First drive: The new Honda NSX, full details,features..

Has the fashionably late Honda NSX actually arrived?

Not quite, sorry. This thing has been trailed for so long that many of its advances have been equalled by others.

After the original NSX died a decade ago, the concept for this new one launched in early 2012. Now, in late 2015, we’re getting our first taste. It doesn’t launch in Britain until late 2016, at a price yet unannounced but in the ill-defined suburbs of £150,000.

So what is it?

Headline act is the drive system. Behind the NSX’s front seats lurks a compact 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 making 500bhp. It’s dry-sumped to keep the centre of gravity low, and has direct injection. Frankly this isn’t one of Honda’s more sophisticated engines: a Civic Type R has VTEC, but this doesn’t.

The ace here is electrification. Attached to its flywheel is a 47bhp electric motor. And at the front there are two further small electric motors, 36bhp each, one for each wheel.

This brings total system power to 573bhp (you can’t just add each contribution because the engine isn’t at its peak revs when the motors are at theirs). That total gets the NSX into contention with other entry-level (!) supercars. We’re around the altitude of the Audi R8, Porsche 911 Turbo and McLaren 570S.

But the NSX people reckon they have a killer app. It’s the way the urge gets to the wheels. Because of the side-to-side separation of the front motors, and a multi-plate controlled limited-slip diff at the back, there’s an enormous degree of control to modify the car’s path via torque.

A hybrid. Must be economical?

Not especially. Chief engineer of the NSX Ted Klaus tells me the purpose of the electric gubbins isn’t economy but instant response. The electric motors mask turbo lag; the vectoring helps agility. There are no official numbers anyway, but Klaus says the NSX will drink like a 911 Turbo, the most economical non-hybrid supercar with quoted economy around 30mpg.

One thing that should help long-distance economy is the nine-speed dual clutch transmission. I asked why they need so many when the power band is so wide. Well, it’s a short first for launch, a long ninth for cruising, and seven for normal driving.

Does it take anything from the old NSX?

No parts, beyond the Honda badge. But like that original car the body is mostly aluminium. Unlike that one though, which was mostly pressed, this uses a lot of extrusions and cast nodes. A new casting process makes the nodes less brittle, better for crash protection.

Then there are steel rails in the A-posts, again made with a new process to be super-strong, so the pillars are thin, to the good of visibility. The footwell floors are carbon fibre – it doesn’t need bracing like aluminium would. So, optionally, is the roof.

And the suspension?

At the front you’ve got an upper wishbone and twin-ball-joint lower links to reduce steering corruption from the e-motor torque. It’s multi-link behind. The dampers are adaptive; the magnetorheological kind we like so much.

With all this electrickery, does it have loads of set-up modes?

Yup, four. A quiet one that limits engine revs, keeps the exhaust valve quiet, and closes the pipes that bring intake sound to the cabin. Then ‘sport’, ‘sport plus’ and ‘track’. These progressively make things louder, use more peak electric power, ginger up the transmission’s shift map and shift speed, make the torque vectoring more aggressive, tauten the damping, loosen the stability system and so on.

Source: topgear.com