lined up and any uneven surfaces. Knocking on the panels to make sure no bondos. It was solid and I couldnt find anything wrong with it. I had a friend with me at the same time and I had him search up the VIN on carfax and on google. Carfax was clean, but found a page on NSXPrime that pointed out that it was in a rear end accident. That discouraged me some more, but after taking a look under the car, checking the frames and removing the trunk carpets, the damage was either minor or the person who repaired it did a very good job. The one thing I noticed that caught my attention was when I looked underneath the car and there was a part of the sheet metal on the lower part of the panel that was wrinkled (To me, this was minor but definitely something I used later as a bargaining chip).
After doing a thorough inspection of the NSX for an hour or so and test driving it, I felt the car was solid, despite the flaws I found. Of course with the flaws, I wasn't going to pay the asking price. I went home, did my research some more on it. Found out it had around $10k of service maintenances that were done to it through Acura within the 10k mile range, including major parts like timing belt/water pump and clutch job. That boosted my confidence in this car and from there, I threw him an offer. I told him all the flaws I found in person and what I've found online. He turned down my offer and countered. He was pretty firm with what he wanted. After a little persistency, and a bit of back and forth, we finally agreed on a price that I was satisfied with. 5 days after checking out the car and the back and forth talking, I went to go do a final inspection with a couple of other car friends in case I missed anything and to make sure it was to my standards with the flaws. After another hour or so of it, the deal went down and I am now a proud owner of this 1993 NSX
Drove it home and went straight to getting it paint corrected. Took it to my buddy who owns his own detailing business and does a lot of high end cars. He was pretty impressed with the paint job himself and said it was definitely one of the nicest paint jobs he's seen. This definitely made me happier about my purchase :smile:
Thanks for reading! If you have Instagram and want to follow my photo blog of the NSX, follow me at [MENTION=9109]NA1[/MENTION]MEAN_NSX !
