A sawn-in-half city car led Honda to build a Ferrari fighter
Around 1984 Honda engineers cut a tiny City hatchback in two, moved its engine behind the driver and took it for giddy laps of the company car park. The fun persuaded management to attempt a true sports car, one that had to match anything from Italy or Germany. Six years later it became the aluminium-bodied NSX.
The target was explicit: equal or beat Ferrari's 328, and later its 348, while being more reliable and cheaper. Pininfarina styled an early concept with a two-litre V6 in the middle, but that engine was far too weak and gave way to a three-litre unit. Chief engineer Shigeru Uehara drew on the cockpit of an F-16 fighter jet, pushing the cabin forward for all-round visibility and stretching the tail for stability at speed.
A late intervention changed the engine. Honda's president, Tadashi Kume, himself a respected engine designer, asked why the flagship lacked the new variable valve timing that was about to appear in the humble Integra. The team redesigned the V6 around it, adding titanium connecting rods that were a production-car first and let it rev considerably higher. The bigger engine no longer fitted, forcing further changes to the car.
Its structure was another first: an all-aluminium semi-monocoque body, saving nearly 200 kilograms over steel. Much of the tuning happened at Germany's Nürburgring, where development driver Motoharu Kurosawa would lap, report where the chassis flexed, and wait while engineers welded on braces by hand. Data went back to Japan, where a Cray supercomputer turned it into reinforcements, raising stiffness by more than half for little added weight. Ayrton Senna tested the car at Suzuka and urged Honda to stiffen it further, though he was an adviser, not the lead test driver.
Shown publicly in 1989, the car went on sale in 1990, badged as an Acura in North America. Around 200 hand-picked workers, each with at least ten years of assembly experience, built it. A stripped-out Type R arrived in 1992, shedding about 120 kilograms by removing sound deadening, air conditioning and the stereo. By mid-2005 more than 18,000 had been sold worldwide, and production ended that November.
Source: Honda NSX (first generation)
