The Acura NSX is certainly not a slow car – with 573 hp
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (birds chirping)
00:03 (car beeping)
00:06 (car engine roaring)
00:35 - 25 years ago, the Acura NSX changed the world.
00:39 After the longest wait in automotive history,
00:41 there's a new NSX and it wants to change the world again.
00:45 How, why, and what is the moron in the racing suit
00:48 doing in a wheelchair?
00:49 Well, you'll just have to stay tuned
00:51 and find out on this very NSX-y episode of Ignition.
00:54 (car engine roaring)
01:04 Hey, you know that Ferrari you lust after so much?
01:07 It does something very strange when you hit the start button.
01:10 It starts.
01:11 And there's one reason and one reason only for that,
01:14 and that's this original Acura NSX.
01:16 This is the car that sent Ferrari back to school
01:24 to learn how to make a supercar that worked.
01:26 The only one complaint you can have about this NSX
01:31 is that it's so slow.
01:33 Not acceleration-wise, no.
01:34 It was in production for 15 years,
01:37 and then even after that, we had to listen to promises
01:39 for seven years that there'd be a replacement.
01:42 It's finally here, and I get to drive it.
01:44 All right, this is an elegant, timeless,
01:57 Pininfarina Italian design.
02:00 This isn't.
02:02 The two cars share the same basic proportions,
02:05 but they don't look alike,
02:06 and I think that's a missed opportunity for Acura.
02:09 I wanna see a lineage here, and I don't.
02:12 What I do see is a lot of the basic design language
02:14 that Acura showed us nine long years ago,
02:18 with a whole lot of mismatched grilles and intakes up front,
02:21 and a plain rear end with a vertical kink
02:23 that looks a bit too much like a 1998 2.2 CL.
02:27 There's some Corvette in the flanks,
02:29 some rather apologetic flying buttresses,
02:32 and from some angles, the rear looks
02:34 like it could be the front.
02:35 Ayrton Senna is probably rolling around in his grave,
02:38 because the original NSX, which he helped tune,
02:41 was all about light weight.
02:43 This thing has hundreds of pounds of batteries
02:46 and electric motors for this torque-vectoring
02:48 all-wheel drive system.
02:49 Acura says this is one of those times
02:50 where you can add weight and add complexity
02:53 in search of a purer sports car experience.
02:59 The first thing you see from the inside of the NSX
03:02 is the outside.
03:03 It has big windows, a great view out, low cowl.
03:07 This is something really special about a supercar,
03:09 and it reminds me of the last NSX.
03:12 This doesn't.
03:13 There's something very different here,
03:14 because this is, of course, a hybrid modern supercar,
03:17 which means dual-clutch automatic with paddle shifts.
03:20 And where the volume control should be for the radio,
03:22 there's a dynamic mode selector that allows you to start,
03:25 for example, in quiet mode, which keeps the engine
03:27 under 4,000 RPM, closes the exhaust,
03:30 and favors electric operation,
03:31 so you can run your neighbors over in peace.
03:33 The car starts in sport mode,
03:35 then there's a sport plus mode, which amps everything up,
03:38 and of course, track mode.
03:40 And given that we're at a racetrack,
03:41 that's the mode we need to be in to find out
03:43 if Ferrari has anything to worry about.
03:45 (engine revving)
03:49 (car engine roaring)
03:57 (upbeat music)
04:00 I've seen this engine, I know there are turbos on it,
04:02 I can hear them, and the engineers tell me
04:04 they're actually working, but I refuse to believe it,
04:06 because this is a turbocharged engine
04:09 that has absolutely no lag.
04:12 The relationship between my right foot and acceleration
04:15 is 100% linear, and that is something
04:17 I have never felt before.
04:19 You've never felt it before either.
04:21 It's because this car has three electric motors
04:23 helping it out.
04:24 There's an electric motor in the back,
04:26 sandwiched between the engine and the nine speed
04:28 dual clutch, and then there are two motors up at front
04:31 that are performing torque vectoring all wheel drive.
04:34 They can power the front wheels.
04:36 That wasn't always going to be the case.
04:39 Originally, the NSX replacement was to have
04:42 a front mounted V10, but the whole program was scrapped
04:45 when the economy took a downturn.
04:47 When it started back up, the NSX project
04:49 had electric motors up front, and the powertrain
04:52 from the TLX in the back.
04:54 That meant a transverse naturally aspirated V6.
