Legend has it that Honda's inspiration for the new car was found in two places: the drivetrain and suspension of the McLaren Formula 1 machines their engines powered, and in the cab-forward, wide-range visibility of an F-16 fighter jet cockpit. Italian supercar firm Pininfarina (Rolls Royce Phaeton; Ferrari Testarossa, Enzo; Jaguar XJ), Honda chief designer Kiyoyuki "Ken" Okuyama, and chief engineer Shigeru Uehara collaborated on the initial designs of what was called the HP-X (Honda Pininfarina eXperimental), identified Ferrari's 328 and 348 as competitors, and got to work. Bridging performance, control, and comfort as they envisioned required the use of components lighter than anything of the day, so Honda invented machinery and developed extrusion methods to form aluminum into a unibody that weighed 40 percent less than it would as a steel unit, while increasing rigidity-a feat never before done. Honda's Takanezawa plant (and later, Suzuka) along with the company's finest craftsmen were dedicated solely toward production of the new car. Formula 1 driver Satoru Nakajima testdrove various prototypes at Suzuka's circuit, and in February 1989, after a month of testing their latest, Honda and Nakajima-san enlisted the opinions of fellow F1 driver Ayrton Senna, whose mixed emotion about the car's rigidity prompted Honda to establish an R&D facility in Germany, to test and tune the car around the Nurburgring, daily, for eight months, until improvements were deemed satisfactory. Moves like these aren't made in making grocery getters.
The new car debuted at the 1989 Chicago Motor Show as an Acura NS-X (New Sportscar eXperimental; the name would be simplified to "NSX" upon its release the following year as a 1991 model), with its proprietary aluminum construction, as well as a 3.0L DOHC 24-valve V-6 that produced 270 bhp and 231 lb-ft of torque, redlined at 8,000 rpm, and ran 0-60 in as little as 5.03 seconds; the quarter mile in as quick as 13.3. It outperformed its Ferrari rivals in arguably every regard. It was also the first production engine to use titanium connecting rods, and bragged forged pistons and an adaptation of the VTEC system developed for the B16 the year before; the NSX would be the first to bring it to the States. Forged aluminum wheels came stock, as did electric steering on automatic trims and four-wheel independent anti-lock brakes-another NSX first, and none were components one would expect to find on anything less than a supercar.
A car so highly tuned from the factory rarely went modified among those who bought it, save for the occasional aesthetic mod-no good could come from mortal hands tinkering with it. But as availability increased, resale prices fell and less-than-perfect specimens became affordable to the layman, inhibitions be damned-we wanted to see just how far its limits could be pushed.
Cody Loveland, of Traverse City, MI, has pushed those limits just about as far as we've seen anyone do. Churning out 920 whp and 641 lb-ft of torque on an average day, Cody's NSX is believed to be the most powerful in the world. When questioned why he chose the NSX to build to the power hilt-the car that politely opts out of high-hp contests and quarter-mile bragging rights, built for the connoisseur with nothing to prove-his reply came inarguably blunt: "because I wanted to. I like the NSX."
Making near four-digit power with any production engine is a feat most will never accomplish. Doing it from within the confines of a midship engine bay is infinitely more so. A Garrett GT45R turbocharger, held in place by a network of Cody's own stainless steel, TIG-welded tubular artwork, forces boost through a custom liquid-to-air intercooler with no less than three heat exchangers, while two Walbro fuel pumps and six 1,200cc injectors provide the corresponding amount of fuel, and an AEM EMS controls it all.
By Luke Munnell
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