Bobby Rahal and (more) Gordon Murray love

[SuperCarnitas]

... actually the Gordon Murray quotes look repurposed from the Honda.co.jp article discussed earlier, but you can never have enough validation. :smile:

From the September 2009 issue of Classic Cars Magazine (www.classiccarsmagazine.co.uk) p68-71: "Mould Breakers: Honda NSX"

Some notable passages:

• R&D Lead Shigeru Uehara:"The most difficult thing was to build the body with aluminum. Everybody hated it. There was the issue of galvanic corrosion, and the production process was very different to steel and difficult to handle."
• Ayrton Senna: "It's a sports car but anybody can drive it."
• Bobby Rahal: "I thought the car was too 'oversteery' for most consumers."
• Gordon Murray: "Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Aston Martins of the period were pretty unsophisticated really from the point of view of their ride/handling compromise, particularly with things like secondary ride comfort. By comparison the NSX was just brilliant."
• "Murray used the Honda to benchmark the F1 for a range of qualities, particularly suspension-related, and talks enthusiastically about its 'really skinny forged alloy suspension links' and 'compliance pivot' secondary subframe design ... Uehara recalls this feature being a major pain to develop."
• Gordom Murray again: "I wouldn't consider it the best proportioned car of all time, but on the other hand it wasn't ugly ... You couldn't put anything in the boot because it melted."

Partial scan:

 

[NSXLuvr]

cool read. Thanks.

Need to go get the mag.

 

[Honcho]

What I like the most is how impressed Rahal was with the NSX's OEM 1991 brakes. Makes me think twice when I see all these 12-piston, titanium, super-duper BBK options out there. It seems for a professional driver like Bobby Rahal, the OEM brakes were just fine. Maybe the BBK money is better spent on Skip Barber learning how to brake properly.

 

[SouthFloridaCarFan]

What I like the most is how impressed Rahal was with the NSX's OEM 1991 brakes. Makes me think twice when I see all these 12-piston, titanium, super-duper BBK options out there. It seems for a professional driver like Bobby Rahal, the OEM brakes were just fine. Maybe the BBK money is better spent on Skip Barber learning how to brake properly.

+1 !!! Well said...IMO 90% of the people who upgrade their "street" cars could never out preform the stock version to begin with !

PS: 89.620% of all statistics are made up on the spot :tongue:

 

[MvM]

Thank you SO MUCH for posting this.

That's one magazine I really need to get ASAP to add to my (voluminous) NSX library

 

[tbromley]

Really enjoyed reading the article even though I've now got a case of eye strain. Tried to blow it up but it just got fuzzy, so I forced myself to read it and glad I did. Great article and the article within the article. Great stuff - someone else that shares our passion. I drove mine into work today, just fun even if the traffic was a bit heavy- no problem. I just love being in the car. One thing I really appreciate about it is that I don't have to worry about warming it up or heating up to high temps or whether the traffic is going to cause my car to overheat like I always did driving my old air cooled 911s. Wonderful car - like the article said - the driver doesn't have to bend to the cars idiosyncracies - the car does whatever you ask of it and so well. Just wish I could have heard that VTEC once but perhaps on the way home! :biggrin:

 

[PhiAlpha44]

Great article.

 

[ChopsJazz]

What I like the most is how impressed Rahal was with the NSX's OEM 1991 brakes. Makes me think twice when I see all these 12-piston, titanium, super-duper BBK options out there. It seems for a professional driver like Bobby Rahal, the OEM brakes were just fine

But then again, Rahal knows how to use them!

Maybe the BBK money is better spent on Skip Barber learning how to brake properly.

Great idea.

 

[SuperCarnitas]

Really enjoyed reading the article even though I've now got a case of eye strain. Tried to blow it up but it just got fuzzy, so I forced myself to read it and glad I did.

Sorry about that. You should be able to click on the image, and then once you're in the Picasa album, click on the magnifying glass icon to get to the full resolution.

There's another page of text that precedes this, but it's pretty much the car's background information you all know already. And it being a (relatively) current issue, I didn't feel comfortable scanning the whole thing -- but know that you got all the good parts.

 

[FXMDBilly]

What I like the most is how impressed Rahal was with the NSX's OEM 1991 brakes. Makes me think twice when I see all these 12-piston, titanium, super-duper BBK options out there. It seems for a professional driver like Bobby Rahal, the OEM brakes were just fine. Maybe the BBK money is better spent on Skip Barber/Bonderaunt learning how to brake properly.

While I agree, the NSX brakes are quite small by todays standards.

And yes, more pistons does not = better performance.