Fashionably fast: Honda’s NSX delivers on its own terms

LISBON, Aug 6 — It has been a long wait but the signs are good as the all new Honda NSX’s twin turbocharged 3.5-litre V6 engine barks into menacing life and the digital rev counter sweeps quickly up to its glowing nether regions on the LED dial.

Just over a decade ago, Honda ended production of its naturally-aspirated NSX two seat supercar. It was, in typical Honda fashion, reliable and easy to immediately get on with compared to more exotic and expensive European rivals of the day from Ferrari, Lamborghini or Porsche.

The new NSX may follow the previous version’s lineage in that it has a V6 powerplant, but that’s really as far as the technical continuity goes.

The little engines that could

For starters, a couple of turbochargers now provide extra push for the mid-mounted longitudinal V6 powerplant and more significantly, this car also gets electric hybrid assistance from three compact motors; two for the front wheels and one Direct Drive Motor sandwiched between the engine and the gearbox which is connected to the rear wheels.

The petrol engine produces 507hp but combined with its hybrid assistance from the trio of electric motors, pushes a total of 581hp. That is 41hp more than the Audi R8 V10 — a car that Honda engineers say they used as a benchmark — but 29hp less than the R8 V10 Plus version.

The aluminium-bodied NSX is no plug-in hybrid supercar like the BMW i8 however, and driving on full electric mode will deplete the compact lithium batteries within a couple of kilometres. Technically, you can get up to a speed of 80kmh this way with Quiet Mode engaged on the front console’s selector knob, but it really takes careful pressure of the right foot to stop the V6 from stepping in.

This hybrid system is all about bringing in extra shove to an already athletic engine and, boy, does it deliver. Honda quotes a 0-100kmh time of 3.6 seconds. Having sampled the car in all of its settings: Quiet, Sport, Sport Plus and Track modes at the Estoril circuit in Portugal, even this seems a little conservative. It doesn’t feel a million miles away from the nausea-inducing Porsche 911 Turbo and that’s not an easy trick to pull off. The hybrid help is abundantly apparent here.

Hybrid help

What the NSX does brilliantly is disguise the fact that it is driven by a turbocharged engine. It wants to be revved and feels brilliantly tractable all the way through to the 8,000rpm red line. Hats off to the hybrid assistance that fills in any gaps where you might otherwise experience turbo lag.

A nine-speed dual clutch automated transmission can also be used in manual mode via shift paddles on the steering wheel. The gearbox is so well mapped though that just stabbing the throttle at any given speed slots you into the correct ratio and lets you get on with the driving. Honda were considering a V10 for the re-incarnated NSX but the V6 still does not let it down in the sound department.

Sport Plus and Track modes especially sharpen up the throttle response and send a searing yet mesmerising scream through the cabin thanks to the activation of an Active Exhaust Valve and an Intake Sound Control system that is a pair of frequency tuned pipes that wind their way into the cabin and sit behind driver and passenger and are finished off with the appearance of a speaker grille. Unlike a BMW i8 though, this is a naturally pulsed sound from the engine bay and not an enhanced soundtrack that’s piped through the car’s speakers.

Handling assistance

The NSX drives supremely neutrally on both circuit and road with the Vehicle Stability Assist (VSA) and Agile Handling Assistant engaged.

The latter is said to use brake torque to enhance the chassis’ dynamic stability. The amount of control that VSA has over the chassis is lessened as you dial through Quiet, Sport, Sport Plus and Track modes and can be completely disengaged in the latter setting as demonstrated by a race instructor at Estoril who sent the car into graceful sliding arcs.

The Honda still cornered supremely flat around hairpins thanks to a taut chassis and self adjusting magnetorheological dampers.

The NSX turns heads everywhere too. It has a handsome style of its own (especially in red) but is not quite as Japanese as you might have expected, as this one was styled in the United States. The best thing for performance newbies is that this is by far the easiest supercar to drive. Ever.

Honda NSX

Engine: 3,493cc twin turbocharged electric hybrid V6, 581hp combined, 550Nm

Performance: 308kmh, 0-100kmh: 3.6s, 10.0L/100km, 228g/km CO2

Pros: Easy to drive and comfortable supercar for longer trips

Cons: Plug-in BMW i8 hybrid supercar costs a whopping S$377,000 (RM1.1million) less — TODAY

from Malay Mail Online | All http://ift.tt/2aPQKed

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