04:57 The engineers that are working on the project in America,
05:01 this is an American Honda product,
05:04 wanted more power and asked the R&D gods in Japan
05:07 for turbos, and eventually they said,
05:09 "Yeah, okay, turbos."
05:10 And the American guys are like, "Yeah, crap."
05:14 Because you can't really cool the turbos
05:16 on a transversely mounted V6 in the back of a car.
05:20 So they had to scrap the whole car and start over again,
05:23 this time mounting the engine longitudinally.
05:26 Installed exclusively in the NSX,
05:28 the new twin turbo V6 makes 500 horsepower
05:31 and 406 pound feet of torque.
05:34 Assisted by the three electric motors,
05:36 total system output is 573 horsepower.
05:40 And the engine pulls right to 7,500 every gear.
05:47 So linear, you genuinely forget this has got turbos on it.
05:52 With launch control, the NSX should hit 60 miles an hour
05:55 in less than three seconds.
05:56 Sure, that's fast, but the real benefit
05:59 of those front motors is torque vectoring,
06:01 the big buzzword that you hear all the time.
06:03 No one can seem to explain.
06:05 Come with me, let's talk about this.
06:07 You may notice I'm in a wheelchair.
06:11 I'm in a wheelchair to explain to you
06:12 what torque vectoring does,
06:13 because wheelchairs don't have steering wheels,
06:15 and yet they can do more than just go straight ahead.
06:18 Wheelchairs are steered with torque vectoring.
06:21 One little caveat before I get started.
06:23 A lot of car companies talk about torque vectoring,
06:25 and what they really mean is torque vectoring by braking,
06:28 which means dragging a wheel.
06:30 You can turn a wheelchair or a car
06:32 by dragging one of the wheels and then having it turn.
06:35 But going faster using the brakes
06:36 is the stupidest thing you could ever do.
06:38 Acura uses real torque vectoring,
06:40 and what that means is the NSX's front wheels
06:43 can be controlled individually.
06:45 One can push forward while the other pushes back,
06:47 opposite, they can both push forward,
06:49 they can both push back in any combination,
06:52 and that allows the computer to steer the NSX
06:54 without the steering wheel moving.
06:56 Got it?
06:57 Unfortunately, having all of that torque
07:00 and adjustability at the front axle
07:02 means you need to mute the steering down,
07:04 because otherwise when one motor is pulling one way
07:07 and the other one's doing the opposite thing,
07:09 it'll rip the steering wheel out of your hands.
07:11 And as a result, the steering is completely
07:13 and totally numb on this car.
07:15 Dead, dead, dead.
07:17 Add to that that we have regenerative brakes,
07:20 and the best way of managing that
07:22 is not having a pedal that's inconsistent.
07:24 This brake pedal isn't actually attached
07:26 to the brakes on this car.
07:27 It's a simulator that's giving me feedback,
07:30 and the braking is controlled by the computer.
07:32 All of this technology comes together
07:34 to make a car that's really fast
07:36 and capable around the track,
07:38 but sometimes feels more like a video game
07:40 than an actual car.
07:42 The other interesting thing is that
07:43 because the front wheels are being powered
07:45 with electric motors, those motors have different
07:48 torque curves than the engine does in the back,
07:51 and at high speeds they really can't contribute
07:54 as much as they can at low speeds.
07:55 As a result, at high speeds like this 70 mile an hour,
07:58 80 mile an hour sweeper, I have to be very careful
08:02 with the throttle application,
08:03 because the rear has more power available to it
08:07 than the front, and suddenly the NSX torque vectoring
08:10 doesn't quite make up for all the power in the back.
08:15 So here at low speeds I can trail it in
08:17 and nail the gas, and it pulls itself right out of a corner.
08:21 Can't really do that in the high speed stuff.
08:23 It also has magnetorheological dampers,
08:26 and these are shocks that are adjustable,
08:28 but not in like a smooth ride versus bumpy ride
08:31 kind of way, that's child's play.
08:33 Magnetic dampers adapt so quickly
08:36 that they can change their settings multiple times
08:39 in a single bump.
08:40 When you have that level of control
08:42 over how the car is moving,
08:44 you can completely and totally change
08:46 the way the car handles.
08:48 And I don't mean like, oh okay,
08:50 the steering got a little bit more heavy in this mode.
08:52 I'm talking about, wow, this car is an understeering mess
08:55 versus, oh my god, it's completely neutral
08:59 or loves to oversteer around everything.
09:01 You can do that by just changing mode, it's all software.
