On another thread that's been around while, someone asked "Is the NSX a serious car?" We just had to give up our NSX, so we have some ideas about this.
Well, I won't touch that last one. I was born in Hollywood, grew up around LA and reached driving age in Newport Beach where you could walk from one surfing point to another stepping from one exotic to the next. [yawn] But it's true. I was, so I'm kinda innoculated against status symbols. If something can't deliver when the lights go off, it ain't... well, never mind. You see my point.
But I have driven most of the other exotics. Not the latest crop of million-dollar babies I'm afraid, but most of the traditional ones. Some of them are very nice cars, but you have to remember that the reputations for these traditional exotics were built when my '49 ford coupe was typical fare. For us, anything from Europe was pretty exotic, and Japan was still making little tin toys. Ferrari was still racing himself, but when he turned to selling street cars his buyers were wealthy enough to buy a mechanic with the car. Well, not literally, most of them just sent their pre-resident mechanic to the factory to learn how to maintain "the new car."
Traditions die hard. Very very few people buy an exotic of that sort with the expectation of driving it often, let alone using it as what we call today a daily driver.
Cindy and I just lost our NSX to a stupid dealer mistake not worth repeating here. It has a thread of its own. She is still upset about it, so instead of buying one of the very nice low-mileage NSX's available here, we went shopping for an alternative.
I wouldn't consider an Italian exotic, nor for that matter an Alfa Romeo. All of them are built around the formula of "buy car, adopt war orphan from region and send to factory for training while you build a hovel in your garage for when he returns to live with your car." All of them are lovely cars. Damn, they have great body designers. But none of them are serious cars as I define that term. They are toys and status symbols and sometimes not even both. (I've met people who consider a Lancia Flavia a wonderful weekend car, but it sure isn't a status symbol.)
Modern Maseratis are basically Ferraris with a different body design commissioned. Ferrari roadsters equivalent to the NSX, like the 328, 348 and 360 were always just a little slower than the corresponding NSX until Honda dropped out of the competition. They are thrilling to drive for half a dozen sensory reasons, but I never met one I'd drive except for pleasure excursions. Weekend toys I'm afraid. Remember, when one of those romantic stories has a Frenchman running down to Monaco for a casino weekend in his Ferrari America, they're talking about a drive we Californias just consider a moderate commute. From the Cannes Film Festival to the casino at Monte Carlo is about 35 miles. Our cursed NSX dealer is fifty miles away, and I used to commute 80 miles one way to a client in Los Angeles. Hell, from *Marseilles* to Monaco is only 130 miles. Europe is not a very big place by our standards out west. Their cars reflect that, and they are cars with a special design focus. They will send a sizzle up your spine along the French Riviera -- or US 101 up the California Coast -- but they are not daily drivers. I know we have some owners of both NSX and Ferrari here and I don't think they'll be offended at my saying that. Ferrari does not design them with that in mind. It's not a flaw, it's their nature. Does that make them more serious or less? Just different I submit.
Bugatti? I'll let you know when I have a million to spare for a Royale or a Veyron. I've seen the former at Pebble Beach and the latter on Top Gear. Never driven either, but I don't think anyone who buys them worries about which car to take to the Yacht Club.
The English cars are easy to love and in general under-designed in my slightly biased opinion as a spacecraft engineer. I had English sports cars when I was young and could spare... no, enjoy several hours a week pampering them. I haven't driven a recent Aston, so I don't know if that trait has changed, but I can't consider one myself because dealer service is hard to get where we live and it's impossible to consider playing nursemaid myself these days. Sure are elegant though. Have you seen the new Rapide?
That left the Germans, since Cindy was still mourning her NSX and I don't personally like the Nissan GTR that well. Wait. I did test drive the new Corvette line. Lovely well made cars by GM standards. But not by ours I'm afraid. Performance to beat the band. I would say the LS3 coupe could keep up with an NA2 on a track. In our NSX I could beat most Corvette drivers I know around Willow Springs, but a better driver could beat me. It's that sort of comparability.
The Z06 is about where the NSX would have been in 2006 or 2007 if Honda had permitted further engine development and continued production. In terms of performance I mean. Build standards for the engine are purportedly quite good, but the body and chassis build is not up to the one-off methods used by Tochigi for the NSX. Not just by repute, but by visual inspection. Everything from body panels not meeting properly to heat shielding that is loose around critical fuel lines. In other words, good ol' boy lovable Corvette is what it always was. Faster than stink on the track, and these days that includes a road course as well as a drag strip; but not built well enough -- and built in too many numbers -- to impress people used to essentially hand-made cars. Like the NSX and Ferrari and Lamborghini. (I apologize for forgetting the Bull. I've admired many of them up close, but drooling on a Miura is not driving. Can't speak to their livability except to quote people like Road and Track, and that's cheating.)
