I don't think you're wrong, I was just answering the question, as it was a huge selling point for me. Not hybrid specifically, but how they executed on it is really something. Sure it would be nice to have more power from both ICE and electric, but I never feel disappointed getting out after a drive, quite the opposite.
At Road America last weekend, a guy asked me why they weren't selling and I think it's pretty simple. Most people with $200k to spend on a car don't think of Acura. I've not been in the NSX community for very long, so I have no idea if this is correct, but I sense that it's similar to the Porsche enthusiast community where a large number of passionate owners have had their cars for a long time and perhaps bought them used and when a $200k Turbo S hits the market, they aren't the ones running to buy them. The NSX was so delayed after the initial hype, it pissed a lot of faithful NSX people off to see the price and most people in this price range are more interested in "hey look at my McLaren" than "you gotta drive this thing, it's awesome".
Lot's of generalizations in my statements and there are surely exceptions, but that's my gut. I do think what gets missed in these conversations is that Acura built this car as an R&D platform. They never expected to sell 200/month despite what the capacity of PMC might be.
I would be tempted to think the same, but when you look at it empirically I don't think the Acura name is necessarily the issue.
When the original NSX came out, Acura had no status whatsoever as a sports car maker, yet sold almost 4,000 units the first year in the USA market at a base price ($63,000) that adjusts to around $120,000 today. Some also paid markups in the beginning that would be equivalent of up to $190,000 today. And, they did this in an economy for sports cars that was sending companies like Porsche into serious financial trouble.
The base price of the new NSX is only $30,000 more than the price of the original, adjusted for inflation. The $20,000 incentive on these cars + avg. discounts makes it almost equal to the original.
I think the real issue is that the original NSX moved the game forward in ways that made people want it: much more reliable & usable than contemporary European supercars, and new technologies (aluminum frame, VTEC, etc.) that pushed the game forward without making the car overly techy (the original NSX team purposely did not include turbos, AWD, etc. despite it all being considered).
The new NSX, by comparison, has not really moved the game forward in any way other than the hybrid system. That is awesome from a theoretical standpoint, but I think the problem is that the average supercar buyer isn't really excited about hybrid alone - they are excited about either super high performance per dollar (Nissan GT-R, Corvette, etc.) or a super exciting experience (R8's screaming V10 @ 8k RPM, Porsche GT3 as an analogue track experience, etc.). The reliability and usability argument also no longer stands for the NSX, because its competitors have now all become reliable and usable (not 100%, but to a large degree).
