Top Car

January 2016 |TOPCAR.CO.ZA 71

If the NSX sounds like a complicated car – and its

spec sheet, prolonged gestation and sh eer weight would

suggest it is – that feeling lasts only as long as opening

the door and sliding over the slim sill into the low-slung

but comfortable cockpit. Take a moment to appreciate

the panoramic forward visibility – low dashboard, slim

A-pillars – start the engine (if it stays silent you’re in

EV-biased Quiet mode), grasp the oddly sh aped wheel

(pronounced bulges where you grasp it) and go.

For a car weighing more than 1700kg (a gluttonous

300kg more than a McLaren 570S), the NSX makes a

good fist of feeling fast. ‘Zero delay’ might be a slight

exaggeration but with the hybrid drivet rain delivering

additi onal torqueand all-wheel-drive traction, the

Honda launches with a refined violence that can make

you feel mildlyunwell. There’s no need for any throttle

modulation – just put your footdown and the low-slung

coupe hooks up without aflicker of the traction control

and gathers speed with a heavy insistence. It’s a job to

keep the thing in gears, so closely stacked are the ratios.

After the initial getaway that ferocity does bleed away

as the car’s weight and the e-motors’ ab ility to help

diminishes, butthis remains an effortlessly fast car.

A shame then the gearbox itself isn’t nicer to use, and

that the cacophony of acceleration is both a little ugly

in note and dislocated from what the engine’s actually

doing. The cheap-feeling sh ift paddles pull home with

a disappointing ‘clack’ and offer little of the McLaren

unit’s feel-good tactility. And while the exhaust note

is nothing more than a muted if potent purr in normal

driving, twirl the drive mode selector around to Sport or

Sport+ and the racket from the artificial acoustics is less

than spine tingling.

Take a moment to get the measure of the steering. The

system is neither hefty and nuanced like a Porsche 911

GT3’s, nor exhilarating in its speed and responsiveness

like a Ferrari 488 GTB. Deliberately so, argues project

leader Ted Klaus – ‘We wanted driver confidence and

a sense of complete control.’ True enough as you build

speed and slide into Sport+ (the third offour modes,

which ramp up from Quiet to Track) you grow to admire

the accuracy and reassuring paucity of slack in the NSX’s

steering. Response to your demands is immediate and

accurate, and it’s during these tentative enquiries that

the first flickers of chassis magic make themselves

known. At speed the car changes direction with an

almost surreal ease, as if the physics that normally

interfere with doing so have beensubtly but tangibly

re-written in your favour.

Soon you long to get stuc k into a meaty complex

of corners, happy that you have the car beneath you to

monster them. Here the NSX’s mixed-media powertrain

promises unique advantages, beingable to trimthe forc e

at each front wheel for an ideal cornering attitude without

drive-sapping applications of the brakes. At the wheel

you’re vaguely aware of the car’s intelligent powertrain

at work butmainly there’s just a sense of neat, composed

togetherness, the Honda driving where you expect a slide.

Ultimately the NSX is inseparable from its hybrid

drivet rain. Without it the Honda would be a lighter,

less powerful, less complex car, and one closer in spirit

to its namesake. But Honda, perhaps more than any

other manufacturer, is a believerin progress through

technology. Do the advantages of the NSX’s hybrid

powertrain negate the weight penalty? Given the car’s

real-world remit, Klaus is adamant that they do, and the

way it powers out oftighter corners, shrugging off early

stabs of throttle and translating them into big corner-exi t

speeds, would certainly seem to back himup, as would

the car’s eerie sense of agility without the instability. But

still the NSX can’t ou t-think 1 725kg.

An extended road drive –as opposed to this all-too-

brief first encounter – will answer a lot of questions,

and perhaps banish the lingering fear that this car just

doesn’t feel as special as it should. Job done, Ho nda

argues, if ‘special’ means obtrusive NVH, tiresome

steering and a chassis prone to spats of oversteer. This is

an everydaysupercar, remember, butsurely the game’s

moved on – what’s not everydayaboutan R8, 570S (okay,

the doors perhaps) and the 911 Turbo? Technically

fascinating, impressively resolved and unfeasibly easy to

drive fast, if the NSX has a failing it’s that its ro ad-biased

remit has left it feeling a little aloof. The original’s subtle

brilliance emerged with time and miles. Perhaps it’ll be

the same story with its complex, enigmatic and fiercely

ambitious successor.tc

There are three

elec tric motors

in here. Three!

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