Though since I've mentioned them, let me say that I called R&T and spoke to an editor before I bought that NSX for Cindy back in 1999. I wanted to know if there'd be any nasty surprises for her in owning one. I won't name him since he was speaking off the record, but let me paraphrase: "We drive them all, but the only two exotics any of us would consider having in our own garages are the Porsche and the NSX. Everything else in their class is just fun for a day at the track, but they become tiresome quickly if you have to live with them. And of course the NSX has the advantage of being very rare. The Porsche has been around for decades so it won't draw an audience like an NSX will."
I remember Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear saying much the same thing just a year or so ago.
Naturally, when I wanted something that would look like "Gary's car" in the garage, and not a replacement for Cindy's murdered RAINBBY, I test drove Porsche. Since I haven't driven one for at least four years, I tried everything across their basic range before deciding which model to get serious about. And I warned the sales manager ahead of time that I would insist on doing that. No problem. Dealers consider the NSX a serious car. When you say: "Our NSX was wrecked and we need a replacement," they pay lots of attention to your interests. Sent me pictures ahead of time, lots of phone calls from Bakersfield to Beverly Hills. (Figure Marseilles to Monte Carlo...<g>)
Bottom line, I bought a 2009 911 Carrera S this weekend. For comparison, I would say the NA1 compares very well to the normally aspirated Porsche 911 of 2003 or so. The NA2 is a better car and performs better than the Porsches from that period. The current model 911S I bought has about twenty percent more displacement than our NA2 and uses all the tricks Honda pioneered. (At least in modern production. I haven't checked the history books. Like most things in the automotive world, I suppose Kaiser or Daimler or somebody tried all this stuff a century ago.) I mean particularly the variable intake volume and the variable valve timing to provide relatively flat power and torque curves.
The 997.2 as they designate it, will outrun our recently deceased NA2, though I haven't told Cindy that. A few tenths faster to sixty and a few more miles under the belt in a quarter mile. But. And this is noteworthy, it does that at the cost of slightly less livability and it took Porsche another ten years to catch up to the NSX. They have had turbos running much faster -- but so do we. If the aftermarket can produce such fast NSX examples, imagine what Honda could have done with the freedom to redesign the engine completely to incorporate one turbo for each bank as Porsche does. The basic NSX platform is every bit as fast as the Porsche 911's, and for those who remember their attempt to move to front engines, the NSX will beat a 968 also.
Interestingly, this same thread is being echoed on the Porsche forum I visited when I was considering what to buy. (Being an old man I was obligated to consider a sedan. Something like a Mercedes CLS550 or an Audi S5. I considered them. I did. Paid my dues. And then bought another exotic.:tongue
In any case, I found the Porsche forum to be what sold me. Well, that and the comments from R&T and Top Gear. The other cars' forums spend their time bitching about this recurring flaw or that one and why won't the factory do something. As if we still had snap ring problems in current production examples. At the Porsche forums, it was not like that. They love their cars just like we do, and talk is about how to personalize them, not fix what the factory got wrong. I expect to learn to love a 911S just like our NSX. They do love them, but they have people saying: "Well, I know Porsches aren't really built for speed..."
Where do these people get those ideas? Granted, a McLaren F1 or a Bugatti Veyron or a fuel dragster have more raw acceleration than any of our cars, but in any field I can push the envelope if you give me ten times the budget of serious production examples. When we say 'serious', we're talking about cars you can drive to work, not ones restricted to guarded executive parking lots where the attendant details the cars each day. And Top Gear aside, people who own exotics spend relatively little time drifting sideways at 100 mph. For one thing, it gets boring replacing a $1200 set of tires every afternoon. That isn't what defines an exotic. It just makes for bloody good videos. An NSX will do that of course, but it doesn't define such cars. Hell, my '49 Ford would do it. Not at a hundred of course, but I could lay it sideways at thirty like crazy, until the battery flipped into the radiator fan and... but that's another story.
The folks on the Porsche forum consider the NSX a serious car. The dealers for Ferrari, Maserati, Aston and Porsche certainly considered it serious enough to assume I might want one of their cars when our NSX was totalled. Granted it is out of production, so the NA2 with aftermarket mods is as good as it's going to get -- and it's hard not to feel guilty about changing a truly original example of a car that was only produced in the hundreds per year. Despite all that, let me quote something they said on the Porsche list when I joined and provided a brief auto biography. (Sorry couldn't resist.) This was from a Porsche owner of long standing. Had a list of models under his signature going back twenty years at least:
"The NSX is amazing. It is one of the very few cars ever made that we could be talking about its performance in these terms five years after it went out of production. It's going to be another famous classic like the Duesenberg."
Yes. The NSX is a very serious car. Love 'em if you got 'em, boys.
