As its F1 team is currency an expensive joke, Honda’s hope of salvaging its high performance pride seem to rest on the revival, or perhaps sequel to the NSX supercar, due in 2009. Anybody who was breathing at the time will remember the 1989 original: the oriental Ferrari wannabe that was actually better than the real thing. But two decades on, the new NSX is set to be a very different animal. It will be powered by a V10 for a start, and have close to the double the first NSX’s surprisingly modest 276 bhp. When Honda decide to go for the V10 of course that was the engine configuration for F1 cars, so in a sense they have been caught a bit cold by F1’s incessant rule changes. But given the F1 team’s poor recent performance, it’s probably no bad thing. Unlike the original NSX, the new car will have its engine mounted up front, rather than behind the seats, which naturally means the styling is very different.
The 2009 car certainly isn’t a retro rehash, it’s a contemporary coupe with a long nose tapering into a “V” above the central of the three air intakes and a stubby tail complete with a pair of vertically stacked tail pipes at each side. It’s also likely to employ a dual clutch transmission and transmit power not all wheel drive system currently fitted to the Legend Saloon. The system apportions torque to rear and side to side, actually increasing the speed of the outside rear wheel to turn the car into the corner, cutting understeer and increasingly agility.
