What's Next For Honda's NSX After FOS?

“When I spoke to Takanobu Ito, the original NSX body project leader, at the start, he said ‘I hope you struggle the way I struggled with the first NSX’,” Klaus tells me.

Reinventing the NSX has been a challenge, to say the least. Here is a brand known for personal mobility of all descriptions - lawn mowers, outboard motors, leaf blowers, motorbikes, cars and one very expensive robot, to name but a few of the products Honda produces. How on earth does the NSX inform the brand?

“We talk about excitement and awareness for the brand”, Klaus tells me. “We hope the public say we’re innovative and cool; that we make products they trust and love - that’s the key for NSX: trust and love. It’s an emotional frosting on the brand.”

We watch as three versions of the NSX go up the hill: the new one, the original and one that Ayrton Senna drove and has Bruno Senna’s signature in the boot. “We have built in a very familiar feeling when you drive the NSX”, says Klaus. “[In the new one] the visibility, the way you sit and are supported… it’s all familiar. When you drive the car, as you accelerate and turn in, the original had this lovely inward motion and the new car is the same way. That creates trust.”

But under the skin, it’s a very different car, we point out, with hybrid technology meaning that motors drive the front wheels while a V6 petrol engine powers the rear via a nine-speed dual-clutch auto box.

Is there a danger that the perceived complicated technology will turn off lovers of traditional combustion engines and rear-wheel-drive supercars? Where do you draw the line as a marketeer between shouting about the innovative technology this car has, and convincing customers that it’s still a thoroughbred sportscar for purists?

“If you look at the NSX, there’s just one badge on it”, Klaus tells me. “It doesn’t say ‘sports hybrid’ or ‘PDK’. We want people not to worry that it’s difficult or complicated to understand. When we relaunched in 2012, there were surprisingly negative comments on electric sports cars but that has changed so quickly.

“We think our system is quite clever in its arrangement. I’m sure the [McLaren] P1 and LaFerrari are amazing machines but the motors are just supporting acceleration. Our motors support steering, braking and acceleration”. So who will buy this clever car? They already have two years’ worth of orders under their belt which is “very satisfying”.

“The mindset of a Porsche 911 owner is aligned,” says Klaus. “That was also true with the first NSX. I’m curious to see how many will come across from the [Audi] R8.” Interestingly, the £130,000 price tag puts it above the R8 but below a McLaren 570S.

The new NSX is, of course, designed by a woman - Michelle Christensen - although it seems to me a design that will appeal to a very masculine mindset, with fewer Ferrari-type curves and more machined aggression. “The first thing we did was talk to original NSX owners,” Klaus tells me. Many have orders in for the new model. “You’ll see many more women – we have one woman in America who owns an NSX and a Noble. This is a chance to appeal to female sensibilities.”

So what’s next? Klaus smiles. “Well, we really want NSX to be a window into who we are,” he says. “We’ve created a sports-car platform so we dream about various derivatives of this platform, which you’ll see [a Type R version s on the cards], and at the same time the next leap.”

For 50 years Honda has been at the forefront of engineering innovation; rest assured that whatever comes next will be in the vanguard of technological capabilities.

Photography by Adam Beresford