Gary
with the 2009 German thingie, and
the much loved 1999 NSX, RAINBBY,
now deceased, may she rest in peace
Well, I won't touch that last one. I was born in Hollywood, grew up around LA and reached driving age in Newport Beach where you could walk from one surfing point to another stepping from one exotic to the next. [yawn] But it's true. I was, so I'm kinda innoculated against status symbols. If something can't deliver when the lights go off, it ain't... well, never mind. You see my point.
But I have driven most of the other exotics. Not the latest crop of million-dollar babies I'm afraid, but most of the traditional ones. Some of them are very nice cars, but you have to remember that the reputations for these traditional exotics were built when my '49 ford coupe was typical fare. For us, anything from Europe was pretty exotic, and Japan was still making little tin toys. Ferrari was still racing himself, but when he turned to selling street cars his buyers were wealthy enough to buy a mechanic with the car. Well, not literally, most of them just sent their pre-resident mechanic to the factory to learn how to maintain "the new car."
Traditions die hard. Very very few people buy an exotic of that sort with the expectation of driving it often, let alone using it as what we call today a daily driver.
Cindy and I just lost our NSX to a stupid dealer mistake not worth repeating here. It has a thread of its own. She is still upset about it, so instead of buying one of the very nice low-mileage NSX's available here, we went shopping for an alternative.
I wouldn't consider an Italian exotic, nor for that matter an Alfa Romeo. All of them are built around the formula of "buy car, adopt war orphan from region and send to factory for training while you build a hovel in your garage for when he returns to live with your car." All of them are lovely cars. Damn, they have great body designers. But none of them are serious cars as I define that term. They are toys and status symbols and sometimes not even both. (I've met people who consider a Lancia Flavia a wonderful weekend car, but it sure isn't a status symbol.)
Modern Maseratis are basically Ferraris with a different body design commissioned. Ferrari roadsters equivalent to the NSX, like the 328, 348 and 360 were always just a little slower than the corresponding NSX until Honda dropped out of the competition. They are thrilling to drive for half a dozen sensory reasons, but I never met one I'd drive except for pleasure excursions. Weekend toys I'm afraid. Remember, when one of those romantic stories has a Frenchman running down to Monaco for a casino weekend in his Ferrari America, they're talking about a drive we Californias just consider a moderate commute. From the Cannes Film Festival to the casino at Monte Carlo is about 35 miles. Our cursed NSX dealer is fifty miles away, and I used to commute 80 miles one way to a client in Los Angeles. Hell, from *Marseilles* to Monaco is only 130 miles. Europe is not a very big place by our standards out west. Their cars reflect that, and they are cars with a special design focus. They will send a sizzle up your spine along the French Riviera -- or US 101 up the California Coast -- but they are not daily drivers. I know we have some owners of both NSX and Ferrari here and I don't think they'll be offended at my saying that. Ferrari does not design them with that in mind. It's not a flaw, it's their nature. Does that make them more serious or less? Just different I submit.
Bugatti? I'll let you know when I have a million to spare for a Royale or a Veyron. I've seen the former at Pebble Beach and the latter on Top Gear. Never driven either, but I don't think anyone who buys them worries about which car to take to the Yacht Club.
The English cars are easy to love and in general under-designed in my slightly biased opinion as a spacecraft engineer. I had English sports cars when I was young and could spare... no, enjoy several hours a week pampering them. I haven't driven a recent Aston, so I don't know if that trait has changed, but I can't consider one myself because dealer service is hard to get where we live and it's impossible to consider playing nursemaid myself these days. Sure are elegant though. Have you seen the new Rapide?
That left the Germans, since Cindy was still mourning her NSX and I don't personally like the Nissan GTR that well. Wait. I did test drive the new Corvette line. Lovely well made cars by GM standards. But not by ours I'm afraid. Performance to beat the band. I would say the LS3 coupe could keep up with an NA2 on a track. In our NSX I could beat most Corvette drivers I know around Willow Springs, but a better driver could beat me. It's that sort of comparability.
The Z06 is about where the NSX would have been in 2006 or 2007 if Honda had permitted further engine development and continued production. In terms of performance I mean. Build standards for the engine are purportedly quite good, but the body and chassis build is not up to the one-off methods used by Tochigi for the NSX. Not just by repute, but by visual inspection. Everything from body panels not meeting properly to heat shielding that is loose around critical fuel lines. In other words, good ol' boy lovable Corvette is what it always was. Faster than stink on the track, and these days that includes a road course as well as a drag strip; but not built well enough -- and built in too many numbers -- to impress people used to essentially hand-made cars. Like the NSX and Ferrari and Lamborghini. (I apologize for forgetting the Bull. I've admired many of them up close, but drooling on a Miura is not driving. Can't speak to their livability except to quote people like Road and Track, and that's cheating.)
