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Honda celebrates 30th anniversary of the NSX with a look back at how it began

In 1989, the baseball-loving Japanese dipped their bats in pine tar and came to the U.S. to take gigundous swings. That single year launched five legends: Lexus LS400, Infiniti Q45, Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo, Mazda MX-5 Miata, and Acura NS-X concept. The Chicago Auto Show (!) hosted the global debuts of the Mazda and the Acura. While Mazda celebrates the bygones with the 30th Anniversary Miata, Acura's reminiscing with a look at how the NSX — a car Motor Trend described in 1990 as, "[The] best sports car the world has ever produced. Any time. Any place. Any price ..." — came to be. The development yearbook opened in 1984, a year after Honda returned to Formula One as an engine supplier for the Spirit team, and for the second Williams chassis in the last race of the season. For the first time in the automaker's history, Honda wanted to build a production car with the engine behind the cabin, one that would demonstrate Honda's engineering prowess and "deeply rooted racing spirit." The sports car would also serve as a halo for the not-yet-launched Acura brand. The engineering team built the first test vehicle in February 1984 on the bones of a first-generation Honda Jazz. After four years of formal development, Honda parked the NS-X Concept in a conference room at Chicago's Drake Hotel in February 1989. This is where the media would meet the red wonder before the public show-stand debut. The F-16 Fighting Falcon-inspired coupe was built on the world's first all-aluminum monocoque, and its SOHC V6 ran with titanium connecting rods. Before the press conference, then-Honda president Tadashi Kume got in the NS-X, started the engine, and revved to the 8,000-rpm redline — a noise felt by everyone in the adjacent conference room attending a Ford press conference. Honda's PR man at the time yelled, "Mr. Kume, stop it! They're gonna hear this!" When Kume got out, he asked Honda engineers present why they didn't put their new VTEC technology in the NS-X. (What's Japanese for, "Why didn't the VTEC kick in, yo?!") They told him VTEC had been created for four-cylinder engines. Kume told them to work on a V6 application. More suggestions came from journos who drove the early prototypes at Honda's Tochigi R&D Center, who said the NS-X "could use more power." The development team had grabbed the SOHC V6 from the Acura Legend for the NS-X concept, and it put out 160 horsepower in the luxury sedan.

NSX Concept-GT is the world's hottest way to boil water

The Honda NSX Concept-GT is one sexy machine, and it looks to be a very effective tool on a race circuit. But Honda's latest web spot leads us to believe that it also can be used to make tea.
In the video, the racecar is hooked up to an apparatus that uses tubing to harness the energy from the car's 500-horsepower hybrid drive system, using it to boil water. The novel tea-making technique reminds us a bit of a couple other inventive Honda commercials, namely Hands and Cog.
Watch the NSX ad below, and be sure to turn the sound up to hear that glorious engine note.

The Aston Martin DB11 leads this month's list of discounts

We've got something of a broken record to report this month. The 2020 Acura NSX and 2020 Aston Martin DB11 have swapped places atop the discounts leaderboard for a fourth month in a row. For the month of March 2011, it's the British entry again in the lead. The DB11 earns top billing with an average discount of $24,614 off its sticker price, meaning buyers are paying an average transaction price of $177,206. That still a large suitcase full of bills, but at least it means buyers get to stare at a drop-dead beautiful coupe in their driveways with as much as 630 horsepower underhood. And if you love Aston Martin's svelte sense of style but don't want to spend quite so much money, you could always choose the 2020 Vantage that's selling for around $143,000. That's nearly $13,600 off that car's sticker, which is enough to land in seventh spot overall. Up next, as we've come to expect, is the Acura NSX. The hybrid-powered supercar from Japan is selling for $137,663 on average this month, which represents a $22,340 discount and seems like an exceptional deal for a 573-horsepower technological marvel that can scoot from 0-60 in just 2.9 seconds. That also represents the largest percentage of savings off the sticker this month. In third place for the month is the Audi R8, making March the second straight month that this trio of supercars has led the list of discounts. Buyers are saving $18,331 off the R8's sticker, which equals an average transaction price of $175,508. That's awfully close to the selling price of the DB11, for those lucky enough to be deciding between the two. Related Video: Driving Iron Man's Favorite Supercar, The Acura NSX | Translogic 215