Meet the Man That Drove His NSX 90,000 Miles Across the USA in Three Years

From Road & Track

To reach Minnesota's Northwest Angle, the northernmost point in the continental United States, the result of a Revolutionary War-era mapmaker's error, you first must cross the 49th parallel into Canada, then cross back into America. The border crossing is nothing more than a phone booth with two pre-programmed buttons: Press one to cross from America into Canada, and press the other for the opposite. Declare your intent and your belongings to a border patrol officer, located miles away and mundanely familiar with tourists checking off this bizarre item on their geographical bucket list, then proceed. And so that is exactly what Fred and Maile Plan did.

The Plans were on a sweeping, grandiose mission: They were attempting to visit all four of the furthermost directional points of continental America, and to this end, they were halfway through. They had already seen the country's southernmost point, Key West's concrete pillar, proclaiming its distance to Havana: 90 miles. They had driven east to West Quoddy Head, Maine, to the ocean, and to the red-and-white lighthouse that has stood there since 1858. Two points remained. West was a ranger station on the rugged, rocky coast of Washington State. But first, they had to go north, and north meant Canada.

The Northwest Angle is calm and quiet and thick with trees, an appendix-like vestige a little under 600 square miles in size jutting into Canada's Lake of the Woods. The only way in is via a gravel-strewn dirt road that cuts across the southeast corner of Manitoba-a fact the Plans were unaware of. It was a hot summer's day with bright sunny skies overhead and no cell service to be found when they hit the dirt.

Normally, such a surprise wouldn't be a cause for concern, but the Plans were in anything but a normal car. On that day, skedaddling along the rocks, kicking up dust, was a low-slung, 20-year-old, aluminum-bodied, mid-engined supercar with 172,000 miles on its creaking clock. Its driver pushed onward nervously, at five miles per hour, hands clenched, bad scenarios dancing across his mind. He'd gone too far to turn around, but he also couldn't stand the idea of damaging his pride and joy-his Acura NSX.

The Perfect Match

In 2012, Fred Plan lived in Northern Virginia working in the cybersecurity industry. Through a mutual friend, he'd met his future wife, Maile-"pronounced 'Miley,'" he notes, "traditional Hawaiian spelling." She had grown up in Honolulu, and was an assistant to Hawaiian senator Daniel K. Inouye. While she was working toward a master's degree in Security Studies at Georgetown University, the two got married.

At the time, Plan was driving a 1993 Legend sedan with a manual transmission, which he had bought in the early 2000s while going to college in San Diego. "It was so reliable, so loyal," he says. "It was a front-drive, four-door NSX." But around June, he began searching for an actual NSX; it was what he'd always wanted, after all. Around 20 examples met his match. He narrowed the list down to five or seven, and he started calling, started sending out friends and contacts to check the prospects out.

The vehicle Plan eventually picked was in Los Angeles. It was flawless. "Hagerty top-level, perfect collector's car," he says. With around 83,500 miles, a little under 5000 miles per year, its previous owner had treated it dearly. It was a five-speed with a targa roof, a common combination. Less common was its Midnight Pearl paint, in production for a mere two years: The dark purple changes color in the sunlight so drastically that it can be a point of contention. "When I talk to people about the car, they're reluctant to admit it's purple," Fred says. "They'll say, 'oh, that's a deep blue, it's almost black.'"

Plan found the car in November. He made the deal a month later. The couple flew to Los Angeles, bought it on the spot, then immediately drove south to San Diego. That same week they drove it back home to the East Coast, across the Southern states they both had never seen-the first of many tens of thousands of miles with their new supercar.

The trip went smoothly, but along the way, the couple found the NSX's first flaw: "I realized that the car did not have a working heater," Fred says. "Late December, going up to the East Coast, you figure that out real quick."

Fred fixed the heater. He also changed the oxygen sensors, a common fault, as well as some engine seals. He followed the factory maintenance schedule fastidiously. After two months, the NSX would start 90 percent of the time, but the last 10 percent worried him. He figured it was the battery, which was 10 years old, so he changed it. The problem persisted. Trial and error, doubling back. Eventually he diagnosed it to an ignition switch. An easy fix-and an important one. "It made the car 100 percent," Fred says. "It completely changed everything."

A Man Committed

The NSX's restored reliability might have changed everything for Fred, but it changed nothing, too. After buying the NSX, he'd intended to keep the Legend as his reliable daily driver-a sensible idea. But he quickly found himself driving the NSX everywhere, all the time.

He took it to Costco in the dead of late winter, when salt-encrusted ice hardens into jagged parking-lot sculptures. Winter tires were a must, but the fancy three-piece wheels that came with the car would cause the tires to leak air before every drive. So Fred switched over to one-piece Volk TE37 wheels.

