Honda now resigns itself to surviving the utter crapness of today by flogging cheap hybrids and some other rather bland cars (for the enthusiast, you understand) in their current line up just to keep the company afloat.
Ironically Honda were on the brink of unleashing onto the world probably the fastest normalish sports car ever seen, by normalish i mean to discount silly irrelevant cars that any manufacturer with the cash and will could produce because the buyer has to pay as much as a private jet to own one, a Bugatti Veyron for example.
As everybody knows, Honda’s supercar prototype was cancelled abruptly.
Although Honda have now ruled the car out for the foreseeable future it is worth knowing a few things about what a stunning proposition the new NSX was.
Firstly and sadly it was not going to be cheap, over 20 million JPY was mooted which would have sat it nicely between the Nissan G-TR Spec V and the still confirmed Lexus L-FA.
Weighing in at only 1600 kg and featuring a 90 degree angle,550 ps, v10 front engine connected to a 4×4 chassis it would have been no tortoise.
Indeed Honda reputedly posted a Nurburgring lap time of under 7 min 20 seconds and at a November 2008 official but secret test session at Suzuka Circuit unceremoniously pulled both Porsche’s 911 and Ferrari’s 430 pants down in quick succession.
The car was apparently almost production ready and it’s hard to believe that Honda have now just stuck the design up one of their engineer’s arses. If they did, they surely used a little Colombian inspiration and at least put it in an XL condom.
When and if Obama goes nuts like his predecessor and decides to invade Canada, Honda will be donning the white gloves and putting a call through to that engineer no doubt.
Autojaponica 