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2017 Acura NSX - First Drive Road and Track

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http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/first-drives/reviews/a27144/2017-acura-nsx-first-drive/


Does the 2017 Acura NSX Live up to Its Legendary Predecessor?

We drove the 2017 Acura NSX. Can it compare to its father?



By Zach Bowman

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Evan Klein


​The sun has gone wild on the California sky, bending the air red and gold, purple and pink, filtering through swollen clouds and splashing across the asphalt in warm pools. It's fall in Napa Valley, and late afternoon is giving way to early dusk. The temperature fades with the day. Paper-thin sheets of rain drop through the light, wetting the windshield and the road before us, a Richter line of perfectly vacant tarmac scratching from Vichy Springs to Hennessey Lake. The air is heavy with the summer smell of rain and eucalyptus. I'm hammering through it all in a 2017 NSX, punching a hole in the quiet countryside with a wailing twin-turbo V6. For the first time in two days behind the wheel, I'm enjoying myself.

This is not a modern interpretation of the light and lithe machine that stole our hearts in 1990. If you're looking for mechanical purity, or that magical synergy of man and machine that Honda once did so well, I'm sorry, neither is here. You can count the similarities between this car and its namesake on one hand. But that doesn't make it any less impressive. Vastly complex, the new NSX is a machine that handily answers the question, "can we?" while leaving the more important, "should we?" to whither.


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Evan Klein


Honda says it didn't build the car to performance targets. If the 0-60 mph or top speed specs happened to be competitive with the other sharks in the water as a consequence of the engineering, so be it, but engineers weren't tasked with building a sub three second car. They did anyhow. There are no official performance numbers just yet, and we won't be able to pull data on the car for a good while, but I'm told the machine can pants a 911 Turbo in the sixty sprint. I believe it. Launch Control is a wonder. There's zero wheel spin and exactly no hesitation, just a relentless press for the speedometer's upper octaves.

There's a twin-turbo, dry-sump, 3.5-liter V-6 behind the passenger cell good for 500 horsepower and 406 pound-feet of torque. It raps to an impressive 7500 rpm, pulling to redline like a good Honda mill. It's fed by both direct and port injection. It's splayed to 75 degrees. It is not the star of the show. There are a total of three electric motors onboard: one direct drive unit bolted straight to the crank and snugged between the engine and the car's nine-speed dual-clutch transmission. The motor can contribute up to 47 horsepower and 109 pound-feet of torque to the party. There are two more motors up front, one powering each front wheel, good for 36 horsepower and up to 54 pound-feet each.

The system uses the electric motors with their instant, brilliant torque, to fill in the powerband while the turbos wake up. There's no lag. None. You'd never know they were back there if it weren't for the whistle of forced induction at your ear and the off-throttle chatter. If electrification really is coming for us all, I hope and pray it looks just like this.

The hybrid components are the backbone of Super Handling All Wheel Drive system, and the NSX can use the front motors to mitigate torque steer and induce or reduce oversteer as needed.

The brakes are monstrous carbon ceramic numbers, and they work in conjunction with the regenerative electric motors to slow the party. The system is entirely capable of dispensing with big speed, but doesn't suffer from the hellish grabbiness of most regens. The reason? The NSX uses a Brake Operation Simulator. You press on the pedal, the car reads your foot pressure, then calculates the correct amount of hydraulic and regenerative brake force to yield the desired result. A small electric motor pushes back on the brake pedal to give you the illusion of "feel." It sounds terrifying, but it works. The brakes are linear.

And the transmission? Porsche sets the pace with its PDK when it comes to dual-clutch gearboxes. Honda readily admits it developed everything in this system, from the hardware to the software, in just 18 months – an eye blink for a manufacturer. It's a strong effort, but still falls short of the German system. Where the 911 can be eerily anticipatory, choosing the correct gear half a second before you knew you wanted it, the NSX manages to be underfoot in anything less than a full, deep-throttle bashing. Manual mode is better, offering very fast, very smooth shifts both up and down the pattern, but I still saw occasions where requesting a gear did not yield a shift.


