Acura NSX laps Mid-Ohio

It didn't have the production engine, nor the production exhaust (it was gloriously loud) and because there were safety vehicles on the track it wasn't able to go flat-out, but by golly there it was, a bright blue 2015 Acura NSX lapping Mid-Ohio just before the start of the Honda Indy 200.

Being a production mule with any number of systems still under development, it couldn't be turned over to just any driver. So it was piloted by Jason Widmer, assistant large project leader for testing for the new NSX. Acura quoted Widmer after the drive saying it was, “great to drive the car as it broke cover for the first time in front of so many enthusiastic Honda and Acura associates and fans.”

Mid-Ohio is only about 60 miles away from Marysville, Ohio, where Honda designs and builds many cars. Thus about 20,000 “associates” (employees at any other company) were on hand for the NSX' running debut. With Mid Ohio's capacity of 75,000, that meant about one-fourth of the fans on hand worked for Honda, prompting Widmer to add that, “It felt good to open it up on the same Mid-Ohio track where the Honda-powered Indy cars would run only minutes later.”

Widmer took two laps around the 2.4-mile, 15-turn Sports Car Course, though because of the safety vehicles on the track and a group of Honda S2000s parked along the front straight to be used for the driver introductions and ride around, he couldn't run flat out. Nonetheless he ran pretty well. There were cheers reportedly heard.

Honda didn't release any new details officially but did make previous generalizations a little less general. We learned, for instance, that the starting price of the NSX is planned to be near that of the Audi R8, which starts at $115,000. Options will bring the price up from there.

Performance details were still vague, too, but in terms of relative performance, the development team is looking at cars like the Ferrari 458, Audi R8, Nissan GTR, Porsche 911 Carrera S and McLaren MP4-12C. So, based on that list of competitors, one could expect a power output from the mid-mounted V6 gasoline direct-injected engine and the three electric motors (one at each front wheel and one assisting the V6 in driving the rears) to be in the very wide ballpark of between 400 and 616 hp. Likewise, look for 0-60 to come up somewhere in the 2.8 to 3.2-second range; again, a wide spectrum and by no means definite, the car is still two years out, remember.

A release added that Acura's Sport Hybrid SH-AWD and dual-clutch transmission will be on board the production model.

"The [SH-AWD] system enables instant delivery of negative or positive torque to the front wheels during cornering to achieve a new level of driving performance unparalleled by current AWD systems," Acura said.

Racing details are still undecided, except that Honda reiterated that racing the NSX is definitely in the plan.

And just as was the case with the original NSX, Honda promises this one will be easy to drive.

“We like to talk about the synergy between man and machine, how easy it is for the driver to live with, how well it fits them physically,” said company spokesman Sage Marie, a racer himself who drove a supercharged CR-Z at Pikes Peak this year. “There are some sports cars you get in where your leg is bumping against some beautiful piece of carbon-fiber that's unfortunately placed. [Other cars are] a handful at the limit or unapproachable at the limit. What the NSX did originally was become something that could be driven quickly and the majority of buyers could approach the limit. This new car has man-machine synergy, so the idea to stay true to the original is to have the driver get in the car and go out on the track and start turning laps or carving a canyon road and the car kind of falls away almost. It's so intuitive, so capable that it isn't forcing its will on you. It's doing exactly what you're asking of it. That's what the original car did and what we're trying to do here.”

Sure, Honda is going to dribble out bits and pieces of teasers for the next two years, just like every other great sports-car maker has done recently, and, as we have done with every other sports-car maker, we are going to reveal them here. But the NSX looks like it may be worth the irritation. Here's hoping it will be worth the wait.

By Autoweek Staff