The year is 1990 and the world saw the birth of possibly the greatest Japanese supercar of all time, the Honda NSX. Developed painstakingly over time and much testing, the NSX also saw input from one of the greatest racing driver's of all time - Ayrton Senna.
The Brazilian World Champion had convinced Honda to stiffen the chassis of the NSX a little more, and together with his and American driver Bobby Rahal's input, the NSX became a driving masterpiece. It single-handedly shook up the entire supercar market in a time where Ferrari's and Lamborghini's were notorious for their poor reliability as they were for their poor drivability. In fact, the NSX showed the Italians that a mid-engined supercar could be used daily without any compromises and many modern Italian supercars owe a lot to the NSX in terms of usability.
Production of the NSX ceased in 2005, and Honda went on to work on a replacement model but when the economy turned bad and pockets went shallow, the project car codenamed HSV-010 was shelved only to be resurrected for use in the Japanese Super GT race series.
Arguably, the end of the NSX also marked the end of a time when Honda built cars that made us go wow. The performance of their high strung engines as well as the remarkable handling is seen in today's FD2R Civic Type R model but production of that comes to an end this August. With no performance models in sight, Honda now offers us cars like the Freed, Accord, Civic, Hybrids, Insight, the CR-Z and a few others. Cars that are worlds apart from what Honda's once were, performance wise that is.
So while Honda runs to hug the trees, some of us here are left reminiscing at what Honda once was, a company that built affordable performance cars with engineering that could make NASA look like kindergarten kids. We may now be facing the end of an era with Honda, but it's not the end of it as long as there's some of us to love and remember.
Here's a great dramatic video as a tribute to the NSX with some quotes from Ayrton Senna. If you have six-minutes plus to spare, kick back, enter full screen, turn it up, and reminisce.
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