Though since I've mentioned them, let me say that I called R&T and spoke to an editor before I bought that NSX for Cindy back in 1999. I wanted to know if there'd be any nasty surprises for her in owning one. I won't name him since he was speaking off the record, but let me paraphrase: "We drive them all, but the only two exotics any of us would consider having in our own garages are the Porsche and the NSX. Everything else in their class is just fun for a day at the track, but they become tiresome quickly if you have to live with them. And of course the NSX has the advantage of being very rare. The Porsche has been around for decades so it won't draw an audience like an NSX will."
I remember Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear saying much the same thing just a year or so ago.
Naturally, when I wanted something that would look like "Gary's car" in the garage, and not a replacement for Cindy's murdered RAINBBY, I test drove Porsche. Since I haven't driven one for at least four years, I tried everything across their basic range before deciding which model to get serious about. And I warned the sales manager ahead of time that I would insist on doing that. No problem. Dealers consider the NSX a serious car. When you say: "Our NSX was wrecked and we need a replacement," they pay lots of attention to your interests. Sent me pictures ahead of time, lots of phone calls from Bakersfield to Beverly Hills. (Figure Marseilles to Monte Carlo...<g>)
Bottom line, I bought a 2009 911 Carrera S this weekend. For comparison, I would say the NA1 compares very well to the normally aspirated Porsche 911 of 2003 or so. The NA2 is a better car and performs better than the Porsches from that period. The current model 911S I bought has about twenty percent more displacement than our NA2 and uses all the tricks Honda pioneered. (At least in modern production. I haven't checked the history books. Like most things in the automotive world, I suppose Kaiser or Daimler or somebody tried all this stuff a century ago.) I mean particularly the variable intake volume and the variable valve timing to provide relatively flat power and torque curves.
The 997.2 as they designate it, will outrun our recently deceased NA2, though I haven't told Cindy that. A few tenths faster to sixty and a few more miles under the belt in a quarter mile. But. And this is noteworthy, it does that at the cost of slightly less livability and it took Porsche another ten years to catch up to the NSX. They have had turbos running much faster -- but so do we. If the aftermarket can produce such fast NSX examples, imagine what Honda could have done with the freedom to redesign the engine completely to incorporate one turbo for each bank as Porsche does. The basic NSX platform is every bit as fast as the Porsche 911's, and for those who remember their attempt to move to front engines, the NSX will beat a 968 also.
Interestingly, this same thread is being echoed on the Porsche forum I visited when I was considering what to buy. (Being an old man I was obligated to consider a sedan. Something like a Mercedes CLS550 or an Audi S5. I considered them. I did. Paid my dues. And then bought another exotic.:tongue
In any case, I found the Porsche forum to be what sold me. Well, that and the comments from R&T and Top Gear. The other cars' forums spend their time bitching about this recurring flaw or that one and why won't the factory do something. As if we still had snap ring problems in current production examples. At the Porsche forums, it was not like that. They love their cars just like we do, and talk is about how to personalize them, not fix what the factory got wrong. I expect to learn to love a 911S just like our NSX. They do love them, but they have people saying: "Well, I know Porsches aren't really built for speed..."Where do these people get those ideas? Granted, a McLaren F1 or a Bugatti Veyron or a fuel dragster have more raw acceleration than any of our cars, but in any field I can push the envelope if you give me ten times the budget of serious production examples. When we say 'serious', we're talking about cars you can drive to work, not ones restricted to guarded executive parking lots where the attendant details the cars each day. And Top Gear aside, people who own exotics spend relatively little time drifting sideways at 100 mph. For one thing, it gets boring replacing a $1200 set of tires every afternoon. That isn't what defines an exotic. It just makes for bloody good videos. An NSX will do that of course, but it doesn't define such cars. Hell, my '49 Ford would do it. Not at a hundred of course, but I could lay it sideways at thirty like crazy, until the battery flipped into the radiator fan and... but that's another story.
The folks on the Porsche forum consider the NSX a serious car. The dealers for Ferrari, Maserati, Aston and Porsche certainly considered it serious enough to assume I might want one of their cars when our NSX was totalled. Granted it is out of production, so the NA2 with aftermarket mods is as good as it's going to get -- and it's hard not to feel guilty about changing a truly original example of a car that was only produced in the hundreds per year. Despite all that, let me quote something they said on the Porsche list when I joined and provided a brief auto biography. (Sorry couldn't resist.) This was from a Porsche owner of long standing. Had a list of models under his signature going back twenty years at least:
"The NSX is amazing. It is one of the very few cars ever made that we could be talking about its performance in these terms five years after it went out of production. It's going to be another famous classic like the Duesenberg."
Yes. The NSX is a very serious car. Love 'em if you got 'em, boys.
Gary
with the 2009 German thingie, and
the much loved 1999 NSX, RAINBBY,
now deceased, may she rest in peace
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