Over the weekend a 2003 Honda NSX-R sold at auction for over $1 million. Naturally, comments regarding the sale have been a tsunami of but-it’s-just-a-Honda type of responses. To which we say, what is wrong with you?
The car was sold at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este event by Broad Arrow Auctions with a hammer down price of €934.375. With fees, that’s $1,050,000 out the door for a pristine 16,000 km (9942 miles) example. In case you’re not the type of person who has eight figures in their bank account, the event is held at the type of hotel that the cast of Succession stays at on the shores of the jaw-droppingly gorgeous Lake Como in Cernobbio, Italy.
Europe’s luxury car brands have unveiled concepts at this event because the Geneva Auto Salon is too gauche. It was a big deal for Japanese cars when a Michelotti-penned Prince Skyline Sport made an appearance there in 2009. And even then, it was under the auspices of an “Italian Style Goes International” theme.
While the clientele there might be more prone to dropping a casual mil than at your average Barrett-Jackson, we wouldn’t dismiss the sale of this NSX as rich people tipsy on Louis Roederer making an impulse buy worth more than your life savings.
There is a tectonic shift happening in the collector car world. Former blue chip cars like a Series 1 Ferrari 250GT Coupe that could once fetch half a million are now $400,000 cars, if that. As boomers, uh, permanently age out of the collector pool, the Gran Turismo generation cars have become ascendant.
The NSX-R is not only peak Honda, but an apex predator of the JDM landscape. A track-focused lightweight variant of one of the greatest driver’s cars ever built, it featured a balanced engine, exclusive aero and improved body rigidity while dropping over 150 pounds from the base grade NSX. That was achieved in part with a carbon fiber hood and rear wing, thinner partition glass between the cockpit and engine, and forged aluminum wheels.
It was also the first production car to achieve negative lift, thanks to an air duct in the hood and underbody diffusers. Not only that, but Honda engineered the negative lift to be distributed in the same ratio front-to-rear as the car’s natural weight balance. That way, even as downforce transitioned from positive to negative, the handling characteristics would not change.
Only 152 NA2 NSX-Rs were built, making them far rarer than the pop-up headlight NA1, of which 483 were made. The only rarer NSX variant is the 2005 NSX-R GT, of which only five were built to homologate the car for SuperGT. Funnily enough, this sale isn’t even the highest recorded for an NSX. That honor goes to the first NC1 NSX Type S, which sold for $1.1 million in 2021. Proceeds went to charity, however, so it’s not a truly representative data point.
People similarly pooh-poohed the A80 Supra as “just a Toyota” when one example broke the six-figure barrier and sold for $121,000 in 2019. We emphatically said there was still room to grow, and were proven right a couple of months later. Sure, balk at the price all you want, but dismissing the NSX-R as if it’s a glorified Fit is either a.) sour grapes, or b.) just plain ignorant.
Images: Broad Arrow Auctions.
It was only a matter of time. The NSX is indeed peak Honda, it was also a wake up call to the European super car manufacturers that an exotic need not be a finicky, hyper maintenance intensive money pit. While Ferrari and Lamborghini chased ever higher performance numbers, Honda went an ever better driver and ownership experience, and it worked.
Let’s face it, the post Enzo Ferrari cars are really just glorified Fiats, with all their attendant reliability issues.
This car deserves this result no less than many cars sold by +1M USD. It´s rare, it´s an engineering masterpiece, it´s exotic, it´s a flagship. It´s the car that translates like no other the “Honda Way” of doing cars.
Still, only few people would find interest in it (the same as MX-5 / Miata from another Japanese carmaker with no interest in cars for rough conditions namely Mazda) as long if these people were South Koreans – but as well as Europeans, and along with Europe, South Korea is not even a kind of market Honda would do business well since I have wondered many times that SK is a country where anything Japan and Japanese is are seen there as forbidden. Plus, the South Korean automotive industry is not even known much for sports / super cars for the same reasons as France’s car business, although the latter had with the Bugatti marque, Renault’s GTA (UK name for Renault Alpine GTA) and the similarly-powered Venturi Atlantique for examples – because the one featured in Gran Turismo 2 (300 Atlantique) was equipped with a V6 engine that was co-developed by Renault (before acquiring Nissan in 1999) and PSA Peugeot Citroen which was in turn was also powered in the GTA, South Korea’s auto business even prior to (as well as after) Hyundai’s 1998 acquisition of Kia had seen attempts to build sports / super cars especially when Ssangyong (now KG Mobility) then took over Panther Westwinds (a British carmaker) – from 1987 until 2001 as Ssangyong that time was under Daewoo now GM Korea – and thus it was also the first encounter of a car company from Republic of Korea performing an acquisition (or business deal) with another automotive corporation. (In addition, the engine in the NSX featured in this article was also the same powetrain fitted in the second-generation Acura / Honda Legend that was also sold exclusively in the ROK / SK market as Daewoo Arcadia to which the latter’s production period ran from 1994 to 1999.)
In that case, the NSX (sold in North America as the Acura NSX) not only explains that it express the fact that the Honda name in carmaking is deeply not known for vehicles that are made for use in places with already-harsh conditions especially in particular farms – which is was for the same reasons how Honda sells more cars in NA and rest of Asia-Pacific (except Australia since its currently one of the few markets where Toyota does not compete with Honda) is by contrast (Honda) runs weak in Europe’s automotive market for example (mainly because Japan doesn’t have a strong farming / herding background compared to countries that have ties with Stellantis like France, Italy, Spain and Portugal), but also, the NSX when its original form’s manufacturing period ended for fifteen years (2005) – three years after the [Toyota] Supra and [Mazda] RX-7 were all discontinued – deeply addresses / addressed the declination fo Japan’s automotive industry in the same decade when fellow compatriots Mitsubishi, Subaru and Suzuki all left World Rally Championship years after Toyota already pulled from the series at the end of 1999 – as Honda too have never been in WRC.
Recently, I have even seen an article about how Honda lost its technological adventures to China’s car manufacturers in this period – title of that article is “Risk vs reward – Why Honda is ceding the ADAS frontier to Chinese automakers” (from Malaysia’s WapCar), and realized that (given that Honda was the same marque that made a bid to partner with Nissan) it would have been good for Honda to be sold and (instead) liquidated at the hands of Stellantis just as if the latter were to do the same with Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors and rest of the Japanese automotive business… (Probably, since PSA’s successor is profoundly known for diesel engines, then as given that one of theirs were co-developed with Ford, I think Stellantis would benefit from using Honda’s powertrains and shoehorn them in their cars like Peugeot’s 20(0)8…)
So, Honda and Mazda are not good companies because they don’t make boring, agricultural workhorse vehicles? And who really cares about Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, or Fiat, they have NEVER been able to crack the nut of the North American market because their cars were/are trouble prone, high maintenance, high repair cost vehicles with dealer networks that were never any good here.
The Japanese became a force in North America because they paid attention to the wants and needs of the North American driving public. They make cars that are easy to own, that will not let you down out in the middle of nowhere. They also set the enthusiast/sports car segment on it’s head by producing fun to drive cars that don’t have to be tinkered with all the time, or have to go to expensive and scarce dealer or independent shops for service.
The introduction of Japanese cars to our market was a paradigm shift that forced the rest of the world’s manufacturers to sit up and take notice.
Period.
A Porsche is just a Volkswagen with lock washers.
Same for a Ferrari wit Fiat only those need loctite too.