"Honda will build a new NSX supercar"
11-30-2011, 09:13 AM
#1
Thread Starter
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: North of Toronto
Posts: 180
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
"Honda will build a new NSX supercar"
Source
Honda President Takanobu Ito arrived at the company's Motegi test track on Monday in full leathers riding the company's all-conquering 2011 Moto GP bike. This is clearly the sort of bloke who should be running a car company.
More significantly, Ito was also one of the chassis engineers on the original NSX, and he knows that Honda desperately needs to inject some sparkle into its environmentally worthy but rather pedestrian range. The company's Tokyo show stand will feature no fewer than three new concept cars, but the big news as far as TG is concerned is a car that isn't actually here but WILL be at the Detroit show in a month's time: an all-new NSX.
‘We need a halo car,' Honda's design manager Yoshikazu Kigoshi told TopGear, ‘and this is a decision that's come from Ito-san down. A new S2000 is a difficult car for us to do, because of its front-engined, rear-drive platform. But we are definitely looking at the EV-ster and a new NSX.'
The EV-ster, aka the Small Sports Concept (pictured above) is barely bigger than Japan's tax-break tiddler ‘Kei' cars, which makes it a likely successor to the early-'90s Honda Beat. Kigoshi confirmed that the EV-ster uses an all-new platform, and that Honda plans to offer a choice of petrol or pure-electric power.
Like the other two Tokyo concepts, the AC-X and Micro Commuter Concept, the EV-ster replaces the traditional steering wheel with a system called TLS or ‘twin lever steering'. Perhaps smarting from its absence in F1, Honda insists that it still has a lot of new tech derived from its F1 programme, and says that a TLS-equipped F1 car lapped the Suzuka circuit 3.3 seconds faster than a car with a regular wheel... Expect to see laser lighting technology arriving soon, too.
The new NSX, meanwhile, will get the company's clever new SH-AWD torque vectoring system, which uses independent electric motors on the rear wheels to optimise cornering behaviour.
More significantly, Ito was also one of the chassis engineers on the original NSX, and he knows that Honda desperately needs to inject some sparkle into its environmentally worthy but rather pedestrian range. The company's Tokyo show stand will feature no fewer than three new concept cars, but the big news as far as TG is concerned is a car that isn't actually here but WILL be at the Detroit show in a month's time: an all-new NSX.
‘We need a halo car,' Honda's design manager Yoshikazu Kigoshi told TopGear, ‘and this is a decision that's come from Ito-san down. A new S2000 is a difficult car for us to do, because of its front-engined, rear-drive platform. But we are definitely looking at the EV-ster and a new NSX.'
The EV-ster, aka the Small Sports Concept (pictured above) is barely bigger than Japan's tax-break tiddler ‘Kei' cars, which makes it a likely successor to the early-'90s Honda Beat. Kigoshi confirmed that the EV-ster uses an all-new platform, and that Honda plans to offer a choice of petrol or pure-electric power.
Like the other two Tokyo concepts, the AC-X and Micro Commuter Concept, the EV-ster replaces the traditional steering wheel with a system called TLS or ‘twin lever steering'. Perhaps smarting from its absence in F1, Honda insists that it still has a lot of new tech derived from its F1 programme, and says that a TLS-equipped F1 car lapped the Suzuka circuit 3.3 seconds faster than a car with a regular wheel... Expect to see laser lighting technology arriving soon, too.
The new NSX, meanwhile, will get the company's clever new SH-AWD torque vectoring system, which uses independent electric motors on the rear wheels to optimise cornering behaviour.
11-30-2011, 09:22 AM
#2
Good news!
But...
Right, because a FR platform is soooooo hard to engineer. 
But...
A new S2000 is a difficult car for us to do, because of its front-engined, rear-drive platform
11-30-2011, 09:33 AM
#3
I think the problem is that he doesnt want to build a bespoke chassis and transmission to support such a vehicle. With all the greenery for the other vehicles, their chassis won't support the layout. Just a guess. But then the counter would be to build more rwd cars that can share a chassis design which is not typical honda. If anything they could have easily built an RL/CL coupe and upped the specs of those from their sedan counterparts instead of equipping the new "nsx" or shall we just say halo car with awd.
11-30-2011, 10:23 AM
#5
^^Yeah that's mainly what I was thinking.
^exactly!
^exactly!
11-30-2011, 01:56 PM
#7
Registered User
Join Date: Aug 2008
Posts: 862
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
They have no FR drivetrain at the moment. They have an AWD drivetrain. Building something around the latter seems like a much cheaper decision from an R&D perspective.
Trending Topics
11-30-2011, 04:38 PM
#9
Registered User
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Milky way galaxy
Posts: 329
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
He means that if they were to choose a front engine / RWD configuration the car would need a unique chassis. There is no way in hell in this economic climate Honda would do this. We all got lucky with the S2000 that times were good and Honda gave a non shared RWD platform from the ground up to build around. It won't happen again anytime soon.
With the NSX concept, they can platform share / drive train share some in house parts to keep costs down.
11-30-2011, 05:34 PM
#10
Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: san diego
Posts: 22
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I would like to see Honda stick with the HSC concept from a couple years back and join 2 k20 to 1 crankshaft, 3.5-4 liter V8 pumping out 400na hp rev to 8200 rpm.. The layout should still be MR, and weigh no more than 2800- 3100 lbs. I read somewhere that the c30 nsx block is very similar to the b16a block, the b16a in the crx was the first Honda vehicle equipped with vtec and right before the release of the nsx, Honda engineers went back and redesigned the engine and added vtec. I know that a lot of people think that the nsx is a waste of money but there's something special about it and how it all comes together, I do own an na1 nsx so I am a little bias. But look at the cars that made Honda special; dc type r, crx, s2000, nsx. All of those cars look like crap on paper with minimal hp and even worse when it comes to torque specs but you can get into anyone of these cars and rev it past 8000rpm, feel the chassis working together with the suspension and it'll bring a smile to your face.