Yahoo Autos It Takes 2500 Miles to Understand the Acura NSX
I thought I knew everything about the Acura NSX. I’d driven the car extensively during our 2017 Performance Car of the Year testing. On the street and the race track, it made a strong enough impression to win my vote; most of my colleagues agreed, bestowing the PCOTY title on the Ohio-built supercar.
But I never truly understood what makes the NSX so special. Not until I spent a weekend driving it most of the way across the country. Getting to know this car requires miles - in this case, more than 2500 of them.
Allow me to introduce Road & Track's long-term Acura NSX. We'll have it until we crown the 2018 Performance Car of the Year at the end of 2017. Until then, we'll be putting miles on this silver bullet - road trips, track days, backroad attacks, everything you'd want to do with a brand-new supercar. We're lucky to have this car at our disposal, and we plan on taking full advantage of it.
But first, we had to retrieve it. The NSX was parked in Seattle, Washington, in the possession of Editor-At-Large Sam Smith. It was needed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, our magazine’s headquarters. Social Media Editor Brian Silvestro and I flew to the west coast to hustle the car east on a three-day weekend. Over the ensuing miles, we both got very familiar with the NSX - more so, I’d wager, than just about anyone who doesn’t work for Acura.
Our route began with a gorgeous loop through North Cascades National Park. Up into the craggy Washington mountains, the NSX was a joy, scything through sweeping turns and slingshotting past slow-moving traffic at every passing zone. No surprise - with a total of 573 horsepower from a twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6 and three electric motors, the NSX has rocket acceleration from any speed. The steering is quick, direct without being darty; the carbon-ceramic brakes make even the most panicked stop undramatic.
The NSX also has torque fill, a feature mostly associated with the outrageously expensive McLaren P1, using the hybrid drivetrain to dose in electric motor grunt while the gasoline engine builds turbo boost. The payoff is seamless thrust with zero flat spots, a magical drivetrain with instantaneous zip everywhere on the tachometer.
Of course, you expect freefall acceleration and telepathic handling from a $200,000 mid-engine supercar. The NSX is a hoot on mountain switchbacks? Water is wet. It was only when we departed the North Cascades and joined the workaday commuters on Interstate 94 that the Acura did something truly unusual.
For two days, Silvestro and I used the NSX like an airport rental. We drove from morning til late at night, swapping seats at every fuel stop, ignoring the temptation to veer off the superslab and go sightseeing or hairpin hunting. We dined on gas station snacks, scanned radio stations, prodded every button on the Acura's dashboard to pass the time.
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When you’re racking up thousand-mile days, attention to detail is everything. The NSX’s seats are all-day comfortable (though the lack of height adjustment is perplexing). There’s plenty of leg room, head space to spare, broad arm rests for driver and passenger alike. The Acura’s profile is svelte and aggressive, but somehow the automaker snuck in one of the tallest windshields I’ve seen on a modern performance car, offering panorama vision normally associated with minivans. With the drivetrain set to Quiet mode (more docile than Sport, Sport+ or Track) and cruise control engaged, the silver wedge is as hushed, calm and stable at 120 as a family sedan at 60.
On a freeway cruise, the NSX is a Honda Accord in a funhouse mirror. The trunk shrinks, the rear seats disappear, and the horsepower doubles, but the same pleasant usability shines through. I assure you, that's a sincere compliment - even if it's not the kind of thing most supercar reviews focus on.
It’s all a little disconcerting. On track, this torque-vectoring twin-turbo beast lives to be thrown deep into the curbing, begs for corner-exit acceleration so early and violent it should be suicidal. But steer it to the interstate and point it toward the opposite coast, and it disappears underneath you. Until you’re tempted to pass dawdling traffic - then, a stab of the accelerator prompts a whipcrack ninth-to-second-gear downshift, the electric motors zip to life, the engine wails to redline, and you’re gone, a silvery dot on the far side of the North Dakota horizon.
It’s a side the NSX that we suspect few drivers will fully utilize, a feature absent in most mid-engine supercars. Competitors in this space tend to have a certain high-strung nervousness that never calms down. Gravel pings off carbon fiber floors; potholes register with a head-tossing thwack; twitchy steering and touchy brakes make everyday maneuvers unnecessarily abrupt. In earlier days, this high drama was a necessary tradeoff for snappy reflexes and immediate acceleration. Lately, it’s starting to feel like a contrivance.
A lot of folks like their supercars to have some zingy tension. That’s fine. It’s a tradition of the genre. But when that edge is only there because nobody took the time to address it - or worse, when it's painstakingly engineered synthetic rawness - it loses its charm. You can see why so many supercars barely accrue a thousand miles a year.
With the NSX, Acura proves you can have it all: A communicative, high-performance screamer when you’re hustling, an all-day comfortable cruiser when you’re chewing up the miles. The NSX does this personality change so well, it makes you wonder why so few competitors have it mastered. It's the same trick that made the original NSX so revolutionary in 1990, updated with 21st-century technology to meet modern performance expectations.
That long-distance prowess will definitely come in handy with our long-term NSX. As we rolled in to Ann Arbor on Sunday night at the end of our 2521-mile journey, the odometer showed a few clicks over 10,000 miles. There’s plenty more mileage in this car’s future, likely including at least one more cross-country jaunt. Stay tuned.
A post shared by Road & Track Magazine (@roadandtrack) on Jul 10, 2017 at 8:40am PDT
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