2016 Acura NSX Pikes Peak Pace Car
06-28-2015, 09:15 PM
#1
Burning Brakes
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2016 Acura NSX Pikes Peak Pace Car
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Tonyware (06-29-2015)
06-28-2015, 09:22 PM
#2
Burning Brakes
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06-29-2015, 12:22 PM
#3
Drifting
Wow. Cool pics.
07-02-2015, 07:43 AM
#4
Safety Car
BloomBerg
Finally. After 10 long years of nonexistence, the Acura NSX is back.
I spent several days with the completely redesigned icon last weekend at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, that 99-year-old race where drivers hit 150 mph around 156 corners over a 13-mile course.
It wasn’t production-ready yet, and it’s facing some significant production delays having to do with the engine. That meant despite initial plans, Acura wouldn’t let me photograph inside it, let alone drive it. But we did get plenty of up-close-and-personal quality time filming the beast dominate the 14,114-foot mountain. 2 decades after it 1st created the low-slung, affordable racer that claimed immortal status after its Gran Turismo debut, Honda says it’s only a matter of months before it unleashes the modern version to a salivating public. “Early fall,” a spokesman said. “Early fall."
Let’s hope. This has taken long enough.
That prototype did a pretty good job of keeping me occupied in the meantime. As we know from its debut earlier this year in Detroit, it has a turbocharged V6 engine paired with 3 electric motors. I was skeptical about how NSX purists would respond to a turbocharged engine rather than something akin to the naturally aspirated rear-wheel drive that pushed the original NSX, but Acura engineers defended the new configuration, saying that the immediate torque of an electric motor combined with the sustained power of a turbocharged engine pairs the best of both worlds. It’s not even about efficiency, they said, it’s about performance. The combination gives maximum thrust at all times.
It all sounds plausible, though I’ll refrain from making a final judgment until I can drive the production version.
Other 2016 NSX details of note: 9-speed paddle-shifter transmission and all-wheel drive. It’ll have between 500 and 600 horsepower and, according to Acura driver Sage Marie, get “competitive” efficiency numbers with the likes of the Audi R8.
To which, by the way, it looks strikingly similar.
The early NSX became a design status symbol for its low, lightweight, and late-'80s angular body. It inspired several well-received cars after that, including the McLaren F1. This new version has the same tight, slightly rounded roofline slope and tidy rear end as the Audi, with amble side vents and lovely bold ventricles on the nose. But sharper edges around the tires and front grille as well as along its ribs give it a little more personality than the R8, a more precise look. The visual effect is very on point.
As for the driving effect, Marie says to expect tight, immediate steering and brakes with quicksilver reflexes. He says to expect to forget you’re in a car at all.
“The idea is that when you drive the NSX, it feels like the car falls away and it’s just you and the road,” he told me during Saturday's race in Colorado. The brand-new chassis, engine, and transmission were developed by Honda in Japan and by engineers in Ohio. They’re currently working to slim excess weight from the car, since that hybrid system adds a lot that they wouldn’t normally have to consider in a sports coupe. It’ll all be manufactured in Ohio once production starts. Cost estimates for the 2016 Acura NSX, according to Marie, will be around $150,000.
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neuronbob (07-05-2015),
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07-05-2015, 07:00 PM
#5
Senior Moderator
07-09-2015, 02:22 PM
#6
Safety Car
TFL Car
2 generations of the Acura NSX took on the mountain at the 2015 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb – a 1991 NSX race car and the all-new, pre-production NSX that served as the pace car for the event.
The 1991 Acura NSX driven by James Robinson in the Open class was originally built as a Le Mans racer, but was rescued and re-purposed for the hill climb. The car makes about 500 horsepower from its turbocharged V-6 at sea level, which drops to 400 horsepower at the start and 350 horsepower at the 14,110 foot peak.
Robinson’s time up the hill was 10:37, which was good enough for 2nd place in the Open class.
The NSX pace car is a development prototype that is not exactly what will be put into production. It has a 75-degree, twin-turbocharged V-6 with 3 electric motors – 1 in the back and 1 at each front wheel. The front motors can provide torque vectoring to the front wheels to further aid in handling.
Sage Marie, American Honda Motor Company senior manager of public relations and Pikes Peak veteran, drove the new NSX up the mountain. He said that the car’s all wheel drive system, especially the torque vectoring, is perfectly suited for carving up canyon roads.
TFLcar provided exclusive coverage of the Honda team at Pikes Peak and captured the 2 Acuras as they made their runs.
The 1st video highlights the cars and the drivers and gives a glimpse into what it’s like to race up Pikes Peak. The 2nd video shows Robinson’s run up the hill to give a glimpse of how dangerous the route is. Once past the tree line, the video shows just how harrowing the drop-offs are, most of which don’t have guardrails to stop cars from flying off the road.
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