He didn't shy away from picking up furniture at IKEA. He avoided potholes with the focus of a Zen master. After he installed an iLIFT suspension kit, specially designed for the NSX and capable of automatically raising the front end by three inches, he swore that he never had to worry about speed bumps again. Here was a man committed. He was proving to both himself and a rapt audience online-a year in he began posting annual updates to the Reddit enthusiast community-that a car held in such exalted esteem could be as reliable and handy as a Honda Accord.

In an NSX, you sit nice and low in sculpted and supportive seats, nestled atop three puffy leather-wrapped pillows, strongly bolstered but not aggressively so. The dashboard and the belt line are both low, remnants of a car designed at a time when visibility was still a standard feature. The switchgear, the steering wheel, the tactile points, even the typography on the gauge faces: all pure Honda, all instantly familiar. There are no quirks to starting up an NSX, no 10-point checklist to unlock its power and its secrets. It doesn't stumble at low speeds, doesn't protest in traffic.

With the NSX getting so much use, Fred's trusty Legend sat for months. It had served him through college and had carried him on road trips covering more than half the states across the U.S. He felt guilty, as though he was betraying an old friend. But he also knew that he couldn't easily sell it. So, instead, he shipped the Legend to his father in San Diego, who still drives it every day. It has over 300,000 miles.

The Open Road

All of our nostalgic waxing for the open read, all the cliches, the songs and poetry and cult movies and scrolls composed in drug-induced hazes-it still holds our attention, captivates us. The open road! Endless possibility, countless destinations in every direction, all within reach. Fred had driven to dozens of states in his Legend. Maile had grown up on Hawaii and wondered what it was like. As husband and wife, they explored together.

On three-day weekends, they would hop in the NSX and drive as far as they could out of Washington D.C.: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, camping at Watkins Glen, as far north as Toronto, as far west as Chicago. "It's a blessing to have a car like the NSX, in a country so big, with so many roads," Fred says.

There are some of us who believe that the best car is the one you have right now, right under your fingertips. Any shuffling of luggage and legroom thereafter is not compromise-it is merely creative interpretation of the vehicle's inherent nature. Perfection, after all, is the absence of character. Trading the four-door sedan for a two-door supercar didn't slow the Plans down.

In a car like this, Fred says, you learn to pack light. The simple rule the couple adheres to: One-third of the car's limited space is dedicated to his stuff, one-third to hers, and one-third to a bucket of detailing products. And while gas can get expensive with the NSX's high-strung V6, capable of 8000 rpm, if you "hypermile," you can eke your highway mileage into the low 30s.

With such a rare color, making sure the car remains unblemished is also a challenge. But as Fred has learned, if you're polite, and you're friendly, and you tip well, the hotel concierge will let you park under the canopy at the front entrance to stay clear of the rain and worse. To that end, he says, "We've moved from staying at Motel 6 to staying at Best Western."

On the road, though, there's little you can do, and even with a Clear Bra up front, he still fretted about rock chips-and worse. Fred remembers one particular hailstorm that pelted the NSX. "It was the worst thing ever," he recalls painfully. "Seeing it covered in ripped up leaves and ice bits . . . "

He had the dents repaired but kept a damaged plastic piece intact-a reminder that yes, this was a daily driver.

A Ridiculous Idea

On a long weekend in December 2014, the Plans escaped the ice and snow and drove south to Key West, Florida. Getting there was easy: Just follow the single causeway that strings together the various keys. But the expansion joints on the bridges spanning each watery gap were brutal. Clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk. On a car with aftermarket coilovers, it becomes a thing to endure. Clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk. Two hours straight.

That spring, as the snow melted, came another long trip. This time the two drove to West Quoddy Head, Maine, two hours east of Bar Harbor, to where a straight and narrow two-lane road cuts through the pine forests to a red-and-white lighthouse, standing clear and vivid against the deepening blue of the Atlantic. Despite its name, West Quoddy Head is the easternmost point of America. Years earlier, Fred had taken his Legend there. This time, he was even more careful. "There's a lot of roads [there] that will really beat up a car," he says.

On the way back, before the Plans returned to their daily routines and Virginia's slush, an idea suddenly struck them: They should hit the country's most northern and western points, too. After all, south and east were covered, and the NSX was more than capable of making it. One day.

Hardly a month later, as it turned out, Fred accepted a job in Hawaii, in Maile's native Honolulu. With that came the chance to actually complete their "ridiculous" mission. Road trip masters the two, they embarked on their last long-distance trek for the foreseeable future, all the way to Canada, all the way to across the continental United States to Washington State, all the way back to San Diego, their last stop before Hawaii.

The Big Trip

"We were maybe going up 45, 50 mph when we hit dirt," Fred says, recalling their journey to the Northwest Angle. "We drove through 16 miles of dirt. Really, really, really slowly." The NSX can reach 60 miles per hour in 5.2 seconds and brake from that distance in 134 feet. When Fred saw dirt, he knew he had to bring the car nearly to a stop.

