2001 ACURA NSX 3.0L V6 4AT (252 HP)

Vehicle Overview

Honda introduced a facelifted version for its supercar NSX, which the carmaker sold under the Acura badge on the North American market.

It was hard to believe that the same company that built econoboxes like Civic could make such a fantastic supercar as the NSX. Yet, the Japanese carmaker had all the technology and engineering skills to create a daily-driver sports car. It was such a good piece of engineering and design that even Gordon Murray took his inspiration from it when he made the McLaren F1. Honda introduced the NSX in 1990 and refreshed it twice, with a final upgrade in 2002.

By the ‘2000s, the carmakers gave up the pop-up headlights. Honda did the same and installed a new set fitted with HID lamps, which doubled the lumen power (light power). The front bumper was extended and lowered, increasing the downforce. There was a new set of taillights and a lip spoiler on top of the rear trunk lid. All these upgrades made the car quicker to 125 mph (201 kph) by 0.2 seconds and increased the top speed from 168 mph (270 kph) to 175 mph (285 kph).

As a premium brand, Acura offered the NSX with a leather-clad interior. Its power-operated bolstered bucket seats provided adequate side support during high-speed cornering. But it featured the same classic Honda layout for the instrument cluster, but with a couple of gauges more for the oil pressure and an ammeter.

The Acura NSX’s mid-mounted engine provided ten more ponies than in the Honda NSX, but without a performance improvement. But thanks to the new, six-speed manual gearbox, it managed to do a 0 to 62 mph run (0-100 kph) in 5.8 seconds, 0.4 of a second quicker than the non-facelifted NSX.