09:04 The NSX's computers have so much control
09:08 over those MR dampers and that front axle
09:11 torque vectoring system, that they can make changes
09:13 that would normally require swapping out shocks,
09:16 springs, anti-roll bars, diffs, you name it.
09:19 The difference between the way the NSX handles
09:21 in sport mode and in track mode
09:22 is like the difference between a Honda Accord
09:24 and a Nissan GTR.
09:26 Track mode is where the car needs to be
09:30 to be driven like a supercar.
09:31 It totally transforms this car.
09:34 90 mile an hour drift, no problem.
09:40 Here's where you can feel the torque vectoring front diff
09:45 pulling this car out of corners
09:47 in ways that defy the laws of physics.
09:49 This is the beauty of this software.
09:52 There is, of course, one big difference
09:53 between the GTR and this NSX.
09:55 You don't have to drive around turbo lag on the NSX.
09:58 Thanks to all of this electric torque fill,
10:03 this really feels like a big V8.
10:06 Unfortunately, it doesn't sound like a V8.
10:10 V6s don't usually sound good,
10:12 and this one's not really an exception.
10:14 Acura's done a lot to manage that sound.
10:17 You have intake resonance tubes and active exhaust,
10:20 and there's stuff going on at the stereo speakers
10:22 that change the character of the tone.
10:24 And in the mid-range, it kind of almost sounds V12-y.
10:28 Most of the time, you just want the engine to shut up.
10:31 The idea that Honda should make a supercar
10:35 is kind of ridiculous on the face of it.
10:36 It's a paradox, right?
10:38 Honda is ruled by rational, logical people.
10:41 And in rare instances, they can do amazing things,
10:43 but sometimes their rationality ruins their product.
10:47 And this is kind of one of those examples.
10:49 Honda wants this NSX to be an everyday supercar,
10:52 something you can get in and drive year-round.
10:54 That's a really lovely goal,
10:56 but they said the word "supercar" in there,
10:58 and that implies a level of performance
11:00 that you don't get from this car on its base tires.
11:05 The NSX comes with sport tires, not supercar tires.
11:08 That decision, like the one to make the car understeer
11:11 in sport mode, was made by rational Honda engineers
11:14 who really wanted this to be a safe car
11:16 in bad winter weather.
11:17 Oh, come on.
11:18 If you're buying an NSX,
11:20 you have a car better suited to crappy weather anyway.
11:23 Luckily, these are decisions that can still be changed.
11:25 See, when we drove the NSX,
11:27 it was still something like six months
11:29 away from customers' hands.
11:30 Normally, that means many things can change slightly,
11:33 but in the case of the NSX, everything can change.
11:36 Remember, this car is all about software.
11:40 Its hardware is such that the software controls
11:43 what it does and how it drives.
11:45 With that said, there's one thing software can't fix,
11:48 and that's that I wish Acura had made a simple NSX.
11:53 Back to its root.
11:54 Stick shift, 9,000 RPM,
11:56 screaming naturally aspirated engine,
11:58 ditch the hybrid, ditch all that other stuff,
12:00 leave the over-complexity to the Germans,
12:02 and do what Honda has always done so well,
12:05 simple and fun.
12:06 The original NSX showed us
12:09 that a supercar could actually work.
12:11 This new one shows us that a hybrid system
12:13 can make a turbocharged supercar work.
12:16 But Acura's decision to insert all that complexity
12:18 comes at the expense of driver involvement.
12:21 The NSX is very fast, very capable,
12:23 but it's also not very engaging.
12:26 If I were in charge of Acura,
12:27 I'd take a long look at the things
12:29 that once made Honda's products so special.
12:32 I'm certain this NSX will start and run every day,
12:35 but who wants to drive a supercar every day?
12:38 I'd buy an Acura sedan for sitting in traffic,
12:40 and then an old stick shift Ferrari
12:42 to drive on sunny weekends.
12:43 Oh, and thanks to the original NSX,
12:46 my F355 would start and run every time I turn the key.
12:49 It also wants to change the world.
12:55 (coughs)
12:57 (laughs)
13:00 I love how much fun you have sitting.
13:03 (laughs)
13:04 Well, you're just gonna have to watch
13:05 this very NSX-y episode of "Ignition" to find out.
13:09 Don't make me keep doing this!
13:13 25 years ago, the Acura Legend.
13:16 One more, that's all you get.
13:20 Well, you're just gonna have to watch
13:21 this very NSX-y episode of "Ignition" to find out.
13:25 (engine revving)
13:28 (clicking)
13:30 (clicking)
13:32 (explosion)