Honda announced Friday that it had found a logjam in its news department, and summarily fixed the problem by releasing a month’s worth of news for the automaker in about an hour.
The logjam apparently precluded the release of information it had for the North American International Auto Show next month, namely an Acura sedan concept with hood lines like an NSX and hips like a Playmate.
The so-dubbed “Precision Concept” will make its bow next month and foretell the company’s future plans for performance sedans. According to Car and Driver, Acura general manager John Ikeda said there was much to be read into the car’s long hood — which may mean a longitudinally mounted mill and rear-wheel drive.
The logjam also help up pricing for the delayed 2017 Acura NSX, which should hit showrooms in spring and cost a cool $156,000 to start before an equally dear $1,800 shipping charge.
(Are they sending it via space shuttle? As in, they’re charging by the pound? — Aaron)
The initial $156,000 MSRP may not get you very far — the company announced a top-range NSX would run $205,700 with all the options ticked. The NSX will be offered in eight exterior colors, with three interior color options available and lots of carbon fiber options all the way around if you have TSX-money you want to blow on fancy trim bits.
Interestingly, Acura is taking the Lexus LF-A/Ford GT approach to selling the limited NSX, in that each car will be built-to-order, according to Acura. Its online configurator will go live on Feb. 25, and customers can make deposits online before finalizing the purchase at a specified NSX dealer.
The announcement of a direct-purchase agreement from manufacturer to buyer may suggest that Acura has negotiated a pre-determined payout with its dealers for just picking up a customer’s check.
So, why don’t we do that more often?
Oh yeah, and we’ll get a peek at the new Ridgeline this year during the Super Bowl.
You can already buy one of those silhouetted cars at the Infiniti dealership. I think it is called the Q50.
http://www.cerritosinfiniti.com/images/uploads/organizations/639/markup/2015_infiniti_q50.jpg
Get rid of the silver beak, and we can talk. C’mon Acura, wake up.
UGLY comes at no extra cost.
That should be Chrysler’s motto… the Charger is about as nasty as it gets.
If you gave me that care for free – I’d sell it for both HELLCATS.
Return of the longitudinal/FWD setup I liked so much I went and bought a twenty-year-old car with it?
Or AWD based on the same type of arrangement? It would have been easy. An AWD Legend would have been a heck of a discount E34 competitor.
I’m willing to bet it’ll be FF, but it’ll have RWD proportions much like the old Legend.
A RWD sedan would be kinda weird for Honda.
Nice new AV there. But you didn’t get it approved by the committee, komerade. So, we must break you.
Thanks! I should’ve remembered TTACs disapproval for face lifts!
Then again I dont like face lifts either…
The coloring of new avatar is more similar to initial yellow one, and is thus more acceptable than photo of man.
AWD based on that arrangement would be nice, but I don’t see Honda making a new longitudinal platform just for this one car. More likely to be based on a LWB version of the Accord’s platform. Though it has the front axle to firewall distance to be a longitudinal platform…
That first image, cloaking device fail.
So the NSX will offer last-gen Ferrari performance at 911 Turbo prices? Hmmm…
And a RWD performance sedan for a mediocre Japanese luxury marque? Let me guess – it will be RWD, slightly underpowered, filled with a shit-ton of acronyms nobody cares about, have a driving feel that is not quite up to BMWs standards, and be about 5K less? Hmmm.. where have we seen that playbook before. Oh wait, it is Acura, they will also only give it a 4-cylinder… Or maybe they will try to move to 2 cylinders now that everyone is downsizing to keep their lead in that race.
What they need is Mazda’s styling, Acura’s engineering, Nissan power, and Lotus steering. Priced like a Hyundai Genesis. That will get them back into the game. But they actually think they have brand equity that means something, so they will just release a me-too product and move on.
Too little too late. Acura blew the perfect opportunity to get into the RWD sedan game 24 years ago. Admittedly though they probably make the same profit per TLX or whatever as Lexus/Infiniti do on their RWD sedans so it doesn’t really matter anyway. “Ring tuning and Brembo brakes don’t matter when you’re STUCK IN TRAFFIC”
A lot of hate for a car that few of us could afford, will never get a chance to drive and all because you don’t like the beak.
Thats assuming that Honda actually makes these cars, they’ve been teasing the NSX for quite a while by now but havent actually delivered them, yet.
I agree; NSX is the Duke Nuke’m 3 vaporware of cars at this point, and when it finally shows up it will be underwhelming vis-a-vis its own hype like Duke Nuke’m 3 also turned out to be.
V6 soft hybrid powertrain is hardly exotic anymore; and it is a much more crowded, vicious market for boutique mid-engine rides than when original NSX appeared. Back then, there was Ferrari and Lambo, Now one can pick from Lambo, Audi, Ferrari, Ford(?) and McLaren.
Don’t see what this thing is selling as an advantage compared to those vehicles. All the more ironic that among such (allegedly) racing-bred machines, an F1 chassis builder (McLaren) makes a direct competitor to the purveyor of its mediocre F1 powertrain (Honda). Don’t think that has ever happened before in F1, definitely not in the modern era.
So are we obligated to like every car we can’t afford? Lets not be silly.
Seems people like to hate this car just so they can put out their snarky remarks.
Seems people like to hate comments hating a car so they can make snarky remarks about people they hate because they hate a car.
Except Fred’s not being snarky, just observant.
The NSX is like a Tesla. Condemnation is at least 95% bitterness over the unreachable price.
Except for me! I’ll slam on flappy doors no matter whose or on what :-D
Honda blew their load in the Avengers over three and a half years ago. I don’t know anyone that genuinely hates this car. I also don’t know anyone that genuinely cares about it either. It’s been so long in coming and has been taken back to the drawing board so many times it’s hard to elicit more than a “meh” response now. They’ve also priced it into some seriously competitive territory. Would I rather have a new NSX or a McLaren 570S? Even if the NSX was loaded at ~$180K and I had to hand crank my windows in the McLaren I wouldn’t need to blink to make that choice.
The Ridgeline is interesting. Another “sedan” with a roofline designed for chauffeuring midgets around, not so much. And ditto for a “supercar” from a company where the last guy to care one iota about “fast,” retired from the engineering department 15 years ago.
I’m a bit of a Honda fanboi, but until the sun that rose on those guys a few decades ago, gets around to do the same over here, any overlap between their priorities and those of most car blog reading Americans, will remain fairly coincidental.
Removing the bizarre hunchback from the Ridgeline makes it much more attractive. Restricting it to only the 4-door/vestigial bed format undoes that.
Even glorious Honda quality and refinement can’t trump the absurd disutility of a “pickup” that can’t accommodate an average sofa or tall hutch.
4-door “pickups” with tiny beds are like someone sent into the world with a 4″ penis. It’s like, damn, either make me a boy or a girl for chrissake.
They could make like a more serious and enclosed 3-row version of the Ridgeline with more serious truck styling for those who don’t fancy the Pilot.
Funny stuff. For better or worse, the truth is, a lot of people are driving around in pristine full sized trucks where the bed had never had anything in it that couldn’t fit in the trunk of a modern Camaro. My basic test is, can I get a 4×8 sheet of plywood home from the hardware store? Can I drive a refrigerator 20 miles in it? Not sure if the Ridgeline would pass that test. I am not above standing a sofa up in the bed and tying it to whatever is available.