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Evan Klein


But the transmission is a soft complaint. There are other ghosts to contend with. Stumbling out of San Francisco and into the varicose pavement along the coast, I expect the NSX to come alive, to shine like the new penny wonder its ancestor was.





It doesn't happen.

The road is a gorgeous thing, silky smooth and tangled up and down a ridge side. Sunlight pushes through the thick conifer canopy in a few rare spots. We splash through the shafts of light at a good clip, the sun shattering over the car's gorgeous blue paint. It would be perfect if I could tell where the hell I was on the road. There's no on-center feel, and the wheel's numb in my hands. If, like me, you rely on your fingertips to tell you what's happening at the front wheels, you're right out luck.

And that's a problem, sure, but not nearly as troublesome as the healthy dose of understeer that shows up when the road gets tight. Drive on the nose or off. It doesn't matter. The front gives up.



There is no one reason for it. Yes, there is an electric power steering system, complete with a variable ratio rack. Yes, the company's Super Handling All Wheel Drive actively works to mitigate torque steer while a dual-ball-joint lower control arm design passively does the same, but there are other players on the board. In Sport and Sport+ driving modes, engineers programmed the SH-AWD system to yield a decent amount of understeer to protect novice drivers from having the tail step out. In a $150,000, mid-engine supercar.


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Evan Klein


There's also the weight issue. Despite a chassis intense with lightweight materials like aluminum and carbon fiber, this car tips the scales at just over 3,800 pounds – some 700 more than the fattest first generation machine. And, like the original NSX and the Ferrari 458 Italia, the new car only puts 42 percent of its heft on the front tires. The engine may be in the middle, but the weight isn't.

But the biggest culprit? These hateful tires. There are two rubber options for the NSX, and if you don't check the box for the sublime Michelin Pilot Sport Cups, you get these: a set of Continental Conti-Sport Contact 5Ps. Let me be entirely clear: these compromise the NSX in an unforgiveable way. If they show up on your car, demand the dealer take them off so you can set them on fire in the showroom.

Acura knows the shortcomings, but chose the Continentals for their carcass rigidity and all around performance. You know, in four seasons. In wet weather. In Ohio. So instead of getting a brilliant car in perfect conditions, we get a compromised car all year around. Lucky us.

Never underestimate the importance in choosing proper footwear. The hero Michelins transform the NSX from a vague, confidence sapping experience into a car that encourages you to push a little harder, to gun for the next apex and dive deep. There's turn in where there was no turn in before. Grip. Glorious, glorious grip. The right rubber lets you use this miracle machine Honda stitched together, and you can feel a quiet thread of commonality singing back to that special car, the first NSX.


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Evan Klein


In Track Mode and shod with the sticky Michelins, the NSX wakes up. The hellish understeer nearly vanishes. It's not a neutral car by any means, but it's easier to point in the direction you want. The rest is managed with big lifts of the throttle or brakes. The tail rotates and sets beautifully. It's so good, you wonder why the engineers buried it under a nasty pile of algorithms and unfortunate tire.

Honda wants the NSX to be an everyday supercar, but by definition, a supercar isn't an everyday affair. It's a special thing reserved for special days, and if you buy one, you never want to quietly tip toe out of a valet stand under electric power. You want to rattle the crystal on the hotel roof. You want to throw open the garage doors on a gorgeous day and bend the asphalt to your will. If there's compromise, you want it in the pursuit of performance, not livability. There was a time when you felt a little NSX in your Accord. Now there's too much Accord in your NSX.



 
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This pretty much sums up the overall impression of the new NSX.

"...There was a time when you felt a little NSX in your Accord. Now there's too much Accord in your NSX."
 
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A very heavy but super car killing Godzilla is not good. Why is the equally heavy but slower NSX any better?

