From The Classifieds: 1998 Honda NSX

From The Classified
1998 Honda NSX

I was in primary school when I first got close and personal with the original Honda NSX.

Having devoured every car magazine which covered its Australian arrival, I desperately needed to see one in the aluminium.

So I was delighted one day when my grandmother picked me up from school with surprising news…we were going to the Honda dealership to see if an NSX had arrived.

I still recall the moment: we pulled up behind this alien-looking black-on-black supercar with a Honda badge on its rump. My mouth was agape until I saw it was saddled with a four-speed auto. My ten-year-old self had memorised that this dropped power from 201kW to 188kW, added weight and dulled in-gear response. Nevertheless, the salesman was taken aback when I advised him of this.

Flash forward another 15 years or so, and an older colleague brought his baby to work.

An original 3.0-litre NSX, this one was red with a black interior, had been driven sporadically and was immaculate. Even better, it was manual. No, he wouldn’t let me drive it, but offered to take me for a passenger ride.

Sadly, he was the type to err on the side of caution with his own cars, though funnily enough he never hesitated to thrash the life out of anyone else’s. In the entire extended ‘cruise’, my ‘pilot’ never once surpassed 5000rpm, though he could describe in great detail the pleasures of its manual steering and utter reliability, and that I should never buy Italian again.

Did you ever hear such prideful sentiments about a Honda?

How a supercar should be done
Until the late-1980s, the Supercar was really Europe’s preserve. Sure, Chevrolet had the Corvette and Dodge had the Viper in the works, but these were saddled with heavy, large-capacity, unsophisticated pushrod engines (bar the ZR-1, a story for another day) which did nothing for nuanced handling. Being front-engined, some questioned whether they could honestly lay claim to being called a Supercar. Ferrari. Porsche. Lamborghini. These were the Supercars of the moment, and others – such as McLaren and Jaguar – wanted in. So, too, did Honda.

Surfing a tidal wave of Formula One success - Honda-powered cars would win six consecutive constructors’ championships from 1986-1991 - the company’s senior management back in Tokyo and Suzuka wanted to transfer its F1 technical might to the road. Like it had been on the F1 tour, Ferrari was caught napping, perhaps dismissing this Japanese upstart for its lack of cylinders and exotic heritage.

Honda’s ‘New Sportscar eXperimental’ was first shown at 1989’s Chicago auto show (the production vehicle would sell in North America under the Acura brand) before first deliveries commenced in 1990.

Packed full of ingenious touches, the Honda NSX employed an all-aluminium semi-monocoque - a first for a mass-produced road vehicle - and was said to weigh almost 200kg less than if it was constructed from steel.
It was also claimed to be 50 per cent more rigid than a Porsche 911.

Aluminium suspension parts further reduced weight and added rigidity. Claimed kerb weight was just 1351kg.

Performance was on-par with contemporary Porsche 911 and Ferrari 328/348 products – but the Honda employed a relatively small 3.0-litre naturally aspirated six-cylinder powerplant.

Transverse-mounted behind the seats, this jewel-like, DOHC, 24-valve, 90-degree V6 featured Honda’s now-famous VTEC system which alters valve timing and lift; the idea being a useable spread of torque at low revs which gave way to a more aggressive setting as engine speed rose, in the case of the NSX, towards a nape-prickling 8000rpm, for maximum power.

The engine also featured titanium connecting rods, another road car first which apparently permitted an additional 700rpm. Peak power of 201kW was produced at a lofty 7100rpm, with a relatively thin 284Nm of torque at 5300rpm. Zero-100km/h acceleration was rated at 5.8 seconds.

Australian showrooms first saw the NSX in February 1991, priced at $159,900 for the five-speed manual or $165,900 for the four-speed auto; an extra $6K for less performance, more weight, and one less gear.

For reference, a 1991 Porsche 911 cost $173,000, and had a 12-valve, 3.6-litre air-cooled flat-six engine generating 184kW/310Nm. The Ferrari 348tb employed a 3.4-litre DOHC V8 which beat the Honda on paper (221kW/323Nm), but was around 40kg heavier and cost an eye-watering $224,315.

Honda added a Targa top option for 1995 production, so you could remove that innovative glass roof which aped an F16 fighter cockpit and provided unsurpassed for all-round visibility…for a Supercar. Otherwise little changed on the NSX until the 1997 introduction of the 3.2-litre engine.

By which time, the NSX’s price had ballooned to $206,790 (the Targa another $10,000 above that). But the updated engine, created via a larger bore (Honda ditched iron cylinder liners in favour of a Fibre Reinforced Metal material, basically a blend of carbon fibre and aluminium oxide) once more sharpened the NSX’s relevance. A steel exhaust manifold also replaced the previous cast iron system and helped offset the increased kerb weight resulting from the mechanical upgrades (officially it was 1390kg).

Now the figures read 206kW (the Japanese market mandated power maximum) at 7300rpm and 298Nm at 5300rpm, with the zero to 0-100km/h sprint cut to 5.6 seconds, also thanks to the assistance of a six-speed close ratio manual transmission. The four-speed auto carried on with the 3.0-litre engine.

New wheels measuring 16-inches at the front and 17 at the rear, with 215/45/16 and 245/40/17 Bridgestone tyres respectively, were another key upgrade and they covered larger brakes.

The Honda NSX continued in this vein for several more years, being facelifted in 2002 - headlights moved from pop-up to exposed, updated interior and body work, modernised specification - but by then the Australian market had moved on to bigger, brasher, newer machinery. Honda quietly phased out its Supercar in 2004, when it cost a massive $245,500, or $256,500 with the Targa top fitted.

Wow.

All of which came to mind when I found this gem of a 1998 Honda NSX for sale. Priced at a cool quarter mill’, $245,888 plus on-roads, to be precise, this Sebring Silver bullet is nothing if not exclusive in this country… and is still comfortably into six figures cheaper than the reborn hybrid car on showroom floors today

The reason for the slightly eye-watering ask is that this vehicle – in desirable Targa-roof, six-speed manual, 3.2-litre specification and before the pop-up headlights disappeared – has never been privately owned, having originally been a Honda Australia vehicle before heading to a prominent Honda dealer in Sydney, where it has resided ever since.

Images show a lustrous deep red leather interior and a refreshingly unfettered appearance, down to the wheels and factory tail pipe extensions. The dash photo, showing the 8000rpm redline, should also make the pulse race at the thought of indulging the VTEC danger zone, top open in the summer months.

With a full set of documentation verifying the scant 25,826km odometer reading, for an abnormally affluent Honda enthusiast, this might be one to tuck away.

See previous carsales From the Classifieds