"Fred almost had a heart-attack when the pavement abruptly became dirt," Maile says. "For the sake of his health, I wished that part of the journey had been smoother."

Fred tried not to panic as the car crawled along. Visions of rock chips across the NSX's pristine bumper, little plastic absences of Midnight Pearl. Beneath them, the gravel churned.

Minnesota is "number one my worst state to drive through," Fred says. "Really nice scenery, nice people, but the worst roads." Here on this piteously silly journey, in the hand-assembled aluminum NSX, the gravel and dirt only made matters worse, and with no cell service, they had no idea when it would end. Fred and Maile had a debate: Do they keep going, or do they turn back and mark it as an accomplishment? Would that be cheating?

"No, no," Maile said, "you want to keep doing this."

They pressed on.

It took them hours to creep along the dirt road, Fred says. Go too fast, and you risk sliding off the sides. And it's not like anyone is around to help. "Even if someone helps us, they'll get a tow truck, which would destroy the NSX," he says. The best option was to play it safe. There was still a lot more trip left.

Eventually, they saw the billboard welcoming them to Angle Inlet, an unincorporated community in the Northwest Angle. Year-round population, as of the last census, was barely 60 souls. A gravel lot, a campground, and some cabins. In front of them was the Lake of the Woods, and beyond that was Ontario-an American flag flew on one side and a Canadian flag on the other. They bought some snacks at the Angle Outpost, took photos, and surveyed the car: The layer of dust looked like it had been sprayed on with a can. The only way out was the way they came in, which meant another two or three hours of dirt. So they loaded up and kept moving.

That evening, while Maile rested in the room of a Best Western, Fred pulled out his detail bucket from the trunk and gave the NSX a wash in the parking lot. Miles and miles of dust washed away onto the asphalt. Then, fearing a hailstorm, he parked it under the canopy.

Nerve-wracking days on the road ensued. The couple headed toward Fargo, North Dakota as hail and tornado warnings followed them for the next four days. They had planned to head south and see Mt. Rushmore, but potential hailstorms diverted them to Sioux City, Iowa to wait out the threat. Severe thunderstorm warnings dogged them across the plains. They drove through Wyoming during a tornado watch. Constant thunderstorms brought warnings of floods.

The storms abated. They continued on, toward northern Idaho, through scenic mountain roads where the NSX shone. "I'm a handling and suspension kind of guy," Fred says. "All the mods have been oriented around the brakes, suspension, reducing unsprung weight."

To Maile's disappointment, the day they had lost to the storms meant that they couldn't spend much time in Seattle. But beyond that was Ozette, Washington, the westernmost point of the contiguous United States, a ranger station between an archaeological site and an uninhabited Native American reservation.

Fred and Maile had finally completed their mission. But after so much driving, it all felt anticlimactic, strange, melancholy even. "We had been driving so far, we had hit every corner-I wanted there to be more fanfare," Fred says. "But there was just this feeling of, wow, this was a really long trip."

All that remained was the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Angeles. Down south, through Oregon, through the Bay Area, past breathtaking redwoods and mile-high cliffs, across Los Angeles County and down to San Diego, where Fred would ship the NSX to Honolulu, where he first brought the car after buying it in L.A., where he had kicked off this whole wonderful, outrageous journey from coast to Costco, from sea to shining sea and back.

A New Home

Hawaii is a beautiful state with beautiful scenery and terrible ways to get around. "I've driven in 49 to 50 states, and Hawaii is probably in the top 5 of worst roads in the country," Fred says. The traffic doesn't help either. "There's just one road, so you're just stuck in it."

Fred might not be able to put the same amount of miles he used to on the car, but overall, it's covered a lot of ground. Since he bought the NSX, he's more than doubled the mileage in three years. Now, the odometer sits at 172,000. Along with taking fastidious care of the car, he's also kept meticulous notes: In 2015 alone, he calculated that he had averaged 70.28 miles per day in Hawaii. His highest mpg: 39.9, somewhere in Wyoming. Lowest: 18.37, sitting in Hawaiian traffic.

Despite the isolation of his new home, Fred still meets up with the NSX enthusiasts on Oahu-there's about 15 or 20 who post on dedicated forums, with another handful who remain in the dark. They push through the traffic and horrible roads to meet up at parking garages, host car shows, make new friends. In that way, it felt like Plan had never left his group of enthusiasts in D.C. "I can go on and on about the NSX and how amazing it is as a car and what an engineering marvel it is," he posted in his 2015 Reddit update, "but what I really love most about it is meeting other crazy motherfuckers just as stupid about the car as I am."

So, how does a 20-year-old supercar-driven daily and across a continent-hold up? That's what everyone wants to know. "I'll take it to Cars & Coffee, and every question I get is, 'Any reliability issues?'" Fred says. "The best thing I can come up with is that it eats rear tires really fast-six-thousand miles on the rear tires. That's pretty much my only complaint. If that's the only thing I gotta do in terms of pay to play, I will happily pay."