Seems sterile and trying to cater to the kind of gentle drivers who drive the RL and not someone who is considering the GT3 or the 488 or even the R8.
 
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The weight is very disappointing at first, but "Acura points out that, given the technology used, this is one of those times where you can add weight and complexity to a car in search of a more authentic sports car experience."

Not sure how I feel about that statement, but then again I'm not an automotive engineer. Although I can for the most part understand their reasoning.

It is also a little disconcerting that the new NSX has become very Godzilla-like. Not saying the NSX is the same, just very similar in certain aspects.


Yes, Acura definitely seems to be aiming for accessibility. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. The new NSX looks to have a very wide "driving" range.
This has always been hinted at in the past though.

And maybe that is the way Acura/Honda are trying to redefine the supercar genre. Could they be going for supreme car? A "do everything" car. A versatile and well-balanced car.

If one is interested in the GT3 or 488 feel, I wonder if you can change the default mode to "Track" ..... because race car? lol


With how the several publications are talking about "The on-sale date isn’t until spring, so there’s still time to make the NSX of our dreams." and the amount of possible tuning and tweeking that can be done to the various systems and software, I truly wonder what the Type R is going to be like.
 
Nice read! Looking forward to seeing what other people's opinion is on the car.

Looks like the 1st gen NSX will continue to be the last it's kind (simple and mechanical).

"This is not a modern interpretation of the light and lithe machine that stole our hearts in 1990. If you're looking for mechanical purity, or that magical synergy of man and machine that Honda once did so well, I'm sorry, neither is here. You can count the similarities between this car and its namesake on one hand."
 
1720 kg is not the end of the world. A F458 is 1590 kg in the standard version.
But the end of the world will be near when (what I've read through the first driving experiences):
- the quiet mode can't be overriden by full throttle. They write that it's restricted to 4k rpm. Noone wants to push a button before you have to overtake someone while you're in quiet mode. Or if you choose a lower gear via paddle it should definitly select a lower gear as it's in the drivers responsability (first man, then maschine) . I'm not sure if the quiet mode is usefull at all. If I want to keep it quiet in the cabin I'm easy on the throttle. The quiet or better crusing mode would be usefull if you can change the underlying parameters like sound level of the engine bay to the cabin and the damper setting for very soft. But I guess it's a marketing gag, something about the car has to be special.
- the different modes would be fixed, esp. as you can compose your own settings in a BMW or Audi. I'd prefer and expect fully customizable driving options for steering, dampening, ESP, engine characteristics and SH-AWD to some degree. This is what is possible today from the engineering point of view. Even though I'm a dedicated hybrid car driver EV mode is not important to me in such a car.
 
The weight is very disappointing at first, but "Acura points out that, given the technology used, this is one of those times where you can add weight and complexity to a car in search of a more authentic sports car experience."

Not sure how I feel about that statement, but then again I'm not an automotive engineer. Although I can for the most part understand their reasoning.
How about the laws of physics ? With my NA2 coupe i can hold to the small Lotus pedal cars on mountain roads, because it's still small, light and nimble. With a 1720kg car i would never approach the hairpins like i do...

It is also a little disconcerting that the new NSX has become very Godzilla-like. Not saying the NSX is the same, just very similar in certain aspects.
Agreed, i would add it's almost opposite in concept: the first NSX designers worked a lot to save weight, and they had to innovate in order to achieve it.

Yes, Acura definitely seems to be aiming for accessibility. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. The new NSX looks to have a very wide "driving" range.
This has always been hinted at in the past though.

And maybe that is the way Acura/Honda are trying to redefine the supercar genre. Could they be going for supreme car? A "do everything" car. A versatile and well-balanced car. (...)
Yeah that sounds pretty much like the outcome of a "design by committee" or "project with no direction". Or both. Where's the focus ? Where is the irreverence ? When you pour that amount of money into a toy, i'm not sure you want a "please everyone" solution with a Ford Focus exhaust note..
 
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