It's about $100,000 more than the car behind it in Acura's lineup. Whether or not this is a vanity project or an honest effort to reinvent itself from the top down, Acura is at least making sports car fans happy with the 2017 NSX.
Honda launched the NSX line about 25 years ago. The car, known as the Acura NSX in the States, was discontinued in 2005, but Honda announced in 2007 that it wasn't done with the sports car just yet. Now, nearly a decade later, the Acura NSX is back.
With its stock fairly flat over the last year, Acura has been trying to change the perception of its brand to be counted, in the minds of people who can't afford the NSX, as being on par with luxury brands like Jaguar and Lexus.
To help change the perception of the brand in the minds of buyers of premium cars, Acura is using the 2017 NSX ($156,000) as a standard bearer because even though most of its prospective buyers will never drive a late model NSX, they can at least dream about it and settle for the likes of an Integra.
So about the 2017 NSX, it's a hybrid sports car with three engines: two electric engines powering the front end and a single gas engine driving the back wheels. Though it is "immensely complex" in scale, what stands out about the 2017 NSX to Top Gear's Charlie Turner is how "immersive" it feels.
"The braking, steering and integration between the V6 and three motors could have been a recipe for a car that constantly interrupted your enjoyment," writes Turner. "In the NSX you learn to drive with the systems not against them, and in return it delivers a fascinatingly engaging experience."
The 2017 NSX can put out a total horsepower of 537 and 476 foot-pounds of torque. It has a nine-speed transmission and can operate in four modes. It can travel in quiet mode, operating solely on its electric engines, for up to 2 miles. The other three modes – Sport, Sport+ and Track – each use more of the car's power plant than the mode before it.
All of that makes for a car that AutoGuide's Colum Wood calls "a bucket list item."
"Normally, a machine with this much power requires a cautious throttle when exiting a curve, yes, even with sticky Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tires – but not here," Wood writes. "It actually challenges you to put your foot down earlier than you'd ever think you could. The car makes you feel like a much better driver than you actually are."
And while the idea of beauty is usually left to background and ideologies of the beholder, it may be especially hard to call the NSX ugly. Jalopnik's Mark Baruth seemed to have drawn a following of flashes during his time with the car.
"If you want to turn heads, the NSX will undoubtedly make waves, even in a desert town like Palm Springs," Baruth writes. "Every time I parked the NSX out in public, camera phones started clicking like Beyoncé had just arrived."
